Schoolhouse on the Ice: Tales from Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands with Sally Bergerud

In this heartfelt and wide-ranging conversation, Dubside sits down with retired teacher and Madeline Island local Sally Bergerud to explore life on the edge of Lake Superior. From teaching in a two-room schoolhouse to crossing ice roads, dodging black bears, and paddling the Apostle Islands with a group of fearless women, Sally paints a vivid portrait of community, resilience, and deep connection to place. The episode ends with a moving story of the Ojibwe people and their sacred ties to Madeline Island—Mooningwanekaaning. This is an episode full of history, humor, and heart.

THE DUBCAST WITH DUBSIDE: Tales from the Edge of Pictured Rocks: Henry Davies on Paddling Lake Superior

 

In this episode of The Dubcast with Dubside, we venture into the wild and windswept world of Lake Superior with long-time kayaker and guide Henry Davies. Broadcasting from Henry’s home on the rocky shore of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Dubside dives deep into a wide-ranging conversation about the unique challenges of guiding at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

Henry shares stories from decades on the water—his approach to training kayak guides in icy conditions, the geology and hidden dangers of Lake Superior, the drinkability of its waters, how he transitioned from canoeing to Greenland paddling, and the joys and frustrations of teaching rolling to newcomers. We learn about shipwrecks, surfing inland waves, bears stranded in sea caves, and why Spray Falls remains one of the lake’s most magical and remote spots.

Whether you’re a traditional kayaking enthusiast, a guide in training, or just someone who dreams of paddling along sandstone cliffs streaked with copper and iron, this episode captures the essence of paddling culture on the inland sea.

LINKS:

Qajaq TC (Training Camp)

Traditional Paddlers Gathering

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

DUBSIDE:
Welcome to The Dubcast with Dubside. This is a special guest edition of the Dubcast. I'll be talking to Henry Davies, who's worked as a guide at Pictured Rocks on Lake Superior. And we talked about the weather dangers on that lake, his work training guides in the area, how he got started with a Greenland paddle, his rolling instruction techniques, extended trips he's done on Lake Superior, the geology of the area, the drinkability of Lake Superior water, bears, fishing, the advantages and disadvantages of kayaks over canoes, the difference between the two Qajaq USA events in Michigan and Minnesota, and surfing—yes you can surf on Lake Superior—and he ends up talking a little bit about the birds in the area.

This runs about 41-42 minutes.

So, I am talking to Henry, I just call everybody by the first names, I don't pay attention to last names, you often tell me your last names, I don't even know what it is.

HENRY:
Davies.

DUBSIDE:
Henry Davies, that's right. And you have been a fixture at, I see you at Michigan training camp as well as Minnesota Gathering, but is one of those more your thing than the other one?

HENRY:
I've been going to training camp since 2004, and the Gathering, I'm not sure when I started there, probably more like 2014.

DUBSIDE:
And so you do instruction and rolling at these events, and you are a long-time kayaker for quite some many years, right?

HENRY:
I've been kayaking, the first time I went kayaking was like one of these guided trips I went to in Bar Harbor, Maine, and so right after— I've been canoeing all my life before that—so after that, then it's like, well, this is more fun. I can do this by myself. So, then I got a kayak shortly after that, so that was like ’89 or something like that.

DUBSIDE:
You grew up in what area?

HENRY:
I grew up in Wisconsin.

DUBSIDE:
Okay, yeah. And now you're living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

HENRY:
Yep, I've been here 10 years.

DUBSIDE:
Does that make you an official Yooper?

HENRY:
Depends who you ask. There are different rules for different people.

DUBSIDE:
Well, being here just a few times in the last few years, I see there's a whole identity of Yooper, which is, UP is the Upper Peninsula, so it's called Yooper for short, and there seems to be a whole very unique culture in this area. So, and then your occupation now, I know you are a— for the Pictured Rocks, which is a very big tourist destination on Lake Superior, right? You said, well, you're not a guide per se.

You teach guides?

HENRY:
I have been a guide for the last nine years. This year, I'm not because the company is not running trips this year, so, but, and I was also training the guides for our company for eight of those years, and I also trained for one of the other companies in the area.

DUBSIDE:
All right, so to explain, tell me about Pictured Rocks. Give me the basic tourist pitch.

HENRY:
Well, Pictured Rocks is, it's left over from sandstone that has been eroded by the glaciers, and so it's mainly formed by the glaciers and how Lake Superior has evolved over time because there are several ancestral lakes to Lake Superior that were here occupying larger and larger spaces as the glaciers receded northward, and as the land rebounded because of the weight of the glaciers, things were pressed down, and now there's something called isostatic rebound or glacial rebound where the land is coming back up still.

DUBSIDE:
Okay, and so what you see when you go to Pictured Rocks is what? Explain that.

HENRY:
You're seeing, they're named after the colors caused by minerals that get into the groundwater and seep out to the face of the cliffs and then drizzle down the face of the cliff, and then as the minerals oxidize, they come in different colors, so some blacks are from manganese, reds are iron, whites are limonite, and if you're blue or green, that's copper coming out of the cliff.

DUBSIDE:
All right, yeah, and it's a very, very picturesque place to go and look at these rocks, but what impressed me last year when I went there, and you took us out there, it's not just one section of one cliff. It goes on for miles, right?

HENRY:
It's like 25 miles of cliffs along the lake shore, and then the cliffs go inland also, but they're harder to see in the woods and stuff. It's a lot easier to see it along the lake shore with the sun shining on it and so on.

DUBSIDE:
For the woods, you have to look out over the cliff, and you can't really do it unless you fall off, right?

HENRY:
There's some of that. There are trails across the top of the cliffs, but as the cliffs go inland from the lake, then you can be walking along the bottom of it in the woods as well.

DUBSIDE:
Okay, yeah, but out on the shoreline where you watch, there is not just kayaks. There's tour boats. There's all kinds of stuff.

HENRY:
Tour boats and pontoon boats and kayaks and just people in their own personal boats.

DUBSIDE:
There are several companies that run trips out there with various watercraft.

HENRY:
Right. In one year, I think there were five kayak companies running trips, plus the big tour boats, plus the pontoon boats that people can rent, things like that, but now I think this year, there were only three kayak companies.

DUBSIDE:
What caused the drop-off? Was this a COVID thing?

HENRY:
No, actually, I think 2020 is when we had five, but a few years ago, one of the companies had an incident where I wound up calling the Coast Guard for them, and because of how they handled the situation, they basically lost their permit that day. Then we were down to four, and this year, the company I worked for, the owner decided he wasn't going to run trips. He's retirement age, so I'm not sure—he’s saying he might be back, but I don't know what to believe at this point.

DUBSIDE:
Explain the dangers of going out in this area.

HENRY:
Well, it's Lake Superior, so early in the season, I've trained guides when we've had fresh skim of ice on the lake, and we're going out doing rescues and wet exits in that with guides who haven't paddled before being with me. They've only been in rec kayaks, if that.

We have to worry about hypothermia. It's Lake Superior, so it generates its own weather, especially in early season and late season when the air temperature and the water temperature are quite a bit different. Then it can generate winds and waves that can be significant, and they can pop up without warning. You have to watch the weather and watch the forecast.

DUBSIDE:
Say people in Denmark are far away that listen to my podcast. It's a lake, but these are serious ocean conditions.

HENRY:
This lake is 150 miles from north to south and 350 miles from east to west.

DUBSIDE:
You've got ships and things out there.

HENRY:
A few years ago, we had buoys within 10 miles of shore reporting waves of 30 feet. 30 feet? Wow.

We had hurricane force winds of 70 miles an hour.

DUBSIDE:
In going out to Pictured Rocks with tour groups and stuff, the danger occurs like the weather kicks up. Is that your primary…?

HENRY:
Yeah. We have to worry about thunderstorms. That's mostly what's going to kick up the wind, but you have to watch.

What I tell the guides, weather forecasts are always wrong. How wrong are they going to be? Maybe not a whole lot, but you have to be ready for it being wrong.

I guess if the wave is going to come sooner than you thought, that's a consideration. Are they smaller than you thought or the forecast said? That's not as big of a deal, but it's always going to be a discrepancy between the forecast and what you actually get.

DUBSIDE:
From where the kayaks put in that to where the good stuff is, you could see quite a bit of it, but you can be an hour or more away from where you come back to.

HENRY:
Yeah. Our half-day trips would go about two miles away from the beach and then two miles back. When you're paddling at tourist speeds, that's getting close to an hour, or the full day trip gets you about four to five miles out and then four to five miles back.

There may be some places to land, but there's no place that you can walk out because there are no parking lots closer than about three miles to the beach or to the cliffs at that point.

DUBSIDE:
Have you been yourself in any major disaster scenarios or close to disaster scenarios?

HENRY:
Well, that one, I wound up on the radio with the Coast Guard for a while because that company got me in that situation. They were having trouble. They couldn't complete their rescue.

We were in, it was like one, one and a half foot waves, but then they bounce off the cliffs and they wind up being two plus foot waves. I had a group of my own and we're kind of out there bobbing around.

DUBSIDE:
People come and rent a kayak without real kayak experience. You put in single kayaks?

HENRY:
Everybody uses tandem kayaks for their rental kayaks now. When I first started, we were using singles though. You'd have more incidents, more rescues then.

DUBSIDE:
Nice, big, wide, stable double kayaks. When it really kicks up, then things get...

HENRY:
I've seen a double kayak basically going along, a wave picks it up, it turns 90 degrees and goes back down. It didn't flip over. It just was aimed 90 degrees off from what it was a second ago.

DUBSIDE:
Wow. You as a single guy will take out how many people at once?

HENRY:
The park lets me take out 12 people in six tandems, but if it's a rough water day, I don't like to do that. I'd rather have four or fewer tandems.

DUBSIDE:
These could all be relatively inexperienced people. You're the only guy out there to take care of all of them. Is the weather call your own judgment or do you have other supervisor telling you you can't go out?

HENRY:
Ultimately, it's the call of the guide on the water. If the weather is kicking up and we know it before we even start the trip, then it's going to be called back at the office and they won't even get out to the guy on the water.

DUBSIDE:
How does it work with the motor boats? There's bigger vessels out there trying to get close to the rocks for the tourists to see things. Do they get in the way?

HENRY:
Not really because they usually stay further away from the cliffs than we do. I usually keep people pretty close to the cliffs, but there's a couple of reasons for that. Also, when we're out there and I see the big boat go by that throws the best wake, then I'll try and get people to surf that wake if they're up for it in their tandems.

Some people will join in, some people won't.

DUBSIDE:
I remember last year when we were out there, you showed us there was a shipwreck out there.

HENRY:
The shipwreck of the George was about 203 feet long and it went down in 1893. It's a wooden schooner. It's remasted.

DUBSIDE:
This end of Lake Superior, is this the one where all the shipwrecks are? I mean, the graveyard back here?

HENRY:
It's considered graveyard of the Great Lakes because there are no harbors on the south shore here between here and Whitefish Point, basically. There's just Grand Marais Harbor. There are no other natural harbors.

Munising Bay is a good natural harbor. Grand Marais is a good natural harbor and Whitefish Bay, but it's what? That covers about 150 miles.

You've got a harbor on each end and one in the middle.

DUBSIDE:
Even for the big ships, they've got to watch the weather too.

HENRY:
Often, if we have south winds, they'll hide on the south shore. If we have north winds, they'll hide on the north shore, that kind of thing.

DUBSIDE:
When you're instructing guides, what do you tell them? What are the important things for them to know?

HENRY:
First, I want to get them so that they can paddle reasonably. Part of their job is to be able to do a rescue. The most important thing there is, in my mind, getting to the rescue accurately, so that they can actually start it.

If they paddle up to somebody and coast past it, they're not doing a rescue yet. First, I have to get them up to speed doing that and teach them how to do rescues. A tandem like that weighs 100 pounds.

Then you put, I don't know, 70 pounds of water in it. It's a big thing to try and dump that out from a little solo kayak.

DUBSIDE:
70 pounds? That's not like 700 pounds of water.

HENRY:
Water's heavy stuff. Yeah, water's heavy stuff. The kayak by itself is 100 pounds.

The thing is, you can't just pull it up right side up onto your boat. It's too heavy. You can't lift it upside down because you have to bring it up on its edge and dump it as you pull it up, or I have to.

DUBSIDE:
So the qualification to be a guide, you start off with some ACA things or something, or it's all your own criteria?

HENRY:
What I'm teaching them is basically ACA level three skills. Some things we don't worry about. Navigation's pretty easy.

If you can see the rocks, you're doing well. If you can't see the rocks, you're too far away from shore. There are a few other…tides—we don't have tides on the Great Lakes. Lake Superior has a tide, but it's only like two inches, so it's overwhelmed by everything else.

DUBSIDE:
But the tandem rescues, you really get into that more so than the regular ACA class, I would think.

HENRY:
Well, we start out with solo rescues, but a lot of the class is getting them up to speed in how to paddle, how to have endurance, how to tow a kayak. So towing a tandem is another thing that's kind of a bit of work, depending how much headwind you're going into, things like that.

DUBSIDE:
What does a typical person pay for a trip?

HENRY:
I think they're paying like $180 for a full day trip.

DUBSIDE:
That's several hours?

HENRY:
Yeah, so it's like four hours of paddling plus lunchtime at Mosquito Beach and some of that.

DUBSIDE:
How long is the season for this class? Because it can be frozen over in the wintertime, right?

HENRY:
Right. We start trips usually Memorial Day, so that can be late May, early June, depending how that works out. Then we usually go to mid-September.

Before and after those dates, well, before that, the guides aren't trained up, but even if we were to try and run trips, the weather is more unpredictable before and after those dates. So we wind up canceling a lot more trips due to weather, due to waves and wind.

DUBSIDE:
Do you get like a turnover of people doing guiding for a couple of years and then they're off to other things?

HENRY:
Yeah, usually they're college students. So often we'll get almost everybody sticks around for two years and then we're starting over again. But sometimes we'll get half of the people sticking around.

It varies a lot.

DUBSIDE:
They're not getting paid a tremendous amount of money, right?

HENRY:
I'm not sure what they get. Yeah, not a tremendous amount. They get something.

They stick around for another year, so it must be enough.

DUBSIDE:
Well, in my experience, talking to other places, just general work in the paddlesport field, it's good summer work for people. But when they look at really what they can expect career-wise, there's no money to be made. So if they want to get some serious money, they're off on something else.

HENRY:
Well, a lot of these people are outdoor recreation majors, so they're going to do the same kind of thing as a real job. Maybe not in kayaking, maybe it'll be rafting, maybe it'll be climbing. But I don't know what kind of income those things are.

But yeah, certainly you can find things that have more income. But you don't need a vacation, kind of, because what you're doing is already fun.

DUBSIDE:
So tell me how you got into traditional kayaking.

HENRY:
Basically, I bought a paddle back in about 2001, a Greenland paddle, and started using it on my first trip that year. So I'm out paddling in amongst the ice with a Greenland paddle and been using it ever since.

DUBSIDE:
What particular brand was that paddle?

HENRY:
That was a Superior, a wooden Superior paddle.

DUBSIDE:
Mark Rogers.

HENRY:
Yeah, I still have it.

DUBSIDE:
Cool.

HENRY:
I still use it.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. And did you plug into the Qajaq USA thing back then?

HENRY:
Well, I think it wasn't there quite yet then, but yeah.

