In Greenland, polar bears and icy seas are no barrier to the beautiful game In the desolate, frozen landscape of Greenland, 10 men play football. They are dressed in their full winter gear: overalls, […]

In the desolate, frozen landscape of Greenland, 10 men play football. They are dressed in their full winter gear: overalls, boots, warm headwear. They need to be. The temperature is around -10 degrees celsius and the water that surrounds them is freezing.



The men are from the Norwegian patrol vessel KV Svalbard and they are playing football to pass the time, to keep them occupied during a lull in their mission.

Attention was drawn to this unique match when a photograph emerged on social media. It raised many questions: Who were they? Why were they playing? Why did one of them have a ladder..?

“The picture shows Norwegian conscripts playing football on a fleck of ice in the West Ice, east coast of Greenland,” photographer, Marius Vågenes Villanger, tells i.

“The Coast Guard were in the area to support researchers from the Marine Research Institute in Tromsø to calculate the total population of seals, and to determine the quota for a seal hunt.”

The scientists did not get involved in the football. Instead, it was a game played between two sets of coast guard. One of the men who played, Herman Andersen Dyrkorn, explained the logistics behind kicking a ball around on a sheet of ice, in freezing conditions and with the very real threat of polar bears in the back – or perhaps nearer the front – of everyone’s mind.

“I felt pretty safe,” Dyrkorn says. “We did see polar bears the day after, though.”

He later sends me a video to prove it: a lone polar bear can be seen wandering across the ice, raising its nose and gazing around. It is no more than a hundred yards from the ship.

“It was incredible,” Dyrkorn adds.

Fortunately, the bear did not arrive a day earlier. If it had, though, Dyrkorn and his colleagues would have been prepared. In the photograph of the football match, two men can be seen behind the goal. They are armed guards, trained specifically to defend against polar bears during arctic operations.

“We also had guys on the bridge [of the ship] with binoculars,” Dyrkorn says. “They were scouting for bears.” Every member of the crew was briefed extensively in how to act if they come across a bear while working on the ice.

But wild animals were not the only threat. Falling into the frigid water was another danger that needed to be avoided, particularly when playing football, where a robust challenge or innocent shove might send someone toppling over the edge.

“We kept our distance from the water,” Dyrkorn explains. On occasion, though, the ball went in. And that is where the ladder comes into play. “We had to use that to pick the ball up again. It fell in the water maybe 10 times.”

A ball was easy enough to find but the goals had to be made out of pieces wood discovered on the ship.

Dyrkorn, who can be seen in the photograph close to the ball, wearing a white headband, tells me he supports Manchester United. This was about as far away from Old Trafford as it is possible to be.

“Each match only lasted 10 minutes,” Dyrkorn adds. “But we played four matches. And we kept count. Unfortunately, I didn’t score.”

“The idea to play football came from a Norwegian officer,” Villanger, the photographer, says.

“He was responsible for physical activity onboard. He wanted to keep the men in shape but also give them a once-in-a-lifetime experience. For many of them this was the first time on the massive ice sheets in Greenland.”

Villanger was in Greenland as part of his compulsory military service, working both as a Public Affairs Soldier in the Norwegian navy and a photographer. “My mission was to sail with the Norwegian navy’s ships and vessels and document their activities through missions in national and international waters,” he said.

The aim of the expedition, Marius explained, was to count the number of new-born seals.

“The seals only give birth at one time per year,” he said. “All of them in the same period. These days around Easter. They also give birth in the same areas. After birth the seals lie on the ice without going into the water for a couple of weeks because they can’t swim yet. The counting is done by analysing photos taken from a plane. They locate the birth areas on a helicopter and mark them with beacons.”

But while the scientists conducted their important and highly technical research, it was a simple game of football that captured the imagination. “It’s cool how this picture has gone from Twitter and Facebook to national media,” Villanger says. “It was fantastic and a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

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