Qaanaaq is difficult to reach, even for other Greenlanders. Many have never met narwhal hunters, who, “even by Greenland standards, are extreme,” McClain said. Yet the figure of the indigenous Qaanaaq hunter looms large in the country’s cultural imagination, the way the cowboy might for Americans. But, although the mythology of cowboys, for all its flaws, represents a masculinity centered around stoicism and independence, McClain said that the hunters he spent time with were complex in ways that might seem contradictory. They are at once quiet and antic; they are brave and cautious, tough and gentle, aggressive and generous. “They need each other as much as they need their independence,” McClain explained. “And they don’t see these things as mutually exclusive.” - Danyoung Kim, The New Yorker, September 2, 2020
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