DUBSIDE:
It was getting started on the East Coast in 2001.

HENRY:
A few years ago, a few years after that, I was at the Great Lake Sea Kayak Symposium, and Greg Stamer was there as an invited instructor. And he was touting Qajaq USA at that point, because he was just starting it up. So yeah, I got into it.

Maybe a few years after that, I probably got into it after I started going to Qajaq TC training camp, which really was only like three years later or two years later or so.

DUBSIDE:
I went to Michigan Training Camp, as I called it back then, in, I think the first time I was 2006 or so.

HENRY:
Okay. My first time was 2004.

DUBSIDE:
Right. You recall seeing me there at all?

HENRY:
Oh, yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Really?

HENRY:
Yeah, early on.
Well, and you were there every year from then on, kind of.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Well, I missed a bunch in between for, I forget what I was doing. That's in, yeah, August.

Yeah, because I was doing more overseas stuff during that time of year for a stretch.

HENRY:
Your hair was much longer then.

DUBSIDE:
Oh, yeah. You remember that. And then the Gathering, when did you start going to that one?

HENRY:
I think it was like 2014.

I'm not sure. I'd have to check my notes.

DUBSIDE:
So you do instruction at these things, and I've seen you working with people rolling one-on-one, like I do a lot of this too.

Tell me your basic technique for somebody who's a beginner.

HENRY:
I kind of feel like there are a lot of people who are better at teaching the beginners than I am, but still, usually I'll get them to work on a balance brace. And if that, we're having trouble with that, we'll work on some sculling. And even if we aren't having trouble with that, I'm still going to get them sculling because I can get them, that scull is the tail end of the roll.

So that helps them learn what they need to do. But what I'm trying to get them to learn is how to get onto the back deck without actually putting their nose in the water yet so that they can be comfortable in breathing.

DUBSIDE:
So what are some typical problems you run into, or typical mistakes people make?

HENRY:
Usually after you get that going, and then you start going into the water and coming out, it's that the paddle stays on the side you fell in on, and then they get totally confused. So that's one of the things. And then I just wind up holding the paddle, trying to make sure it gets onto the other side.

They're still confused, but now the paddle's in the right place. Usually people just forget to hip snap, things like that. I mean, there's how many different things.

Everybody's got their own failure they can do.

DUBSIDE:
People that are very afraid of going underwater?

HENRY:
Some. Often that's not so much the case. But you do have people who just want to delay by talking to you until they decide to do the roll again, which can occupy more time than actually doing the roll, almost always.

DUBSIDE:
I remember Dan, I think it was Dan Segal, he'd get into that and he'd say, shut up. I talk, you listen. Shut up, do the roll.

I don't quite get that abrupt with people, but that...

HENRY:
You're just stalling, you know that, right? Okay, let's roll. Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Do you do any teaching of rolling outside of the Qajaq USA events?

HENRY:
I have done that. I used to teach rolling for a local kayak company, local shop when I lived down in the Detroit area. But since I've moved up here, I haven't really.

DUBSIDE:
Was that with the Greenland paddle still?

HENRY:
I didn't care. Whatever they brought.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.
When you just want to go out paddling for fun, I should mention here, we are in your house on the shore of Lake Michigan with a beautiful...

HENRY:
Lake Superior.

DUBSIDE:
Lake Superior. I'm sorry. Excuse me. Lake Superior, there's a big difference there.

We're in a back room, so I don't have a view right now, but it's a very, very nice place here. You got the water lapping right at your yard, actually. So when you just want to go out paddling for fun, where do you go?

HENRY:
Well, I'll go on Lake Superior because it's right here. I'm not one much for going on the local lakes because if I'm going to go out paddling for fun, I'm probably going to do 15 or 20 miles. I just got done with a trip where there were two of us and we did like 270 miles over 13 days camping out of our kayaks.

DUBSIDE:
This is along the shore of Lake Michigan? No, Lake Superior.

HENRY:
Lake Superior along the Canadian coast.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. All right. Now, I'm understanding that they call it the North Shore up on the top part there where Canada is, is that, the… what, the layout of the landscape is a lot different from the southern part?

HENRY:
The geology up there, there's some differences and some similarities. There's a lot more volcanic rock basalts and so on, but there's also some sedimentary rocks like sandstone, but the sandstone there doesn't have the mineral streaking that we have here. It's often more of a redder sandstone where we've got a beige sandstone and even just like Grand Island is right near Pictured Rocks.

It's in Munising Bay and that one is made of a much older sandstone than the Pictured Rocks is and that's got a mixture of reddish and cream-colored sandstone.

DUBSIDE:
And does anybody do the whole circumnavigate the whole Lake Superior?

HENRY:
Sounds like several people do it a year. Like somebody did it this summer, and they said they paddled like a thousand miles. Like, well, you didn't follow the coast very closely then, did you?

DUBSIDE:
It's longer than a thousand if you go into every little nook and cranny.

HENRY:
Yeah. I think I've read a number like 1600, but...

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, I could see it'd be tempting to take shortcuts here and there. But even with the shortcuts, that's going to be, what, a month?

Is it longer?

HENRY:
I think that's what people do, is a month or... You know, it just depends how much they're following the coast and things like that. What are the goals of their specific trip?

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Do people try to go across it?

HENRY:
People have gone across it. I don't know much of the details of that. I think I've read of people who have successfully crossed it, yes.

But like... I've been out to Isle Royale, which is a national park in the middle of Lake Superior. It's about 45 miles from the Keweenaw Peninsula and the UP.

And I've been out there and met a guy who paddled out there from the Keweenaw Peninsula. And I've paddled out there from Minnesota side, which is about 15-mile open water crossing. Right.

And that's just sort of the west half of the lake.

DUBSIDE:
Right.

HENRY:
Like I said, it's about 350 miles across.

DUBSIDE:
Are the shipping channels fairly well known?

HENRY:
They're on your charts, yeah. That doesn't mean you know where they begin and end.

There are no buoys for them out in the middle of the lake.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. And you get fog here. Sometimes it hangs for quite a while.

HENRY:
Last year, we had a trip. We were out for 15 days and it seemed like we had fog every day. Not all day long, but you'd be paddling along.

And there was one day we were like, this island, we saw it two hours ago when we were eating breakfast, but we know it's right over there. And we just about ran into it because the fog was so thick.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. So just careful navigation with your compass to keep you on track.

HENRY:
Yeah. I have a GPS, but usually I just use that to keep a track so I can put it on my maps. And I usually go with compass and chart.

But if we have a wind and fog, then sometimes you don't quite know where you are. So the GPS helps with that. We found shore, but what shore?

I'm not quite sure.

DUBSIDE:
Do you monitor VHF radio to listen to the ships and stuff?

HENRY:
Often not because I've only got the limit. I'm usually out on two-week trips and I've got a limited amount of battery I can spend on stuff like that.

DUBSIDE:
All right. But the Coast Guard is all over monitoring the radio out there.

HENRY:
Last time I was out on Isle Royale, I had to make a mayday call for a different group. So yeah, they picked up when I made my mayday call on my radio.

DUBSIDE:
Can you drink Lake Superior?

HENRY:
It's pretty clean.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

HENRY:
The things you have to worry about are what washes off land. So if you're paddling close to shore, you're more likely to have problems than if you're out in deeper water.

DUBSIDE:
All right.

HENRY:
Having said that, I've had guides that work with me in the past who that's all they did, but they would drink water out of the lake as they were guiding and they're paddling along the cliffs. I'd say to them something like, so what lands on the cliffs and what do they do when they're on the cliffs? In between rainstorms, the seagulls up there.

I guess that didn't bother them, but okay.

DUBSIDE:
Well, it's a big lake. There's a lot of water to lose.

HENRY:
I know, but you're still pretty close to shore. It's true. It's true.

DUBSIDE:
Can't deny that. So do you see any big changes or milestones in the future for kayaking or for the type of stuff you do or what does the future hold?

HENRY:
Yeah, I don't know that I don't look at things very globally because Lake Superior's got a lot of interesting shoreline and I can paddle here happily for many more years and probably more than I have left anyway. And there are places I haven't been and places I need to go back to and so I think about things of how do I paddle more than the paddling world, I guess.

DUBSIDE:
So when you go do these runs along the shore for several days or weeks, do you have bears in this area?

HENRY:
Oh, there are bears in this area. When I've backpacked in this area, I've seen fresh tracks and I've also run into like, oh, look, a cub. Where's the mother?

DUBSIDE:
Really?

HENRY:
Things like that.

DUBSIDE:
These are black bears, right?

HENRY:
Black bears. That's what we have around here, right?

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

HENRY:
I've never really had an issue with a bear. I've had bears that were grunting and shaking trees.

DUBSIDE:
But you've got to do all the keep the food out of your tent and hang your stuff up in a tree and all that kind of stuff.

HENRY:
Yeah, yeah.

DUBSIDE:
But no major disasters.

HENRY:
Yeah, I've never had a minor disaster either.

DUBSIDE:
All right, all right. When you do these camp trips, do you like fish for supplement your food with stuff that you gather or catch?

HENRY:
Um, a little bit, not much. I mean, I don't fish personally, but I've had been on my trips where one of the other people or a couple of the other people fish sometimes. But usually it's, do we have extra time in this day?

It doesn't happen every day.

DUBSIDE:
What kind of fish are they catching? Do you know?

HENRY:
Um, Susan caught a pike on one of our trips on Pukaskwa and last year she caught a brook trout.

DUBSIDE:
So they're fishing, not while they're paddling.

HENRY:
Right? Yeah. Fishing from shore.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, all right. Cool.

HENRY:
And we've had, we've harvested mushrooms and berries and stuff on our trips too. One of the people I paddle with is knows all the mushrooms.

DUBSIDE:
What kayak do you prefer for say these trips, extended trips?

HENRY:
I paddle the Explorer for the extended trips, because it's got room for a couple of weeks worth of gear.

DUBSIDE:
What is it?

HENRY:
An Nigel Dennis Explorer.

DUBSIDE:
Oh, Explorer. Oh yeah.

HENRY:
And so, and for training, I usually paddle a Romany and then when I'm just day paddling, I'll paddle an Anas Acuta or, and I've been using that for when I go to the Qajaq USA events as well.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. Yeah. Have you built any skin-on-frames?

HENRY:
Uh, no, I have not. The only thing I built was a canoe about 30 years ago.

DUBSIDE:
What made you go from canoeing to kayaking?

HENRY:
The ability to do solo and the ability to get out on bigger water, like the Great Lakes. Right.

DUBSIDE:
You can't solo in a canoe?

HENRY:
Um, I'm sure you could, but you have to worry about the waves a lot more.

DUBSIDE:
True.

HENRY:
I can go out in bigger waves in a kayak than I would be safe, feel safe doing in a canoe.

DUBSIDE:
I see on Lake Superior. Yeah. I could see the kayak was coming to its own.

Those, those small lake trips are long things. If you have lots of stuff to carry, the canoe has its advantage.

HENRY:
It's so much easier to move a canoe full of gear. You know, the kayak… “portage” is not in the Inuit language. That's the canoe language.

The French Canadians. So yeah. So my kayak never gets portaged.

DUBSIDE:
All right. Have you, have you gotten, um, interested in the, the, the rolling competition list of all the different weird roles that the Greenland list consists of?

HENRY:
A little bit, but mostly it's stuff I can't do. I can do maybe about 10 or 11 roles, but, and maybe there's some I don't even think of, but yeah.

DUBSIDE:
All right. So at the Michigan Training Camp, what is your favorite part of that weekend?

HENRY:
I like to see people learning new things and help them learn new things. That's, and just to see it when they get something to work, it's like, ah, or even if they don't quite get it to work, they have the something new, they, a new way to work on it on their own for later, that kind of thing.

DUBSIDE:
All right. Have you been to any of the other Qajaq USA events in other parts?

HENRY:
No, I haven't.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. Well, how do you, how do you see the difference between the, the Gathering in Minnesota and the, uh, Training Camp in Michigan?

HENRY:
Training Camp is, it's a bigger event. Um, it, it's, it's, a lot of it I see is how it's evolved because I've been going there for so long. It's the, the different groups of participants have changed over time where early on, when I was going, it was more people who were trying to learn third, fourth, fifth kinds of roles.

And now it's people who want to understand a Greenland paddle versus a Euro paddle and how is it different? So they're just getting into it and there's a lot of, a lot more people who are learning first roles or maybe just learning how to do forward stroke and some of those kinds of things.

DUBSIDE:
All right. So when you, you first were going there, it was, it was Dave Braun, was it?

HENRY:
Yeah. He was still running it then.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Okay.

HENRY:
And it was a lot of the, um, Walden Pond Scum people doing a lot of the teaching.

DUBSIDE:
So, so back then you, you saw there's more, less straight up beginners and more some advanced things.

HENRY:
That's what it seemed like.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Okay.

All right. Well, I've always noticed all these events have somewhat of a turnover and you get some new people, but sometimes more people, more new people than other times, but it's always good to have a mix of all the, all the different things.

HENRY:
It seemed like there's been a couple of times where we had just a lot of new people come in at Training Camp and, and it changes the flavor of it for a few years after that. And then it'll happen again.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. All right.

HENRY:
And where it seems to me, and you know, I'm, I haven't been going as long, but that the Gathering is more people who've known each other longer. They tend to live closer to each other.

They're more family. And I think that's kind of how Training Camp started, but now we've got, it's gotten bigger and more new people. So it's a little less that way.

I mean, there's still a core kind of, but there's a lot more people than just the core.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. All right. Well, the, the one unique feature of, of a training camp is since you have Lake Michigan right there on one side of the camp and a little lake, the small lake that they do more instruction on the other side.

But, and so sometimes we do like last year, we had surfed out there on the big lake and that was fun to do. Do you do a lot of surfing?

HENRY:
I, when I'm, I, I don't do a lot of surfing on my own because it would be just me going out. Sometimes that doesn't feel like the wisest way to go, but it's not like somebody else can help you much when you're surfing. But I do, because when I'm training guides, I need to get them up to the point where they can do all their rescues and maneuvers and stuff in two feet of waves.

I need to teach them to surf too. So usually I'll get out and surfing with them earlier in the year and get them towing and rescuing and all that kind of stuff in two to three feet of waves.

DUBSIDE:
And you still use your Romany or your Explorer for that?

HENRY:
Romany usually, yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. Yeah. My version of surfing is just trying to get on the wave and then rolling.

Since, since I, I, my role is fairly dependable, so I'm not intimidated by the surf, but to get it to stay on and ride the waves…

HENRY:
Yeah, that's a little tough. And I, I don't have, I can't think of when I've had a problem with rolling in surf. It's when my surf, when I wind up on shore and I'm upside down on the beach, then yeah, the roll is not as good.

DUBSIDE:
All right, all right. Yeah. So in, along the shore of Pictured Rocks, you must be familiar with every little spot, you know, the whole progression from however many miles of it is.

What is your favorite place?

HENRY:
I guess one of my favorite places is Spray Falls. Okay. And mainly because it's kind of the hardest place, one of the hardest places to get to in a kayak because it's like eight or nine miles from a beach that you can drive a car to.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

HENRY:
So it winds up being a 16 or 18 mile trip, depending how closely you follow the cliffs. Spray Falls also falls directly off the cliff, 75 feet right into Lake Superior.

So, and it, it's all, I've never seen it not flowing.

DUBSIDE:
So this is like springs or, or melting snow or what's feeding that?

