On the agenda were ongoing programs and concerns of the Arctic Council Stakeholders thematically arranged under headings such as Climate Change, Biodiversity, Monitoring, Oceans, and the Council's communications and outreach plans.
Outside the panoramic windows of the meeting venue overlooking Ilulissat with its lively colored houses scattered out over a rocky landscape, the Disko Bay filled with giant icebergs. These icebergs is produced by the worlds most productive glacier, the Sermeq Kujalleq ("Southern Ice") in the bottom of the Ilulissat Icefjord, from where they gently sail out to sea.
The icebergs reaches heights of up to 50 meters. Yet, the meeting participants were informed, in former times true monsters stretched up to 3 times as high into the air. This information emerged during a dinner hosted by the Greenland Government on the first evening of the meeting.
In connection with the dinner, hunter and fisherman Johannes Mathæussen made a presentation on climate changes as experienced by someone subsisting on the living resources of the Disko Bay area. Johannes explained to a fascinated audience that, while he had in fact experienced the arrival of new fish, wildlife, and insect species in the area, he did not find that the quality of traditional food sources had as such deteriorated due to climate changes.
However, one of the weirdest and most unpredictable effects attributed to climate change, according to Johannes Mathæussen, was the fact that the length of the arctic night had shortened. The sun, he elaborated, according to observations of Ilulissat inhabitants, nowadays returns to the sky one day earlier than it used to on this particular latitude within the Arctic Circle. Local residents assume that this phenomenon is connected to a possible shrinking of the surrounding Inland ice sheet.
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