HENRY:
It's, well, it's also got to be fed from rain, but it's, it's a stream, Spray Creek, but it must have enough of an area that it collects water from that it, it never seems to dry up. I've never seen it dry up.

DUBSIDE:
So it's 75 feet off the, off a cliff. It just comes right down into the...

HENRY:
Right down into the lake. You can paddle in the water falling down on you. The problem is the water falling down creates a current flowing out and the air that it brings with it creates a current above the water flowing out.

So everything's trying to keep you from getting under the water.

DUBSIDE:
Wow. Well, I remember when we went out there, there are different areas here and there with the water coming down and falls, but this sounds like the, the most spectacular one.

HENRY:
Yeah. Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Right. So I would gather that not very, not very many people are there compared to the other places because it's so hard to get to.

HENRY:
It's, well, so there's one of the tour companies that launches from a boat, so it's easier for them to get there.

DUBSIDE:
A motor boat.

HENRY:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

HENRY:
A large motorized boat. Okay. They can launch like, I don't know what it is, 12 kayaks, 12 tandems off of it.

DUBSIDE:
But they go out there like a mothership. And then you go, oh, okay.

HENRY:
But they don't actually go to Spray Falls. It's like, they go close to it. You know, they get within two miles of it, but they don't go out to it.

DUBSIDE:
Huh. Why don't they go all the way?

HENRY:
Yeah, I don't know that. That's not how they run their business. Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
All right. Are there any wildlife out there that are noteworthy to see? I guess you don't have whales or seals, right?

HENRY:
No. We did have a bear one year that I don't know how it got there. It was at the base of the cliff in amongst the ice at the base of the cliff in spring when we were doing training.

My guess is it fell off of a low part of the cliff or something and just wound up there. And it couldn't figure out how to get out of there because it was a mile to go east to get beyond the cliff or three miles to go west to get to a beach. And so it couldn't figure out how to get out of there.

And so I came back next week with a different set of guides that I was training. The bear was still in the same cave. And so I told the park about it.

And they said, bears are good swimmers. It'll figure it out. I actually told them the first time we saw it.

Second time, bears are good swimmers. It'll figure it out. And then I said, OK, but the bear is here.

It's going to be here on Memorial Day weekend. And kayakers are going to feed the bear. And then the DNR came out and towed the bear, put a rope around its neck, apparently (I didn't see this happen) and towed it off to a beach so it could run into the woods.

DUBSIDE:
All right. And what about birds and things?

HENRY:
We get a lot of we see a lot of eagles. We see a lot of mergansers. Sometimes we'll see moons, but not too often. A lot of cormorants, seagulls.

DUBSIDE:
Well, that is a very good view of Lake Superior and Painted Rocks. And anything else you'd like to add?

HENRY:
Um, yeah, I can't think of anything right off.

DUBSIDE:
All right. Well, thank you very much for being on the Dubcast with Dubside.

HENRY:
Thank you.

See you next year here up, I imagine. You'll be at the Gathering next week.

HENRY:
Training Camp next year.

DUBSIDE:
OK, thank you very much.

That is Henry Davies. Interviewed the last week of August 2024.

At his home in Michigan's Upper Peninsula on the shore of Lake Superior. Thank you for listening to The Dubcast with Dubside.

 

The Straitjacket Roll and Other Obsessions: A Conversation with David Täng

 

In this episode of The Dubcast with Dubside, Dubside and Andrew reflect on the highlights of the weekend at SSTIKS 2025, the people they met, and the unique energy of the event. It’s a quiet moment of gratitude, insight, and storytelling around the campfire.

We then head to Sweden for a deep-dive conversation with David Täng—Greenland-style kayak roller, skin-on-frame qajaq builder, and founder of Sweden’s growing rolling competition scene. From his early days learning from Cheri Perry and Turner Wilson’s DVDs to launching a rolling club and helping organize the Swedish Rolling Championships, David shares his journey, philosophy, and the technical secrets behind his competition rolls—including insights on cockpit design, spinal flexibility, and the elusive straitjacket roll.

Whether you’re a seasoned roller or just learning your first recovery, this episode offers rich technique discussion, community-building wisdom, and inspiration for anyone obsessed with qajaq rolling. Plus, David tells the story behind his website qajaqrolling.com, and shares thoughts on building toward an international rolling competition.

LINKS:

David Täng: Welcome to Qajaq Rolling

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

 

ANDREW:
Hey everyone—Andrew here. Welcome back to The Dubcast with Dubside.

This episode kicks off a little differently—because the introduction is actually on video. So if you'd like to watch this video, you can find it on my YouTube Channel. I'll put the link in the show notes.

Dubside and I had an incredible time at SSTIKS—and in the couple weeks leading up to it—reconnecting with old friends and recording some great conversations. A big thank you goes out to everyone who came up and said “Hi", and told us how much you enjoyed the podcast. Hearing how much it inspired you truly means a lot to us.

And of course, a huge shoutout to the organizers and volunteers who made SSTIKS 2025 such a fun, welcoming, and unforgettable event. We really appreciate all your hard work.

Now, some of you have asked what it’s like to be spending time with Dubside. Let’s just say: I really admire how he can follow a very simple, and focused, almost ascetic lifestyle. His routine is dialed in—yoga every morning while his breakfast cooks, mostly plant-based whole foods, no screens, just books. You know he hasn’t watched TV since he was 12 years old. There’s a discipline and focus to how he lives that really makes you think about what it takes to master something. I’ve learned a lot just watching his routine throughout the day.

So after SSTIKS, we sat down by the fire and recorded our thoughts. I'm going to share some of that conversation here. Like I said, this part is on video, so head over to my YouTube channel to see it.

ANDREW:
So here we are, Monday evening, the day after SSTIKS.

DUBSIDE:
Fly out tomorrow morning, back to the East Coast.

ANDREW:
Yep, getting up early tomorrow. What did you think of the weekend? How would you kind of sum it up?

DUBSIDE:

Just the weekend? How about the whole, what have I been here, two weeks?

ANDREW:
Yeah, the whole weeks. The run up to the event.

DUBSIDE:
I can't even remember when I got here. Moulton Avery picked me up at the airport, did some classes up there in Vancouver, Washington, and then I was, you picked me up from his house, right?

ANDREW:
Yep.

DUBSIDE:
And then we went on a little road trip doing interviews.

ANDREW:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Then we got to SSTIKS. Yeah, heck of a time. Whirlwind for these two weeks.

Not a whole lot of time to rest.

ANDREW:
Yeah, that's a good word for it. But we managed to make it work. On a very tight schedule. What do you think of the event itself?

DUBSIDE:
SSTIKS, yeah, I think they're off to a good start. It's definitely a new start. They got a new location, new staff learning how to do things, and they're making little snafus here and there that'll improve over time.

When we interviewed Peter Gengler, he'd been coming to Delmarva for so many years, longer than I have, 25, 30 years almost. And doesn't he lament how, you know, that it's not how it used to be, and you miss the old times, and it just changed so much. And I know that people feel that way.

People who don't come back to these things, it's just not the same anymore. And Peter Gengler said, you just have to embrace all of it. And each one is unique, and not trying to make each one a reference point to the other ones, and a better or worse one, but just it is what it is.
And you come there and enjoy it. So SSTIKS is going to be the same thing. You know, it's a different group of people there, a different location, but hey, you're just going to enjoy it.

It was a very enjoyable weekend, and some new cool people, and some cool old people.

ANDREW:
And I wish I had more time to talk and interview with people. We had, you know, a few people that we were trying to get to do an interview with, but everybody was so busy.

DUBSIDE:
They got me on the water teaching and doing yoga instruction in the morning, and presentation in the evening. So I didn't have much time to get out my gear with you and record stuff.

ANDREW:
Yeah, it was a really tight schedule.

DUBSIDE:
You got some good video, right?

ANDREW:
I hope so. We'll find out.

DUBSIDE:
And as they're learning how to do things, I was very happy when they wanted a Sunday afternoon rolling competition thing. Usually at SSTIKS, that would mean we get out on the dock, I'm in the water, and everybody else they can find who wants to do it. And we go through a list until usually no one can do any more rolls except me, and I'm doing the last one, and that's the end of the demonstration.

Somebody will be narrating. I wasn't all that thrilled on Sunday afternoon to get my gear all wet again if I could get out of it. And so we had two folks there who were relatively new.

I don't think they've been at prior SSTIKS. And they got good rolling skills. They still got some things to learn.

So I encouraged, I suggested we have them in the water. I was suggesting several people. Those are the two that stepped up to the task.

And I narrated along with Henry Romer, one of the old timers there. We were studying the names of the rolls in Greenlandic and making comments on them. And they were in the water.

And I was happy about that because if you have, you know, when Cheri Perry and Helen Wilson and I, or people like James Manke do the rolling demos and, you know, knocking out all the hard rolls, I think it's just intimidating for other people. I mean, you see how they're done. But to expect someone else to try that and maybe next year they could do the demo, we don't get a whole lot of buy-in on that.

But so to this time, deliberately step back and say, okay, you folks do the rolling demonstration. And they did some good rolls. Then at the end, they started playing around, do some funny tricks they made, which is just like Cheri Perry and I used to do back in the day.

And when Freya Hoffmeister, we do demonstrations at Delmarva and things. So let the new generation come in and give us some new ideas of vitality.

On this new location at Columbia River, we had these ships, container ships, huge container ships coming right past us on the river at various intervals. That was kind of new.

ANDREW:
That was pretty interesting how close they came to the shore.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. They were doing some nice trips up into the streams and things that feed the big river there. And I didn't get to go on any of those, but it sounds like they had some really cool places to paddle into.a

Maybe next year I'll get to see some of those.

ANDREW:
Yeah, it's a beautiful area. They had this beautiful sandy beach. And we'd also been approached by a lot of people who listened to the podcast, which was really cool.

DUBSIDE:
We met some fans.

ANDREW:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Good fans. Some people said they'd listened to all of them.

ANDREW:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
I was impressed.

ANDREW:
Yeah, I was impressed too. And it's great to get that kind of feedback.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Folks who have came to kayaking recently, and this has been sort of their introduction to the whole sport. So all the reference points we tie in there just gives them the background on it.

So that's gratifying to be able to provide that. I gave out a fresh batch of guitar picks. Since I haven't been out here since before we started the podcast. So everybody was new. So I handed them all out.

So when I get home, I'll have about two weeks or so to prepare for Greenland again.

I'll be bringing my recording equipment and another set of interviews. This two weeks here, we got what, like six, seven…?

ANDREW:
Dubside and I continued our conversation long into the night. Maybe I'll share more of it down the road. For now, I'm excited to bring you Dubside's interview with Swedish kayak builder and rolling enthusiast, David Täng.

David's story is full of insight. He shares his journey from casual paddler to rolling competitor and delves into the fine points of kayak design and his dream of creating an international kayak rolling championship. If you geek out on technique and rolling form, you're going to love this one.

Also, a quick update. We've launched an Instagram for The Dubcast With Dubside. We'll be posting photos, videos, and behind the scenes moments there.

So be sure to follow us. That link's in the show notes too. Thanks as always for listening. And until next time, happy paddling!

 

DUBSIDE:

Welcome to The Dubcast, With Dubside. This is a special guest edition of the Dubcast. An interview with an expert kayak roller from Sweden, named David Täng.

I talked about how he got started kayaking, and how he got interested in rolling. He formed a rolling group, how he got interested in competition rolling. And Cheri Perry and Turner Wilson come up in the conversation a number of times.

He talks about going to the Danish rolling competition. We delve into the straightjacket roll. We mentioned Jan David Jensen.

And we talk about skin-on-frame design, related to rolling and special modifications. He mentions Jorgen and Anna-Sophia from Norway. The finer points of spinal flexibility.

His ideas of organizing the Swedish rolling championship. And having a kayak community. And the idea of an international rolling competition.

This goes for a little under 45 minutes.

Well, it is August 12th. And if this sounds familiar, it's because I've recorded a few other episodes right here from this location.

But I'm talking to David Täng, from Sweden, at his house. And so as a special guest, I would like our listeners to meet you and get to know you. T

DAVID TÄNG:
Thank you.

DUBSIDE:
And welcome to the Dubcast with Dubside.

DAVID TÄNG:
Thank you.

DUBSIDE:
So I first became aware of you in finding out about the last couple of years of the Swedish kayak championship.

And when I saw they put up a video of Jan David competing and missing a few rolls that I knew he could do. And some guy named David Täng going after him and doing, I think, what was scored as better than him. Which impressed me quite a bit.

So I tracked you down. And here I am at your house, talking to you. So how long have you been kayaking?

DAVID TÄNG:
Oh, 10, 12 years. Something like that. It was my wife that said, well, we had to have some common interests. So after golf didn't work out, let's try kayaking. And I said, well, all right.

Okay. And here I am.

DUBSIDE:
So you didn't pick up on the Greenland rolling stuff until relatively recently?

DAVID TÄNG:
Well, I did start to roll basically straight away. But the kayaks I had by then, they weren't really suited for rolling.

DUBSIDE:
Were you using a Greenland paddle early on?

DAVID TÄNG:
Not at the beginning. I had a Euro paddle, had a huge fiberglass kayak, which we didn't like.

But it took a year or two, and then I said, yeah, I like this. It's fun.

DUBSIDE:
Kayaking in general?

DAVID TÄNG:
Kayaking in particular.

DUBSIDE:
And you were going out paddling just day things and not really rough water?

DAVID TÄNG:
No, just smooth water, day trips, going back and forth a little bit. But I did try rolling early because I like to get wet. So there was a lot of bailing out, a lot of self-rescuing stuff going on.

And Euro paddle is not very well suited for rolling, and especially not with a kayak with huge freeboards. So after a while, I decided that, yeah, I want to do this. So I invested in a more expensive kayak.

The second kayak I bought was the Valley Anas Acuta, and that rolls very well.

DUBSIDE:
We've heard all about the original designer of that kayak on the podcast.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah, I really appreciated that. That was something else.

So after another year, I found these plans on the Internet for a Greenland paddle. That's something. I love… you know, woodworking is fun.

So I started making my own paddles, and they were awful to start out with. 1.2, 1.3 kilos, huge things, thick things, heavy things, but they were way better than the Euro paddle.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah? Okay. And so when did you become aware of there was this kayak, Greenland type of community, whether in Sweden or other places?

DAVID TÄNG:
That was much later. I didn't know anything more than the standard Greenland roll. Luckily, I've never heard of the C2C, which I'm kind of not a fan of.

But, well, I spent a lot of time on YouTube by then, and after a short while, I found Cheri and Turner. So I actually got their "This Is The Roll 2” first.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
So then the whole world opened up for me, and I said, wow, this is something else. A couple of years later, when I went through most of the rolls on the second DVD, I bought the first one, and then things started to pick up. Because if you don't have a good foundation, the harder ones basically get impossible.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. All right.

DAVID TÄNG:
So I went back and I relearned, and I've relearned a couple of times since then.

DUBSIDE:
All right. Now, when you started, you're out paddling. Now, my awareness of Swedish coastline here, there's some beautiful places to paddle.

I guess you're right in the middle of that. It's outside of, in greater Gothenburg is where you're at.

Did you have other…?

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah, well, I live permanently south of Gothenburg at a place called Onsala. So we got pretty good waters around here.

But I am so fortunate that my parents came from up the coast. They're from a small town called Strömstad.

And my grandfather was a pilot there. So they had a little house out on an island outside of Strömstad called Koster.

And that place, well, I can't find the words to describe that place, but it's a mecca. It's a wonderful place for kayaking. It's one of the best places I can imagine.

It's very easy to paddle there because we don't have any tidal waters or tides, basically. And it's very sheltered. And millions and millions, oh, sorry, hundreds of small islands, some of the size of rocks sticking up.

And you can go in between them. In some places, you can stretch out your arms and touch both sides to the rocks.
Yeah, so it's very sheltered. But when you want to, you can just go a little bit further, you know, another half an hour, and it will be the North Sea.

And the North Sea swells coming in. So if you want to go rock hopping or… So you can choose. And I've been so fortunate to have good parents.

DUBSIDE:
So you started learning the Greenland rolls with the Cheri and Turner DVD and things, right?

DAVID TÄNG:
Right.

DUBSIDE:
Now, when did you connect with other people that were similarly interested in Greenland rolling?

DAVID TÄNG:
That was much later. I don't really remember. Well, I was, you know, I was scanning the Internet, and I heard that Cheri and Turner actually was going to be in the Gothenburg area teaching.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
By that time, I was unable to sign up because—

DUBSIDE:
Can you think of what year this was about?

DAVID TÄNG:
’15, ’16, maybe ’17. Something like that. But, you know, I couldn't attend because I didn't feel very well, but I went there. So I watched from the docks, and I get to say Hi, and—well, they were teaching the basic stuff, but still— And I didn't listen in to the lessons, but, you know, I was sitting there.

And then I started finding people sitting next to me, started talking, and it turned out that they were, you know, just having a chat group, a messenger.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
They were asking each other, you know, anybody want to go kayaking tomorrow and stuff like that. There was a small community around there in Billdal. So I joined them, and one of my first posts was, does anybody like to roll?

So there were a couple of people there. So we did, you know, a few sessions, and that's when things really started to kick in or kick off or kick down or whatever you want to call it. But we started meeting up regularly.

So nowadays, we go twice a week. And in the wintertime, it's just Saturdays because, you know, it gets dark. But we still go every week.

And there's, you know, when you find a group of people that can stimulate and help each other, things really start to pick up. And we've been so fortunate to have that group. And even though we're on very different levels, and everybody's welcome to join us, we now started a club.

And why we started the club was just to get the licenses for competing. So half of the fee is for the license fee, and the other one is for future whatever. So we don't invest anything.

So we got the parking lot as our clubhouse.

That's fine in the summer, but it's a little bit chilly in the wintertime.

So they started pushing me. And after a while, they said, well, these are some very interesting people. They're so competitive.

And, well, I completely lured or fooled into, you know, getting my competitive horns growing as well.

So, but I mean, like, Johan, he's been doing the… he's been competing in BMX bike, biking. Henrik Wahlsten, he was the world champion in skateboarding, slalom skateboarding. Johanna Møllersten, she’s… I don't know if she competed in the championships, but she does kickboxing, rock climbing.

DUBSIDE:
So these are all athletic people, but we've also generated an interest in kayaking then.

DAVID TÄNG:
Right. So, I mean, these were the people that joined me and I had around me, and they said, well, we got to start competing. We're getting good!

And I said, no, I mean, competing in rolling? We’re just doing this for fun. Oh. So, well, so I, they said that, and I just, you know, said no, no, no, no, no.

And, of course, that same evening, I started looking where are the competitions.

So, Greenland, of course. So next to that, I said, well, Denmark, much closer. I mean, it's just an hour away, or a couple of hours away.

So I said, does Denmark have any competitions? And they do. And I just showed… I just found out that they’ve been holding them for years.

So in ‘22, we joined up. So it was me, Johan, Henrik, Andreas. No, Andreas didn't go, but Johanna went.

And so we went to, well, my first competition, Struja. Yeah, that was the first place we went to.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. How did you do there?

DAVID TÄNG:
I came third.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
So there was this guy from the Netherlands, Knud Stentiks. Sorry, Knud. I can't pronounce your last name, but you know who you are.

He was outstanding. That was the first guy I actually saw pull up a straight jacket drop.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
And while I was sitting there on the docks, Swedish people, we understand Norwegian, Danish.

But since I live closer to Norway, I mean, Norwegian is so much easier for me.

So sitting on the docks, waiting for my turn, and talking to Danish people. Sorry, Danish people, but some have difficult accents. And this was not the place where they had the most simple accent.

So after a while, there was this guy coming down, and he was Norwegian. So it was much easier just talking to him. And he had a skin on frame.

So, yeah, I had a skin on frame. So, you know, did you build it yourself? No, I got a friend build it for me, he said.

You know, he was, I would say that he was the seal hunter of rolling because he was so modest.

DUBSIDE:
That's a seal hunter. Yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
So he never, you know, said anything. Then, you know, that was my first competition, so I kept asking him a few things. And, you know, they have this line with small floating balls every meter.

DUBSIDE:
To measure the distances.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah, upside down.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
So we were talking about that, and he said, yeah, well, I competed once. And then we had this rope to the end of the kayak, but they entangled the rope. So when I was paddling, I got pulled back.

So they had to pull me back, and I had to redo the whole thing.

DUBSIDE:
And clearly you're talking about Jan David Jensen.

DAVID TÄNG:
That's when he struck me. I've seen that video.

DUBSIDE:
Oh, okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
And then, you know, then I became very quiet.

DUBSIDE:
Then you knew who you were talking to then.

DAVID TÄNG:
Then I figured out, then I realized who I was talking to.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
But, I mean, what a guy, what a guy. So that was the first time I met him, and I was hoping to meet him. He didn't attend the dinner that night.

I found out later that he had his daughters with him, so he had to go back pretty early. So, yeah, that was the first time I met Jan David Jensen.

So he came second. So he beat me bad. The first time.

DUBSIDE:
So what roles were you having trouble with then?

DAVID TÄNG:
The same ones I had troubles with now. Yep. What are those?

Well, in my opinion, the hardest role on the competition list is the clenched fists back to front.

DUBSIDE:
Ujaqqamik tigumisserluni kingukkut.
Clenched fists starting in the back, ending in the front.

DAVID TÄNG:
Exactly. And thank you, Dubside.

I will start practicing the Greenlandic terms.

DUBSIDE:
But, so, yeah, in my experience, with a good-sized brick, the surface area of the brick makes it easier than the clenched fist for those ones.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah. It does quite a bit, in my opinion. So the clenched fist is really the toughest one on the list, I would say.

So— But by then, I didn't know the—I didn't have a good technique, so, of course, I didn't make the—

DUBSIDE:
Had you been able to do it intermittently, or you never did it?

It never worked at all, or you just couldn't get it to work consistently, or how is that?

DAVID TÄNG:
I get it and I lose it.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
So, when I practice a lot, it becomes easier, of course. You know, I build my own kayaks.

DUBSIDE:
I was just going to say, this is in one of your own skin-on frames you're doing. Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
So, lately, there's always a trade-off between laid-back rolls and forward finishing rolls when you do the kayaks. So, of course, I mean, I've been looking for the holy grail these last couple of years, and that would be the straight jacket roll.

So, I built my kayaks to help me in the straight jacket roll without much concern on the forward finishing ones. So, that has been, I would say, rather stupid, but as I do pull them off regularly, sometimes I need a second attempt.

I'd say, yeah, it's worth it because, you know, a straight jacket is 11 points per side, and a clenched fist is only 9.

DUBSIDE:
Right. But at the really top levels, you've got to hit them all, right?

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah, and you don't want to have any deducted points. So, yeah, that's why I practice a lot these days.

DUBSIDE:
Well, I don't know, since I don't build kayaks myself, I just take what I've got and try to work with it. I modify folding kayaks by changing the size of the ribs. But, say, in the Rebel Ilaga design, the Johann Wirsen's design, to do the straight jacket stuff, I find you can take the foot pedals and slide them all the way forward.

So, you're not using the foot pedals at all. They're just out of the way. And then when it comes time to do the hardest layback rolls, you slide forward in the seat until the cockpit's against your stomach, and then you can lay back farther.

Whereas that position for the forward-hitting rolls would make them harder. So, in the forward-hitting rolls, you slide yourself back.

DAVID TÄNG:
Right.

DUBSIDE:
And you can get into an issue if the tuliq is not loose enough. Sometimes sliding all the way forward, there's not enough give. Like if it's a Reed tuiliq, you might stretch too much.

But does that make any sense to you?

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah. Yeah. The cockpit design is a big thing for me.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
A big thing to me. I'm pretty tall. I'm 183, 184, morning or night, you know.

I'm 184 in the morning. And I weigh less than 70 kilos.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
So, that makes me pretty thin.

So, I got long legs, but since I want to have my thigh support in a certain place, you know, just about a decimeter above the kneecaps so I can move my hips back and forth and twist them. So, I just have my knee support there and I skip the masik when I build.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
So, I just put the coaming on my thigh support, which means that I got lots of room in front of me.

DUBSIDE:
Hmm.

DAVID TÄNG:
Okay. So, then for forward-reaching rolls, as you were talking about, you slide back. I don't have to do that because my cockpit is so low in front of me and it's kind of far forward.

DUBSIDE:
Hmm.

DAVID TÄNG:
So, I can lay down from normal seating positions. And I've done the same thing to the back.

So, I moved the backrest further back and lowered it as far as possible. I even wedged it off so it doesn't, you know, have any sharp edges to my back.

DUBSIDE:
So, the edge of the back of the coaming does not hit that back, that isserfik when you lay on it. It's in front of that.

DAVID TÄNG:
Isserfik is far in front of the coaming, yeah. So, if you look down straight down into my cockpit, you can see the isserfik clearly.

DUBSIDE:
It's in front of the coaming? So, it's in the circle of the coaming? You can see the isserfik?

Or is it farther back underneath?

DAVID TÄNG:
No, you can see it. You can see it. You can see all of it, basically.

DUBSIDE:
Oh, okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
And also the coaming, the isserfik is lowered so it's about two centimeters below the gunwales.

DUBSIDE:
So, it's not on top of the gunwales.

DAVID TÄNG:
No, it's about two centimeters below the gunwales. And I made it kind of wide so I don't have to have it that high.

DUBSIDE:
So, it sounds to me like in a fiberglass kayak, they'll put the back band across the back of the seat. So, your isserfik functions as the back band because it's up in that position, not back behind the coaming.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah, right.

But, I mean, the back band, if you move that back, I would say almost 20, 25 centimeters.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
That would be 10 inches almost. You can imagine how much space I got behind me.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
And, I mean, I don't have more than 20 millimeters of freeboard to start out with. So, from the bottom of the kayak to the top of the gunwales in the seating position where I sit, I think the kayak is 12 or 13 centimeters high.

So, for our American friends, that would be...

DUBSIDE:
Three or four inches?

Four to five inches. That's still not a lot.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Well, with the cockpit pushed that far back, when you do a forward ending roll, if your tuliq isn't, like, long enough, it's going to hinder you. It's going to catch on the back of the coaming back there.

Yeah. Is that ever a problem?

DAVID TÄNG:
No.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
I bought a large.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. You anticipated that.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah. All right. So, and also, yeah, well, I got both Reed and Brooks tuiliqs.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
But now, since I… I build about two new kayaks a year in the wintertime. So, I got to experiment a bit.

So, the Reed tuiliq, they're both tent style, and that's important to me. But the Reed tuiliq, you have to stretch it quite a bit now since the cockpit coaming is bigger and bigger. And also, another thing that differentiates my cockpit to, you know, manufactured kayaks is that I can make it wider.

So, the side of the cockpit is actually on top of the gunwale.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. All the way to the width of the kayak.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah. And the lip is then sticking out outside the gunwale.

DUBSIDE:
Now, how does that help you with rolling?

DAVID TÄNG:
It doesn't really, but it's out of the way.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
So, I never touch my coaming when I roll.

DUBSIDE:
Wow. All right.

DAVID TÄNG:
So, it's always out of the way.

DUBSIDE:
Well, I can see, in trying to lay out the side of a kayak for, like, a balance brace or any of the harder rolls, you're trying to twist your body and get your shoulders flat to the water. So, if the rim of that coaming is farther in than the gunwale of the kayak, that does restrict some of your movement. So, I can see that bringing that edge all the way to the edge of the gunwale can give you complete freedom to slide it aside and effectively give you a lot more flexibility.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah. So, if my kayak would be to your size, I would love you to try it.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
You may try it as well, but, I mean, I'm quite a bit taller than you are, so you wouldn't fit that well. Well, you're talking about foot pegs earlier, or you're sliding them forward. The interesting part is that we were…

There's another story about it. Last summer, we were training, and I ed the layback roll. Last summer.

DUBSIDE:
You relearned? What happened?

DAVID TÄNG:
I met up with two beautiful people, Anna-Sophia Furehaug and Jorgen Fagerheim Wessel.

DUBSIDE:
Jorgen, yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
So, I think you know Jorgen at least. So, I saw Anna-Sophia do a straitjacket roll, 1st of April, on Facebook.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
So, I started watching this and found out…

DUBSIDE:
She was doing that in a Ilaga, or…?

DAVID TÄNG:
No, she was doing that in a Tahe Greenland.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
And in an outside pool. Okay. So, I figured out that she lives in Oslo, and that's pretty close to where our summer house is.

So, I wrote her, and I then invited her, and she said, can I bring my boyfriend, which was Jorgen, which I didn't know. So, they came, and I've invited Jan David as well.

DUBSIDE:
Okay, wow.

DAVID TÄNG:
And I only met him once at the competitions, but I said, I mean, heck, how bad can he be? So, they stayed at my place in my summer house then for a couple of nights, and they relearned… I relearned the layback roll.

They said, you know, turn the kayak first, head out of the water last. You ever heard about that?

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
Well, yeah, I said. Sure, of course. Well, now you have to do it.

And I said, well, I've been doing that all along. No, you haven't.

So, that was the secret to the straitjacket roll. For me, at least. And by that time, Jan David, he brought his skin on frame, but it didn't really work out for him, so he tried mine.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
And he did the straitjacket rolls for the first time with a clean straitjacket roll in my kayak. So, after last year's competition, it was black. My kayak was black.

And I know your opinion on black, but me having a black. I don't really like the black kayak, you know, every little scratch shows up, and even on skin on frame, it does show.

And, I mean, I got a brown tuiliq, I want a brown kayak.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
It was just a glitch why I made it black, because I had a friend ask me to build a kayak for him. So, I had to try out the black pigment.

So, I said, yeah, well, I'll just, you know, try it out on my first, and I'll do yours later. So, that's why it turned black. So, I gave my kayak to Jan David, the black one.

And he is quite a bit shorter than I am. So, I said, well, you'll be having problems with the footrest, because that's fixed, but, you know, you can adjust that.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
And he's a handy man, so, but he just looked at me and said, footrest? Really? Never use them. Never use them. All right. And that was also, you know, something that I never heard.

So, professional or really, really, I mean, I still consider Jan David better than me. Okay. Because his technique is so much better.

I get up, but he makes it look beautiful.

DUBSIDE:
All right. Well, it sounds to me like when they adjusted your layback technique to bring the boat up first, you weren't arching your back enough. Which is another way of conceptualizing it.

DAVID TÄNG:
So you wanted me to give out all my secrets on the podcast?

DUBSIDE:
You don't have to. You can do whatever you want.

That's a common phrase I've heard Dan Segal use. “Do that again, just arch your back more”. Which is Helen Wilson's way of saying it, “your eyebrows in the water" thing.

All different ways to get the same idea across.

DAVID TÄNG:
Well, yeah, it is physical. I mean, the straitjacket roll is physical, and yeah, it is. But now, when I crack the code, so to speak, it's no longer the toughest roll on the list.

I'll pull that off with more confidence than I do the reverse clenched fist. But I would say you need to bend your spine sideways. I mean, like you know, you wiggle from side to side.

So if I'm doing a right-sided roll, going in on the right side, capsizing to the right, just to make sure that everybody's on the same spot here. If you can get up into a static brace in a straitjacket position, just imagine yourself floating like that on the water, then you need to push your non-water leg forward. Because when you push your non-water leg forward, your hips will twist.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
And that will get your lower back up onto the back deck of the kayak while still having your upper torso and head in the water.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. There's a woman in Canada… and we were tweaking those advanced layback rolls, and her phrase was, I'm trying to remember her name to give credit where credit is due, I lost track of that. The phrase she came up with was, “stomach first”.

So getting your spine to twist that way by bringing your stomach up first and your shoulders down is that same sort of sideways spine curving motion.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah. I usually imagine having a thread connected to, what's this part of the body called?

DUBSIDE:
The middle of the stomach, the belly button?

DAVID TÄNG:
No, above the belly button. It's where the ribs connect.

DUBSIDE:
Bottom of the rib cage.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

DAVID TÄNG:
We have a name for that in Swedish. Solar plexus in latin.

DUBSIDE:
Solar plexus, okay.

DUBSIDE:
All right.

DAVID TÄNG:
So have a string connected there, which pulls upwards. That's how I imagine the layback rolls.

So then everything goes back and down, and you dip your eyebrows.

DUBSIDE:
If you pull up on that, you have to arch your back, so it's another way of visualizing it. Yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
Because I like the mental image of me being pulled up out of the water instead of pushing the head back. It helps me. The same thing as you always raise the water leg when you're doing rolls, right, to flip the kayak over, but also to push the non-water leg out or out and down.

Yeah. Cheri and Turner speaks about this on their DVDs, and I've done that. But it's hard to do that with the legs without, for me, for me personally, without engaging the core, and that is the core.

My trick is to imagine having a string connected to my solar plexus. That lifts me up, and then everything kind of falls into place.

DUBSIDE:
Well, I first was invited to Sweden in 2007 and spent 10 years or so there coming on a regular basis. This probably ended just about the time you were getting involved, and the demand for my classes was trickling off because everybody had done the class with Dubside, and that sort of saturated the market. And so for Cheri and Turner to come in, they'd probably been there before, but I'm glad you hooked up there somewhere.

As I said before, their teaching technique, I think, is better than mine. And so when you get into this kind of detail, I'm thinking, Oh, yeah, that's true. I hadn't thought of that before.

Because I would do it, but not really understand what I was doing, because I'm not a natural teacher, but people like Cheri, they are.

DAVID TÄNG:
Well, they've been through a lot of students, and that helps because you've seen most of the errors. And I don't teach that much, but as we have the club, yeah, of course, I try to teach my fellows. And anybody in the west coast of Sweden, you're welcome to roll with us.

You can come rolling with us at any time. Find us on our website, rolltokarna.se.

DUBSIDE:
So your website, say that again?

DAVID TÄNG:
That was the club's website. I got my own personal.

DUBSIDE:
I need all this data so listeners know where to kill this.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah, but you also need to be able to roll with us. We want you to have your first roll before you come. We don't teach the first roll.

We teach all the other rolls, and we can reteach you the first roll. I got my own website, and it's called qajaqrolling.com. I think most of the people listening to this have been on Christopher's website, qajaqrolls.com.

DUBSIDE:
Crowhurst.

DAVID TÄNG:
Christopher Crowhurst.

DUBSIDE:
His site is called qajaqrolls.com

And yours is?

DAVID TÄNG:
qajaqrolling.com Yeah, but it's spelled the same way with the Q and Js.

DUBSIDE:
Q, A, J, A, Q, qajaqrolling.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah. I spoke to Christopher, so he was okay with having a very similar name. And he also pointed out some interesting facts that I missed.

I haven't corrected them all, but I'm still thinking about it. And since I never got to attend any class or advanced class, so I met Turner and Cheri, but I never got any teaching from them.

DUBSIDE:
In person, but you looked at their DVD many times.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah, yeah, of course. But, I mean, having an instructor next to you, they can point out what you need to do so much quickly, and I had to figure it out myself. So I think I've made most of the mistakes.

So that's what my personal website is all about, the qajaqrolling.com. It's my path through the Greenland competition list. And there are, of course, some videos.

They're on YouTube, so I just link to them. But I hope that somebody will pick up. And it's not teaching per se.

My website is more like a blog of what I think about, what kind of mistakes I've been through. And I'm sure there are many more that I haven't written about. But if anybody finds something interesting there, I'll be happy.

And so far, I left my email there, but so far nobody has contacted me through the email.

DUBSIDE:
How long have you had this website on?

DAVID TÄNG:
It's about two and a half years. One and a half years. One and a half years.

DUBSIDE:
All right.

DAVID TÄNG:
And I've increased my hits on YouTube.

DUBSIDE:
Okay, yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
So that's something.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
So after I went to the first competition in Denmark with my friends, who were very competitive, as I said, we started thinking about, well, we should do this at home. We should have a Swedish championship. So how do we do that?

Well, bummer. You have to be a registered club with the Swedish Canoe Federation to be able to interact with them at all.

DUBSIDE:
They've got requirements for things.

DAVID TÄNG:
Well, you know, the licensing for one part to get a competition license. So we started talking with some friends. Well, I wasn't really friends with them, but Johanna, she's our chairman in rolltokarna.se, our club.

She knew some people, and she started mailing, and she connected me. And then we got hold of Karin Åmosa, and she's on the board of the Swedish Canoe Federation. So she helped us out and got all the connections and, you know, checked out the rules that I pulled off, the Qajaq USA, and Danish Canoe Federation website, and did the translations and stuff.

So we got approval to be a, what do you call it?

DUBSIDE:
Recognized.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah, recognized. So last year was the first time that we held the competitions in Sweden and Stockholm. They said that, well, David and Johanna and all of the people on the west coast did a lot of work.

So they said, well, if you want to have it, please, you know, do the arrangements. But we were so, I mean, you just started up the club. We were kind of not organized at all.

So we said, please, could you do it for us? And they did a great arrangement, great competition last year.

DUBSIDE:
That's when Björn Thomasson was judging.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah, so that was the first time I met up with him. And I mean, just having people knowing Björn to call him up and ask him. Björn is like Johan Visén.

For me, they're larger than life, you know, you just don't call them up. But I think they're probably nice people, persons as well.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, they are.

So that's how that started. So they said, well, next year you're going to have it in Gothenburg. So we'll have it in Gothenburg in about two weeks time.

DUBSIDE:
Two weeks from now. You'll be competing.

DAVID TÄNG:
I will be competing.

DUBSIDE:
Good luck.

DAVID TÄNG:
Well, thank you.

DUBSIDE:
Well, I'm very encouraged to hear that this much progress has been made and the rolling has gained momentum here in Sweden. And that's very inspiring to see. And I don't know how much of my early instruction in teaching people in time in Sweden has influenced that.

But I'd like to think it helped a little bit in building up the popularity.

DAVID TÄNG:
Oh, yeah. I mean, you're a big name.

DUBSIDE:
Some of my early students have probably long since stopped kayaking and onto other things now. But at least it keeps some sort of momentum going. So, yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
Well, you know, Sara and Johan, I mean, they were always around. I mean, they're around Gothenburg.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
So Nautopp [Nautopp Kajakceter] is not far away from here.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
Their business. I haven't been involved that much with them, but everybody's talking about them. Also further up north.

Yeah. Oh, sorry. Nautopp is further up north. Escape Outdoors was what I was thinking about. Here in Gothenburg. And, you know, Sea Kayak and Billdal. Also Mikael Svalstrand and people.

So they've been champions. They haven't put in the time that we have now. I mean, practicing that large amount of hours that we put in.

And also, I mean, just having friends like that, it makes all the difference in the world. I talk to people in Denmark, and they're so envious of us that, you know, have this community that we meet up every week and just, you know, have fun. Some days, I mean, you don't do much rolling at all.

You just hang out, but you sit on the water. I mean, people have tough jobs these days. So just getting out of the water, looking at a beautiful sunset, it's worth it.

And, you know, to be able to share it with somebody, that's beautiful.

DUBSIDE:
Well, we've talked in the last couple of days about the idea of making a bigger, like, Scandinavian rolling competition with visions towards maybe an international competition. So we won't go into heavy details on that right now. That idea is in the air.

So hopefully in the future, maybe we'll see more in that direction.

DAVID TÄNG:
Yeah. I mentioned that Silas Kral from the Danish Canoe Federation, he contacted me together with Ida Nielsen, Gormlund, and David Teichner. You know him?

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, David Teichner, yeah.

DAVID TÄNG:
So they were the Danish representatives. We know where we're heading. We don't know how to, you know, get there.

But if everybody, you know, works in the same direction, I got great hopes.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. But using the Greenland method, you're on the right track. You don't play every last little detail.

You just know, in general, this is going to happen. So we'll just be ready for whatever happens and go with the flow and make it work.

DAVID TÄNG:
Well, they survived. So will we.

DUBSIDE:
Well, thank you for being on the Dubcast with Dubside. And it's very nice to come here and visit you and meet you for the first time. And I'm hoping to come back and see you again.

DAVID TÄNG:
Well, thank you for having me. And thank you for visiting. It's been a pleasure.

DUBSIDE:
You're welcome. All right. That is David Täng.

Interviewed August 12th, 2024, at his home in the suburbs of Gothenburg, Sweden. Check out his website, qajaqrolling.com. You've been listening to another special guest edition of the Dubcast with Dubside.

THE DUBCAST WITH DUBSIDE: Wood, Water, and the Swedish Way: A Visit to Petrus Kajak

 

On this episode of The Dubcast with Dubside, Dubside travels to the idyllic beachside waters of southern Sweden to visit friend and local kayak heroes Petrus and Irene from Petrus Kajak. Petrus discusses how they expanded a solo kayak construction operation to a full-time boatbuilding and rental business, operating hands-on workshops where students build their own wooden kayaks from the ground up. Irene provides a behind-the-scenes tour of the day-to-day operations—and shares the history behind the addition of a robot lawnmower to the team, christened “Dubside Junior.”

They look back over their Scout heritage, Sweden’s right of public access (Allemansrätten), and the art of staying cool with vacationing canoeists. There’s a multilingual twist too, as they also provide impromptu translations of their services in Swedish and German.

A warm and easygoing dialogue rich in wisdom, wit, and the unmistakable beat of a water, wood, and people-based life.

LINKS:
PetrusKajak

FULL TRANSCRIPT

DUBSIDE:
Welcome to The Dubcast with Dubside. This is a special guest edition of the Dubcast, interview with Petrus and Irene of Petrus Kayaks in South Sweden, good friends of mine that we first met in episode 42. I asked Petrus about his rental operation and the classes he does building wooden kayaks, the town and the lake where he's located, his house on the other side of town, their involvement in the Scouts where they met, the Swedish right of public access, which is part of Swedish law which allows you to camp on other people's property and cross their property.

And I interviewed Irene separately, talked about her running the rental business, and I mentioned the train ordeal I had on the Swedish rail system. We talked about a robot lawnmower that she named after me, and finally she demonstrated her ability to speak Swedish and German. This runs a little over 40 minutes.

DUBSIDE:
I'm at Petrus Kayaks and I'm talking to Petrus, how's it going?

PETRUS:
It's okay, it's summer and the sun is shining.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, so we're on lake, what's it called?

PETRUS:
Sommen is the lake, and the 20th biggest lake in Sweden, 132 square kilometers.

DUBSIDE:
All right, and you're renting things to go out?

PETRUS:
We have, we start with kayaks in 2005 and now we have kayaks, Canadians, boat with an Indian and a sailing boat.

DUBSIDE:
All right, a Canadian is what we would call a canoe. That's what, in America, I would call it a canoe. And you said there's another, kayaks, Canadians, and what else?

PETRUS:
We have real kayaks.

DUBSIDE:
Real kayaks, yeah.

PETRUS:
And then Canadian canoe. And then we have motor boats and one sailing boat also.

DUBSIDE:
Okay, and so what do people usually like to rent first?

PETRUS:
I think they usually start with a Canadian canoe. And then there'll be a lot of people is still a little bit, yeah, they want to try kayaks and it's not usually inland that we have kayaks in Sweden, so.

DUBSIDE: Oh, they're more on the coast.

PETRUS: They usually rent them at the coast.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. And so besides the rental here in the summertime, you also make kayaks for people?

PETRUS:
Yeah, we build wooden kayaks. Wooden kayaks. With plywood and epoxy and fiberglass.

DUBSIDE:
So people come and sign up for you to help them build in your place?

PETRUS:
We have classes. Classes. In one week, so they come here and build their own kayak in one week.

DUBSIDE:
Okay, and you've been building Björn Thomasson's Black Pearl kayak and his other kayaks for a long time?

PETRUS:
Yeah, the plywood kayak starts with Black Pearl. And then we make another one, we call Alleq and Björn also make the plans for that one.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

PETRUS:
And then we have Frej, which also made of Björn Thomasson.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, and so it takes a week to make one of those?

PETRUS:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
How long is a day of work?

PETRUS:
Yeah, you don't need a book in the evening. You don't need a book. You sleep anyway.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

PETRUS:
It's quite long days, but yeah, eight, ten hours, something.

DUBSIDE:
What’s the hardest part in the process? What do people have trouble with?

PETRUS:
That people have trouble with is to put this spackle inside.
DUBSIDE: The spackle inside the kayak?

PETRUS:
Yeah, that's the hardest point because there you have to have a good feeling in your hands for putting this in.

DUBSIDE:
So you have to put it inside the kayak after the kayak is all together?

PETRUS:
No, when we build kayaks, we start with the deck. And make that on forms and glue it together with hot glue and some super glue. And then we put epoxy inside and put this, I don't know the English word for it, but we call it spackle in Swedish.

DUBSIDE:
Spackle, we have a word in English.

PETRUS:
Some sort of plastic padding.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. Okay.

PETRUS:
And then we put fiber and all of that in one time. Okay. So the first day you have built the deck and then next day you go on with the hull.

DUBSIDE:
So like overnight the stuff is drying?

PETRUS:
Yes, then the epoxy is dry in the morning.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

PETRUS:
And then we built the hull, same way. Put all the pieces together with hot glue and some super glue and epoxy, spackle and fiber.

DUBSIDE:
So these pieces of wood, you've already cut those out? That's what they buy?

PETRUS:
Nowadays we cut them with a CNC machine.

DUBSIDE:
CNC, okay. But you've done all that cutting ahead of time before they come to the class?

PETRUS:
From the beginning we cut them by hand with a Japanese saw.

DUBSIDE:
In the early days you say you cut them by hand?

PETRUS:
Yes, when we start with Black Pearl. Quite many years ago.

DUBSIDE:
Right. Then you got a CNC machine.

PETRUS:
Yeah, so now we cut it with electronics.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Is that any faster than doing it by hand?

PETRUS:
It's faster and it will be more perfect, more precise.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, okay. If you don't have really precise pieces, then when you glue them together you got edges that stick out.

PETRUS:
Then you use gaffa.

DUBSIDE:
You use what?

PETRUS:

Tape. Duct tape or something to put around all the... What is the name? Joints.

DUBSIDE:
The joints.

PETRUS:
Yeah, and then you put fiber and spackle and epoxy inside anyway.

DUBSIDE:
So is there a lot of sanding you have to do?

PETRUS:
Yeah, and then when you're finished with the inside, then you have two days to make the walls inside and make stuff on the deck and put hatches in and all this cockpit ring. And when you put it together, then we sand maybe four or five hours. Sometimes more. And then we put the fiber on the outside also.

DUBSIDE:
Are you sanding by hand with sandpaper or you have like...

PETRUS:
No, we have sanding machines.

DUBSIDE:
Sanding machines, okay. But even with that, it's like four or five hours to do the whole thing?

PETRUS:
And it's also different. Some goes faster and some is slower. Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Why would it be slower? Is it different people or different wood?

PETRUS:
Different people work different fast.

DUBSIDE:
Okay, yeah.

PETRUS:
And also have maybe different ideas how it should look when it's finished.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. And so is painting it a certain color come after that?

PETRUS:
Yeah, after a week when the epoxy is hard, then you can sand it and put some more epoxy for the finish and then clear lacquer or paint.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. So what is one workshop to make a kayak cost in Swedish kronor, I guess?

PETRUS:
Today, it costs 22,000 Swedis Kronor. Okay. But then it includes everything except the paint and the lines to the kayak.

But it includes also the food you need for a week.

DUBSIDE:
So you feed people while they're here?
PETRUS:
Yes, of course.

Otherwise, they'll be angry and make bad work.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. So kayaks like Bjorn Thomasson's Black Pearl and those ones, do you rent those out here as well? You have different kayaks to rent?

PETRUS:
Yes, we have some wooden boats for renting. But most of them is PE plastic or fiberglass.

DUBSIDE:
How do you know if somebody has enough skill to use the wooden ones?

PETRUS:
That you never know. You see it afterwards.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah? Do you have people gotten in there?

PETRUS:
If they are wet in the head, then we know that they got a little bit too nice kayak for paddling.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. All right. So I've been coming here for...

Well, I haven't been here the last five years, but before that, I've been here at least 10 times, I think.

PETRUS:
Yeah, something like that.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

PETRUS:
And in that time, we have a weekend with the classes and different things. But after the corona, we haven't start that up again.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, yeah. I remember, we used to do rolling demonstrations here and have Björn or somebody narrating with a microphone, and I would be doing things on the water.

PETRUS:
And Johan Wild?

DUBSIDE:
Johan Wild, yes, yes. Yeah, that was very good.

But that was nice. And also a lot of guitar playing in the evening at the barbecue.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, all right, yeah.

PETRUS:
That was nice. But maybe one day it comes up again.

DUBSIDE:
All right, yeah, we'll see.

PETRUS:
We will see. Maybe next year, we celebrate 20 years in the business.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, I'll see. It might work out for next year. I'm hoping to go to Greenland again next year.

And so after Greenland, I come through Scandinavia, so I may well be here. But I haven't been able to do this time here, but I enjoyed very much a few times back—it’s going out overnight and camping on some of the little islands you have here.

Yeah. It's a very nice lake for that.

PETRUS:
Yeah, and a lot of people have realized that it works. So we rent out boats for a week for paddling on our lake here.

DUBSIDE:
So when they go out for a week, it could take them a week to go all the way around parts of the lake and still not get.

PETRUS:
You have to use more than one week.

DUBSIDE:
To see the whole lake.

PETRUS:
Yeah, I have sailed on the lake for 45 years, and I still find good spots.

DUBSIDE:

Really? Wow.

So are there other lakes where people do this that are maybe more crowded than this one? Or how does that work?

PETRUS:
Most of the island is very, very silent.

DUBSIDE:
Here?

PETRUS:
Yes. And there is no roads close to the lake. Yeah, there is some parts of the lake is very much used for motorboats, but you don't have to choice them.

DUBSIDE:
How clean is the water? It's drinkable. Yeah?

PETRUS:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Even with all the motorboats you can go out and drink?

PETRUS:
It gives just a little bit taste of gas.

DUBSIDE:
Oh, yeah? Not everywhere, but some places?

PETRUS:
Yeah, some places it's more used for motorboats.

DUBSIDE:
You go out in the middle and you can drink it? Yeah, everywhere. Wow, very nice.

So in the wintertime, this all turns to ice?

PETRUS:
Yes, usually it's ice. The last years has been less ice than what it was earlier. Usually there is ice.

DUBSIDE:
So you close down for the winter?

PETRUS:
The renting closed the last of September. September.

And then we go into the workshop over the winter for building kayaks.

DUBSIDE:
So the rental here, there's a whole big camping area. People come with their campers and things, attached to this area. Are most of the people renting kayaks camping out there, or people just come from…?

PETRUS:
It's both. A lot of people just arrive from home and come here and put all the stuff in a boat and then out on the lake for a week. Other people come from the camping site and visit us for a couple of hours.

Also the people from the neighborhood here come for renting boats from us.

Both for a week or for a couple of hours.

DUBSIDE:
How rough can the water get out with the weather, with wind and stuff on the lake?

PETRUS:
It can be rough because some areas are quite big and the wave goes up to half a meter or something.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Have you had to go out and rescue people sometimes?

PETRUS:
That happens every year. Sometimes from the water and sometimes they realize by themselves that this is too much for us.

So we call and then we pick them up with our boat.

DUBSIDE:
They call you on their cell phone and tell you they need to come rescue. All right, that's another service that you provide.

PETRUS:
Yeah, that's also service.

DUBSIDE:
But you haven't had any really bad accidents? Nobody's died out there for you?

PETRUS:
No, not yet and I hope that not happens. And we got luck. We have some accidents every year but not with bad results.

Usually there is other boats out on the lakes and can pick them up or they call from the water and we help them or they dial 112. And firefighters come with their boat.

DUBSIDE:
So this town, we're on the edge of it by the lake here called Tranås. Tell me about what's special about Tranås.

PETRUS:
It's a small neighborhood, 15,000 people live here. And you have what service you need. And from the beginning, we have a lot of...

They made skin and clothes of skin here. But that's gone.

DUBSIDE:
Fur clothing? Okay, that's gone?

PETRUS:
That's gone because all this military vegans, people don't have courage enough for wearing clothes of skin anymore.

DUBSIDE:
You mean like the protests from the animal rights people? Okay.

PETRUS:
And maybe also a little bit of the... It has been expensive to have clothes of skin.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

PETRUS:
And they made them cheaper in other countries.

DUBSIDE:
Uh-huh. But is the main thing in town the tourism or what else?

PETRUS:
No, it's a small industry town. We have some bigger or smaller industries.

For example, Bosch have a big factory here with 900 workers and we have some other. Metal and wood industry.

We have quite a lot of industry for building furnitures.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

PETRUS:
It's fantastic.

DUBSIDE:
So how is it that you started with kayaking, started doing this business? What drew you to kayaking?

PETRUS:
From the beginning, we were out on a renting station to check how work this. Is it fun to paddle a kayak? And after half a day, we realized that this is our thing.

And then we start to search for a cheap kayak.

But the cheapest way must be to build it by yourself. So then I found the homepage from Björn Thomason and and then we start to build our own kayaks from the beginning. And then I run classes for building wood strip kayaks and I build one every year by myself.

And after a while, we have some. So then we start wondering what should we use them for? We only need one for ourselves.

So then we start renting out kayaks. So from the beginning, we have half wood kayaks and half plastic. And then, yeah, as always, shit happens.

So now we run this company for full time

DUBSIDE:
So how many kayaks do you have out here, would you say?

PETRUS:
I think around 30. I'm not sure.

DUBSIDE:
How many canoes?

PETRUS:
And 26 aluminum canoes. And then we have five motorboats and one sailing boat also.

DUBSIDE:
And then you've got your other, your sailing boat, right?

PETRUS:
Yeah, then we have a bigger one for ourselves.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. So in the wintertime… in the summertime, you have a very nice house that I'm staying at back on the other side.

PETRUS:
But it's quite alone, I think, in the house.

DUBSIDE:
Because in the summertime, you sleep down here, you work down here and you have your workshop in town, but there's not much reason to go back to the house.

PETRUS:
No, not in the summer. And yeah, Dubside lives there and he wants to have silence around him.

DUBSIDE:
I don't have to have silence. It is a nice, quiet house.

PETRUS:
And we also use it in the wintertime for the building classes. They can...

DUBSIDE:
People stay there?

PETRUS:
Yeah, they stay in our house for this week.

DUBSIDE:
So you used to have lots of kids in that house, they all grew up?

PETRUS:
Yes, from the beginning, we have our kids there. I have four kids and my wife has two kids. So it was usually five or six kids living in the house.

DUBSIDE:
So I'm understanding that you met Irene through Scouts, Boy Scouts?

PETRUS:
Yeah, we were leaders in Girl and Boy Scouts. So that was one of the points that we connect. And after a while, she moved to this town and we go on with this scouting thing. And then the company be too big to have a lot of time for Scouts. So now we have finished that.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, yeah. So do Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts do things together like camping things? Or how does that work?

PETRUS:
It's that usually works with no problem. And we are still Scouts in the heart. So when that comes usually three, four, five groups with Scouts from Germany. And we try to take care of them as good as we can.

DUBSIDE:
Were there other things that you did besides camping? What other sort of activities did you have Scouts doing?

PETRUS:
I really don't know what they do nowadays, but we learn about the nature. That's what we try to learn to our Scouts when we work with it. But nature and how it works together and how we should take care of the nature. And how we should survive in the nature.

DUBSIDE:
So there's a thing here in Sweden, in English, it's called the right of public access. I forget what the Swedish word is. Where you can go on other people's private property, right?

PETRUS:
Yeah, we have Allemansrätten in Sweden.

DUBSIDE:
Say that again.

PETRUS:
Allemansrätten. So everyone is, you can use the nature. So you are allowed to walk, cross over other properties.

And you are allowed to tent one night on other's properties. And you also can, yeah, you can use the water everywhere as much as you want. But you are not allowed to walk in private areas around houses.

DUBSIDE:
Somebody's actual house, you can see they're living right there. But if it's just a field or woods or something, you can go through.

PETRUS:
If you're in the forest, that's no problem. And there is the… maybe the, the point of this Allemansrätten is that you're not allowed to destroy or disturb others, not the nature and not other people.

DUBSIDE:
Okay, so it's not like anybody can just go anywhere, there's some responsibility to take care of things.

PETRUS:
Yeah, you have to be… take care of the nature. And also be careful with it and be careful with others' properties, so we can have this for the future.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. So like, they don't have that in Denmark, do they?

PETRUS:
I don't know how it works in Denmark, but I know that in Norway, you're allowed to to walk over others' properties.

And there is, I think they have something in Germany, but there you are not allowed to walk in the forest, you have to follow tracks and so in the forest.

DUBSIDE:
So around this area, you have moose?

PETRUS:
Yes, there is some left. But they are shy, so you don't see them so often. But we have them here, and we have other animals also, but moose is the biggest one here.

DUBSIDE:
Right, but what other animals do you have?

PETRUS:
Deers, and then you have bears in the north, middle of Sweden, you have bears, and then you have reindeers, maybe?

Renar in Swedish.

DUBSIDE:
What is it?

PETRUS:
It's a small animal that they have in the north.

It looks like a very small moose.

DUBSIDE:
Oh, okay, yeah, one of those four-legged things.

PETRUS:
Yeah, four-legged with the... They have quite big feet, that animal. And they eat from the nature as all other animals.

DUBSIDE:
And in this lake, there's a whole lot of fish, is that...

PETRUS:
Yeah, we have the usual in-lake fishes in the lake, and also some salmon fishes.

DUBSIDE:
So a lot of people come here to fish? Yeah, they try anyway.

PETRUS:
A lot of people try, and not so many people got fish. It was yesterday, somebody had a big, long pike.

Yeah, they found some pikes, one yesterday and one today, so there is pike in the lake, actually. Yeah. And there is also perch and some other special fishes for sweet water.

DUBSIDE:
So if I was going to come here from another country or something, tell me your website so I can look it up.

PETRUS:
We have petruskajak.com, as it sounds.

DUBSIDE:
All right, how do you spell that?

PETRUS:
Petruskajak.com.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, okay, petruskajak.com.

All right, very good. Well, thanks for talking to me and being on The Dubcast with Dubside.

PETRUS:
Yeah, thank you for talking with you, Dubside.

DUBSIDE:
I'm always delighted to come here and see you.

PETRUS:
And you're always welcome.

DUBSIDE:
Yes, well, I appreciate that.

•••

IRENE:
Kayaks, canoes, motorboats, sailing boats.

DUBSIDE:
Uh-huh.

IRENE:
I'm the boss here, Petrus says.

DUBSIDE:
Okay, yes. So on a typical day, you open at what time?

IRENE:
Nine o'clock.

DUBSIDE:
All right, and what has to be done to get ready to open?

IRENE:
Take out the spray skirt and fix so I have all the life jacket in order.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.
IRENE:
Check if I have some bookings to take care about.

DUBSIDE:
So people reserve from the day before sometimes?

IRENE:
Yeah, yeah. Even month before. It starts in January.

DUBSIDE:
Really? All right.

IRENE:
So then, just waiting for the people to come. Quite often they write down they should be here at nine o'clock and then they show up ten o'clock. A little bit tired on the vacation.

DUBSIDE:
So if they reserve for nine o'clock and they show up at ten o'clock, do they still have to pay for the nine o'clock?

IRENE:
Yeah. If they should have the whole day, they pay for the whole day.

DUBSIDE:
But you can also rent for three hours.

IRENE:
Zero to three hours, you must say.

DUBSIDE:
If you want to rent for one hour, you still pay for three hours?

IRENE:
For three hours, yes. It's like on a parking place. You can't pay for less than what they say.

So yeah, sometimes people argue, but I tell them it's as much as do for me if you are out for one hour or for three hours.

DUBSIDE:
Oh, it's much work for you.

IRENE:
Yeah. Show them how to do, how to paddle, everything. Show the life jackets. They stand here and say, oh, it's too small.

No, you should adjust it. I have to tell them.

DUBSIDE:
So you've seen all sorts of difficult customers.

IRENE:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
But some people understand everything?

IRENE:
It's very different. Some understand everything and are totally clear with our conditions and everything. And other people, they argue and wonder, oh, must I have a life jacket? Is that common here in Sweden? Is that an order or not? You have to wear it? It's just water. Yeah. Yeah.

I say. So yeah, it's quite different.

DUBSIDE:
So in my experience, places where you have to service the public, it's like maybe the one to 5% of the people that are causing like 89% of the work. Real difficult customers.

IRENE:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
If you didn't have those, it would be a very easy job, but you have to have those.

IRENE:
Yes. I have to have all different.

DUBSIDE:
They come with the territory.

IRENE:
Yeah. Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
And so when you close it for the season.

IRENE:
In the season. In September. Yeah, in September.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. By the time September comes around, are you getting tired of things?

IRENE:
Yeah. At that time, it's quite nice to put in all boats on the winter place and just do anything else.

But then it's to building kayaks.

DUBSIDE:
That's right. Building kayaks at the workshop.

IRENE:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
It's a whole different.

IRENE:
A whole different life.

DUBSIDE:
So you're involved in that too. I was imagining that was Petra's thing.

IRENE:
Yeah. But I make all the stuff that should be inside the cockpit. All these rings where you put the hatches on.

DUBSIDE:
Oh yeah. Really?

IRENE:
Everything that is made of carbon fiber. Yes. Everything.

DUBSIDE:
I was looking in the warehouse and there's a whole corner there with a whole sewing area. That's your place?

IRENE:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Is that for kayak things or other things?

IRENE:
No, the sewing area. That's for my mother.

DUBSIDE:
Oh.

IRENE:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

IRENE:
She moved here and all the time that she have spare time, then she make things and help us with things and so on. So she fix everything that is broken and make new things as well.

DUBSIDE:
All right. Very good.

Do you remember the first time I was here?

IRENE:
No, not really. It was a long time ago when you have been here so many times.

DUBSIDE:
It all runs together.

IRENE:
Yeah. Do you remember the first time?

DUBSIDE:
Somewhat, yeah. What I remember mostly is I was in a hurry to leave because I was going to get back to Denmark and then go on to Greenland or something like that. So I had said, I got a train for some time in the afternoon and my last class was till 12.

So I was in a hurry to finish with the teaching and then get driven to the train station and get on the train and go back.

Do you remember that?

IRENE:
No, not really.

DUBSIDE:
I had my dry suit on.

IRENE:
Okay.

DUBSIDE:
And I went to the train station still with the dry suit on.

IRENE:
Yeah, exactly. Now I remember.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. With the dry suit on.

IRENE:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
And in the little train from Tranås to the next town, I just changed trains. There was hardly anybody on that train. So I figured this is a good time. I'll take the dry suit off and change into my clothes.

And then the train I got on, that train broke down and stopped on the tracks. Did I tell you about that?

IRENE:
No.

DUBSIDE:
You didn't know about that?

IRENE:
No.

DUBSIDE:
That train stopped on the tracks and it was hot. It was middle of summer. Very hot. And so there was no air conditioning in the train when the train stopped. So things started to get really warm. And the conductors came around and said, well, we'll see what's going on. We sat there for a total of three hours.

IRENE:
Three hours. So you missed your next train.

DUBSIDE:
Oh yeah, yeah. Totally. I was trying to get to Copenhagen by, it would have been like five or six in the afternoon.

I got there about after midnight. I was told that it was one of those things where the train broke down, but who had to fix it was a jurisdictional thing. Like the track people said, well, we just do the track.

Everything had been subcontracted, track people. And then the people responsible for the engine, the people responsible for the power overhead and everybody was pointing the finger at somebody else for three hours while we sat there on the train. It was bad.

IRENE:
It's complicated with train in Sweden.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. And then we had to get off the train. We had to climb out of the back of the train and walk along the tracks for half a mile to the stop where there was places where there were buses came.

They said, some of these buses are going to Malmö and some of these are going to Copenhagen. Not all of them are going to Malmö or something like that. Most of it's all in Swedish and I'm trying to figure out what's going on and I finally get on the bus.

But then when you get off the bus, you're ready to scream at somebody like, what am I supposed to do? He's like, I'm just a bus driver. I'm just, I just dropped off here.

You know, the train people are all gone. You can't complain to them. Yeah.

And then I think they said, I said, well, what do I do to get to Copenhagen? I don't have a ticket. You know what?

And they said, well, just, just tell, just tell them that, that you were on some train that got stopped, you know, but the bus driver didn't care. So, but you know, they don't always check tickets. They just, you're supposed to have a ticket.

So I didn't have a ticket for the right train, but I said, I'll tell them if I do. So they didn't say anything, but it was after midnight, I got back to Copenhagen. It was bad.

But the only, the only good thing was that when that first little train from Tranås, I took the dry suit off. If I still had the dry suit on, the crowded train would have no place to change. That would have been, that would be even worse.

But that was, so that was that. And I think when I, I got back out, I was, I forget if I tried to get a refund on the ticket. They had a lot of nerve to want me to pay money for that disaster.

Three hours on the train. Anyway, the next time I came here, it was much better.

IRENE:
Yeah. And then you got a son here as well.

DUBSIDE:
I got what?

IRENE:
You got a son here, “Small Dubside”.

DUBSIDE:
Oh, you got to be careful with that! You’ll get me in trouble with that!

IRENE:
It’s a … what is the name in English?

DUBSIDE:
Robot? Robot mower?

IRENE:
Robot lawn mower.

DUBSIDE:
Robot mower. Yeah. I hooked it up for you.

IRENE:
Yeah. You fixed that. And that was very nice.

DUBSIDE:
Keeping the lawn mowed.

IRENE:
So then he got the name, every such things in Sweden got a name. So they are very personally, and this one has your name.

DUBSIDE:
You called it “Dubside Junior”.

IRENE:
Yeah. “Dubside Junior”.

DUBSIDE:
So, so, but, but Dubside Junior now is, is, is he's not, he's broken?

IRENE:
He’s not broken. And we check if he's still breathing. Yes, he did. He got power in the batteries. So when we can put out this new wire for the wire is broken. So therefore he hasn't worked for not last year and not this year.

DUBSIDE:
Next year, maybe I'll come and fix the wire.

IRENE:
Yeah. Good. Then we, maybe we are finished with the work in our garden.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Well, there's still some, yard still needs…

IRENE:
Yeah. We, we tried to make a new front and make a better place.

DUBSIDE:
But all during the summer, you're hardly ever there.

IRENE:
No. So that's the problem.

DUBSIDE:
I'm there. It's nice to have a whole empty house all to myself. It's like having a giant hotel.

IRENE:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Nobody else there. Yeah.

IRENE:
Yeah. That's good for you. No, we, we'd rather be in the boat.

That's nice to stay down here on, on this and you're sailing.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Tell me the basic rundown of what, what Petrus Kayaks has, what services they offer, et cetera, et cetera. But tell me all of that in Swedish about what you say, just, just what we do, what you do, what you have, what you put the business is tell me in Swedish.

IRENE:
[Speaking in Swedish]

DUBSIDE:
Very good. I like to have different languages on my podcast. You also speak German.

IRENE:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Can you tell me all that in German?

IRENE:
[Speaking in German]

DUBSIDE:
What am I supposed to say? Danke?

IRENE:
Yeah. I like, I like, uh, languages.

DUBSIDE:
Yes. Do you know any other ones?

IRENE:
And, uh, I, I didn't know then how, for me, it was quite easy to learn, uh, Deutsch (German). I have heard it for a long time, several years. And then I think that, Oh, I must try to speak as well. So I tried to, and together with English and this German, then maybe it works a little bit. And I ask people here that come, it's a lot of people from Germany.

So then I asked, how do you say that? How do you say that? And is that wrong or right?

And so on. And now I can speak. And they, nowadays they ask me, uh, how many years have you lived in Germany and where do you live?

So my English is worse now than my, my Deutsch. So that's not so good. I will also have a better English because that's also very good for the people that comes from Netherlands, England, sometimes even Danish people want to speak English instead of Swedish.

I don't know why they are so scared.

DUBSIDE:
And then other people talk to you in Danish, sort of figure out what they're saying, in Norwegian as well?

IRENE:
Yes. And quite often they understand Swedish. So it can be a word here and there that you need to explain, but otherwise it work.

DUBSIDE:
Do you get any people from say like Estonia or Ukraine or Slovakia?

IRENE:
No, that's quite unusual. We have some from Poland and also Switzerland, France, Belgium and so on. So it's most of them come from Europe and then this year we have some from USA and some from Great Britain as well.

DUBSIDE:
Very nice. All right. Well, thank you for the short interview.

IRENE:
Yeah. Thank you.

DUBSIDE:
And I hope to be back here next year.

IRENE:
Yeah. That I hope really. Yes. All right. You're welcome.

DUBSIDE:
And there you have Petrus and Irene of Petrus Kayak recorded August 8th, 2024 at their place of business in Tranås, Sweden on Lake Sommen in the South part of Sweden. And I apologize if you listen carefully, you can hear that the audio quality of the interview with Irene is not quite up to my standards. I had to rely on my secondary backup recording equipment for that one.

Check out their website, petruskajak.com. That's P-E-T-R-U-S-K-A-J-A-K different spelling there. Well, if I get back there next year, maybe I can interview some of the other interesting people to be found in that area.

There's a guy across the lake from Petrus from Canada. I think his wife is Swedish and they own this little island. They have this rather old historic house, which they filled up with, I think, artwork and sculpture and things.

Maybe in the future, you'll hear from them directly on The Dubcast with Dubside.

THE DUBCAST WITH DUBSIDE Reviving the Spirit of SSTIKS: A Conversation with Paul Steinberg and Noy Davis

 

In this episode of The Dubcast with Dubside, Andrew sits down with Paul Steinberg and Noy Davis, coordinators of the South Sound Traditional Inuit Kayaking Symposium—better known as SSTIKS. After a five-year hiatus, SSTIKS is back, and Paul and Noy share what it’s taken to bring this beloved gathering of Greenland-style paddlers back to life. They talk about the history of the event, the joys and challenges of rope gymnastics, why kids make the best rope rollers, and the rich community of kayak builders, rollers, and storytellers that have kept the tradition alive in the Pacific Northwest. With reflections on mentors, DIY kayaks, and Deadfish Polo, this episode is both a tribute and a rallying cry for the next generation of traditional paddlers.

LINKS:

South Sound Traditional Inuit Kayaking Symposium (SSTIKS)

Palo’s Wedding

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

ANDREW:
Hello friends and welcome. You are listening to the Dubcast with Dubside. I'm Andrew Elizaga and I'll be your host for this special episode where I'm going to be talking with Paul Steinberg and Noy Davis, coordinators of the South Sound Traditional Inuit Kayak Symposium, also known as SSTIKS.

Welcome, Paul and Noy.

PAUL:
Thank you, Andrew.

NOY:
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

ANDREW:
And thanks for taking time to do this. I know you'd rather be out kayaking, especially on a weekend like this where the weather is starting to warm up.

PAUL:
Actually, we were kayaking all day yesterday. We had a train-the-trainer event ahead of SSTIKS. And I'm just as happy not to be kayaking because I'm sore.

Probably because of the darn ropes, which is not where I excel.

ANDREW:
Yeah.

PAUL:
And I'm just as happy to be talking to you.

NOY:
I also discovered I do not excel at ropes, but I have a little bit of a bug now. I really want to set some up so that I can actually become better.

ANDREW:
Yeah. You know, I never really got into ropes. I didn't understand the connection with kayaking.

It actually takes a lot more athleticism than it does to do all the Greenland kayak rolls.

PAUL:
It certainly does.

ANDREW:
And of course, it helps your rolling technique as well. Isn't that true?

PAUL:
That was how it developed. As I'm sure you've heard from Dubside and from just studying it, that it was developed by the Inuit as a way to essentially stay in shape and keep their mind-muscle memory going during the times when they weren't kayaking. And it was a training for kids as well in order to habituate them to those kind of maneuvers.

The hard part is you don't have the buoyancy of the water helping you, as you admit. That buoyancy is wonderful. It's our friend.

If it's just you and gravity, it can be a huge challenge. And I have nothing but admiration for people who can do the ropes rolls well. It's also something, by the way, that kids tend to excel at.

And it's very cool to see them working through the ropes routines.

ANDREW:
My daughter had tried it once when Dubside had his ropes set up during a symposium in the Puget Sound. Yeah, kids really love it. I was wondering, maybe that's how it developed, where they had these harpoon lines strung up and kids started playing around with it.

PAUL:
Yep. Could very well be.

NOY:
That's an interesting question. I had asked Dubside about the ropes, and he said, well, you know how you really get better at them? You really have to set them up so that they're really readily accessible.

So I was thinking, okay, my house, the basement, outside, somewhere.

ANDREW:
So you're planning to set some up in your house?

NOY:
I'm looking over. As soon as I get back to my house, I think I'm going to look over and see what my options are.

ANDREW:
Yeah, you just have to stick a bolt into a heavy stud and a carabiner and put some ropes there.

PAUL:
Just between two trees.

NOY:
And have something soft below you.

ANDREW:
All right. Let's talk about SSTIKS. This is a historic event because we haven't had a SSTIKS since 2019.

PAUL:
Yeah, like many things, there was an interruption because of COVID, and we were right in the midst of planning things, and we just couldn't go forward with it, unfortunately. And then the next year, too, we just weren't able to get SSTIKS off the ground. We lost a lot of the impetus that we have and the SSTIKS machine.

So this year, we really made a huge effort to get SSTIKS going again. It will be. It's June 6th through 9th.

It's going to be in Skamokawa Vista Park in Washington on the Columbia River this year, which is not exactly where it was in the past in Twanoh Park. A few nitpickers have called out it's technically not the South Sound.

ANDREW:
Yeah.

PAUL:
Because that's what South Sound, Traditional Inuit Kayaking Symposium, is what makes up the SSTIKS name. Close enough, and it doesn't really matter. But it's a lovely place, and they were really interested to have SSTIKS there as an event on their calendar in that region.

And so it was wonderful to have that partnership. And we really, really appreciate that. We're working with Columbia River Kayaking and the folks at Skamokawa River Resort.

And they've been tremendous partners. So SSTIKS is happening, and we hope folks on this call will be able to attend and enjoy SSTIKS. I've been going to SSTIKS—I wasn't at all one of the founders, whether the Tim Mattson, Don Beal, Henry generation—but I've been going for the last decade or so. And I fell in love with SSTIKS immediately.

What I liked about SSTIKS—and I want to set the stage here— is that I am not a super kayaking hotshot by any means. I love kayaking. It's a super important part of my life, and I love using the Greenland tool set.

And I have a reverence for the traditional roots of kayaking within the Arctic peoples, and then especially with the Inuit peoples of Greenland. It's really something I love to do, more than something I'm really, really, really good at. That kind of love is what attracted me to SSTIKS, because it felt to me like I was joining a big family.

And SSTIKS has that family feel. It's quite literally, in the past, a family event, because it's one of the only kayak events that had a really active kids track. But it has a familial feeling as well, with everybody there supporting each other.

There is competition there, but it's a friendly competition. And there's a place for every kayaker there of all different abilities.

ANDREW:
Now, how about you, Noy? How did you get involved in Greenland style and being a coordinator for SSTIKS?

NOY:
Well, I got involved in kayaking a long time ago. I did some river kayaking. And then more recently, about four or five years ago, I started doing some ocean kayaking.

It might only be about four years now. And I bought a boat that was way too big for me. And I had a Euro paddle that was way too long for me.

And a friend lent me an extra paddle that they had hanging around their garage. And it turned out to be, you know, it was a Greenland paddle. And it was very, very skinny, even for the skinny sticks that we like.

But I just kind of started using it and fell in love with it. It was my go-to for the first year. And when I was out in some wind and waves, it was an extremely secure paddle.

There's something about that stick when it goes in the water. You're just, you know, you're fine.

ANDREW:
Yeah.

NOY:
So I have been experimenting with other kinds of Greenland paddles. And I did end up doing some other Euro paddling. I got an L3 coastal kayaking instructor certification recently and used a Euro paddle for that.

But went back to my beloved stick after that was done. Although, I don't think that the ACA actually requires the use of any particular kind of paddle. So that's just an aside.

In terms of SSTIKS, my love of the Greenland paddle is what drew me to volunteer to help out with SSTIKS. And they took me up on my offer.

PAUL:
Luckily.! Because Noy is bringing wonderful new energy to sticks. And she's going to be championing SSTIKS going forward as we go forward in the next couple decades.

ANDREW:
Oh, yeah.

NOY:
Yeah. I mean, this northwest region has such a rich wealth of areas in which to enjoy our sport. There are so many different paddling clubs to draw on.

And many people spread out across all those different clubs who are very interested in Greenland paddling. So I think SSTIKS is really such a wonderful event to kind of reinvigorate when we're bringing it back post-COVID this time. And I'm so excited about it.

And we have after our train-the-trainer yesterday, I think we've got a number of people who are very excited about it. So we're really super looking forward to it. Neither of us is Dubside.

And so we have invited, as you know, Dubside.

ANDREW:
Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention!

PAUL:
Why try to pretend to be Dubside when you can get Dubside? Yeah.

ANDREW:
So Dubside will be there. He'll be giving the keynote address. Isn't that correct?

PAUL:
Yeah, Dubside will be a keynote speaker. And we're having another great speaker, too. Another very important person is Brian Schultz.

ANDREW:
Oh, yeah.

PAUL:
Brian's going to be there. And just to pick up a little bit on what Noy was saying, we are so fortunate here in the northwest. When I started kayaking, my first kayak was the kayak I built with Brian.

And my first paddle was the paddle I carved with Brian. So I started right away with a Greenland paddle. I've really never used a so-called Euro paddle.

I mean, I have one, of course, and I've used it. But my paddle since I started has been a Greenland paddle, and my boat was an F1. I didn't build one of the East Greenland or West Greenland kayaks.

But learning that kind of technique and building it myself meant a lot to me. Just sitting in it and feeling it, you know, the way it moved in the water and it flexed. You could still smell the red cedar smell coming up sometimes.

And it really cemented for me what it meant to kayak. And we're lucky to have people like Brian here and to have that kind of tradition here. It's rare in other places.

It does not exist in other places.

ANDREW:
Absolutely.

PAUL:
And Harvey. I met Harvey very early on. Harvey Golden, who I'm sure many people on your calls know is the preeminent kayak historian of our times. Especially with its traditional boats. To have him here and to meet him. I was fortunate enough to live just a few blocks from him in Portland.

All of that meant a lot to me and helped guide my career as a kayaker.

ANDREW:
Wow. Yeah. That probably has a lot to do with moving location down to the Columbia River.

A lot of these people live in Portland. Brian, Harvey…

PAUL:
Yeah. Originally, and we mentioned, I think, SSTIKS was in Twanoh Park up in the Hood Canal area. Really, the move to the Columbia River this year has much to do with logistics, if anything.

We sort of lost our continuing reservation at that park. So where the permanent home of SSTIKS will be, we're not certain yet. That's to be decided.

Like I was going to say, a lot of things about SSTIKS. I want to make this one of the themes as we're talking. SSTIKS is a living thing.

Noy and I are working on it this year, but we're really, really looking for other people to get involved and to people who are interested in traditional kayaking as much as we are. Become involved with SSTIKS. You're more than welcome.

We're looking for new leadership and new ideas to come into the symposium.

NOY:
Absolutely. I think in the tradition in Greenland, it's a very community event. We have a broad community and we're really, really, really open to all who want to come and help participate to make it whatever it is moving forward.

PAUL:
Yep. We don't think of it as something cast in concrete that has to be maintained exactly the way it is. If SSTIKS changes completely over the next few years in good ways, we'll be the happiest people around because everything needs new ideas and new ways of doing things.

NOY:
The heart of it is that it's a celebration of this style of kayaking. It's sharing all this information and getting people like Dubside In to come help share his experiences and expertise and the camaraderie that we all get from being able to play with our kayaks and our Greenland paddles.

PAUL:
And our friends out there.

NOY:
I think at its heart, it's all about that and the specifics of it can develop and change over time. We're looking forward to how new people who get involved can help grow it.

ANDREW:
Now, one of the things that has made SSTIKS unique among the traditional paddling events sponsored by Kayak USA is the kids program that you had mentioned. Is that still a feature of the new SSTIKS?

NOY:
Well... It is. Yes or no?

PAUL:
This year, we've had very few families with kids sign up. And that's not part of a plan. We want it to remain a kid-friendly, family-oriented event.

We used to have a lot of people that would come year after year and bring their kids. I used to bring my kids when they were young. This year, with a smaller event, we just didn't get that many kids.

But definitely, we want that to remain part of SSTIKS. It's one thing that made SSTIKS so distinctive is that we had the kids program.

ANDREW:
I'm curious because you two are probably involved in paddling clubs and going around to paddling clubs and talking about Greenland style kayaking. I'm just curious, have you seen the demographic shift to a more older population as the years have gone on? Do you think there are fewer people with younger families kayaking?

PAUL:
Sea kayaking always has skewed a bit on the older side, as we're probably all aware. A lot of younger people start out, I think, if they're starting out in kayaking at all, in Whitewater. They want the thrill.

You can get a lot of thrills in sea kayaking, as we all know. But it definitely skews a bit older. I don't think that we're not seeing kids this year because the population has aged out.

I think it was just the dynamics of restarting the event, trying to keep it small, losing some of the momentum with families. I'm pretty confident that next year we'll be back with a very healthy kids program.

ANDREW:
When you talk to clubs about traditional kayaking, do you find that a lot of people already know a lot about traditional kayaking?

PAUL:
There's a hunger for it. Noy and I talked down at BASK, which is a very large club down in the Bay Area. I recently moved down there.

There was a hunger for it. We did a talk, and Noy and Trina taught a Greenland class. It filled up in five minutes.

There's a lot of people who use paddles, but they don't really know how to use them (Greenland paddles). Or they own them and never use them. Boy, that filled up quickly.

They were so excited. They were so excited to have that class. It was unbelievable.

Dubside would be overwhelmed with people. I'd love to talk to them about having a Dubside event down there. There would be standing room.

NOY:
Oh, actually, that would be a great idea.

PAUL:]
People would love it.

ANDREW:
We've got to talk to them about it.

PAUL:
Oh, no, absolutely. We've talked about it. You could have a SSTIKS-like event down in the Bay Area, and it would be very popular.

There was one once upon a time called TAKS.

ANDREW:
Yes.

PAUL:
It was a bit farther north, up in the Mendocino area. But you could easily do one in the Bay Area, and you could help spread the love down there. It would be very popular.

ANDREW:
I did attend a TAKS event that was held up in Trinidad.

PAUL:
Trinidad, yes. You don't have to “Slap a Wall” and all that. That's an awesome area to kayak.

ANDREW:
Oh, it was fantastic, yes. Real coastal kayaking with the boulder field and the surf. It's still also a protected bay.

PAUL:
You can dial up and dial down as you like. It's a wonderful area.

ANDREW:
Helen Wilson's playground. Well, in the Pacific Northwest, where can you go for Greenland-style instruction?

I mean, SSTIKS was the event to do it.

NOY:
There's been a resurgence up in this area, and quite a few people within the local paddling groups are using Greenland paddles. You have interviewed James Manke on the Dubcast? Yeah, so he's up across the water, or he was.

I think he's relocated, but he does go back, I think, to Ucluelet. He's helped to train a number of people. So there are some people who are in this area who use Greenland paddles, but there's just nothing like the SSTIKS event.

And so many of us have been looking to see when it was going to be coming back again. So I think that's why it did fill up, and we are really so happy that it's going to be starting to happen again up here.

PAUL:
One thing, speaking of passing the knowledge on, the tradition at SSTIKS for years was to bring folks actually from Greenland. This year, of course, we're not doing that with smaller-scale SSTIKS this year. But that's something we hope to keep as an ongoing tradition at SSTIKS, is to bring people from the source to be mentors at the event.

ANDREW:
So let's talk about the event itself. What do you have planned on the schedule?

NOY:
Well, we have a lot planned.

PAUL:
We have a lot planned for such a small event. So it's June 6th through 9th, as we said, at Skamolkawa Vista Park. Each day there's a morning and afternoon session.

And the morning and afternoon sessions always include a lot of rolling, strokes, and tripping, as well as ropes. You don't have to be an expert roller to come to SSTIKS at all. It's a lot of people come to learn to roll.

A lot of people, you know, that's the skill they want to acquire or they kind of got to roll and and of course once you get a roll, you know, it really opens things up. You can get out onto rougher water and in a much safer fashion, obviously for yourself and for your friends. We recognize that and we have a lot of opportunities for rolling at SSTIKS.

We also talk about rescuing and how to properly and safely use a traditional kayak, kayak that doesn't have bulkheads. So how to dewater the kayak, how to get somebody back in and out of a kayak if they need to, how to rescue people who have flipped over and may not be able to right themselves. It's one of the few places, I think, where you can actually take those kind of classes.

That was part of our train-the-trainer yesterday, by the way. We had Don Beal, who's a master at that and he's a wonderful instructor in those arts.

NOY:
We're also having, I mean, honestly, as I understand it, most people go to SSTIKS for rolling. How can you not when Dubside is going to be there demoing all of the different rolls and having people there who can help you with any of them that you would like to learn how to do. But one can't try to roll all day long and so there are some other things, kayak-related things, that we are offering and they are like half-day trips in the local area and there are some wonderful refuges nearby.

We will be doing strokes, beginning and advanced strokes.

PAUL:
We have games as well. So traditionally in Greenland, games are an important part of learning and maintaining your kayaking ability and we follow that tradition. Some of the SSTIKS events in the past, we've had many Greenland games.

Again, this year we're keeping things low-key and a bit smaller scale, but we'll definitely have races. We have Dead Fish Polo. One tradition at SSTIKS, which we'll always maintain, is the Wedding of Palo Race.

ANDREW:
Wait a minute. Explain the Dead Fish Polo.

PAUL:
Oh, I just tossed it out there. I just tossed it out there.

ANDREW:
I mean, I know what you're talking about, but it sounds kind of funny.

PAUL:
Dead Fish Polo is a kind of a melee kayaking where you have a, not a literal, but a constructed dead fish. It could be actually something shaped like a fish, like a sock stuffed with flotation. Or this year, actually, Trina Hahn created a ring, which worked really nicely.

And essentially, it's sort of a keep-away passing game, using only your paddles to move the dead fish around. You can do teams, or you can just do every person for themselves. It's a lot of fun.

And it's also a great way to cement the skills you're learning, because in order to do it well, you have to be able to, you know, scull. You have to be able to maneuver your kayak backwards and forwards to the side. When people get really enthusiastic, people tip over.

So you've got to be able to roll up. And so it's a way of cementing all the skills that you're learning in a really fun environment. We also do the Wedding of Palo Race, which also needs some explanation.

There was an early movie filmed in Greenland by Knud Rasmussen and others. It was a fictional story about an Inuit love triangle. It's a wonderful movie to see.

It captures glimpses of, obviously, fictionalized, but nonetheless, take it with postmodern eyes, it's still wonderful. And it showcased a lot of the traditional skills, kayaking skills. And we take a subset of those skills and built it into a tradition called the Wedding of Palo Race, taken from the main character in the movie.

And it's a relay race where you move across a short distance in kayaks, and it involves a sprint. It involves a seal tow, which often, when we had a lot of kids, the kids would be the seals and you'd have to drag them along behind your kayak. This year, it's going to be adults, so that'll be tragic.

And then even more challenging.

ANDREW:
They're in the water when you're dragging them?

PAUL:
In the water, in the water, hanging off your toggle. And then there's the bride section where you have to have the bride in the movie, sits on the back of the kayak as Palo heroically paddles her through a storm. And so we did the bride section, sans storm, but the bride is, you get a kayak or you get somebody sitting behind you in the kayak facing backwards, you paddling forwards.

My favorite year was when Tim Mattson was the bride on one of the kayaks.

NOY:
Maybe he will be again.

PAUL:
Maybe he will be again. If you know Tim, Tim's a big guy. And his girlfriend, Pat, was the paddler.

And that was, I've got a great picture of that with that kayak. We have a lot of fun at SSTIKS too. It's a fun event.

Another feature we did in the past was a film festival. I'm not certain if we'll do that this year again, it's a truncated one, but people could either bring short films or a little couple of minute film with their GoPro or whatever at the event or their iPhone. And at the last night, we'd have a film screening.

If you go onto the SSTIKS website, kayaks, spelled with a Q-A-J-A-Q-P-N-W dot O-R-G, you can see the films from our past film festivals and they're fun to see.

ANDREW:
Awesome. I love film festivals.

PAUL:
Film festivals rock.

ANDREW:
I'll definitely check it out. Yeah.

PAUL:
Yeah, yeah. There's some good ones. And also, again, if you're in the region, in the Pacific Northwest, and you want to be involved, hop on board.

We're looking for new ideas and new energy and new people. I think I said that once. I'll say it again.

Yeah.

ANDREW:
Another thing that I really like about the event is just simply looking at all the skin on frame and the homemade wooden kayaks that people bring.

PAUL:
Yep.

ANDREW:
Half of them probably belong to Harvey Golden, but just an incredible variety, incredible craftsmanship in these kayaks. Very inspiring. It has been very inspiring for me when I went to build my own kayaks.

And another thing I think is unique about SSTIKS, and this is probably because of Harvey's influence, is the presence of Alaskan kayaks and the Aleut kayak. That may be because we're in the Pacific Northwest and there has been interest in the Alaskan tradition here. Well, George Dyson, of course, lives up in Bellingham, and Corey Friedman runs a Skinboat school in Anacortes, and all he builds is baidarkas.

PAUL:
Yeah. You see a lot of his boats or his designs at SSTIKS, for sure. And all those guys, again, why we're so lucky up in this region. You can't overstate how important Harvey's been. He's an amazing person. But the Skinboat School and the Wooden Boats Shop and all those folks up there.

ANDREW:
Yeah. The Center for Wooden Boats.

NOT:
Super important. And we're lucky. And Brian.

ANDREW
Yeah.

PAUL:
And Kilii. And others.

ANDREW:
Oh, that's right. Kilii.

PAUL:
It kind of goes on and on, you know?

ANDREW:
Yeah. Yeah. I first met Keely at SSTIKS, and he's gone on to become a National Geographic photographer.

PAUL:
Yeah, absolutely. Everybody. And you know what?

You too. The Death Point Pirate, when I was starting to kayak and everything, I was looking at your videos.

ANDREW:
Oh, yeah? Okay.

PAUL:
They're wonderful. And it helped build, you know, it's part of the culture here. It's a very rich culture with roots in that tradition here.

And it's nice.

ANDREW:
Okay, great. What else would you like to mention?

PAUL:
Did we mention that we're looking for people to hop on board?

ANDREW:
Okay, as an aside, you know, I actually volunteered one year. I taught a paddling class, and I led a half-day trip. You know, you went from Twanoh State Park up to Alder Brook Resort.

It's a beautiful resort. Grand Hotel. Marina. We all stopped and went to the bar and had a drink.

And on the way back, the trip kind of took a little bit longer than I expected.

PAUL:
That's an awesome trip.

ANDREW:
Yeah. And we ran into some commercial oyster harvesters along the way and bought a bag of oysters for five bucks and grilled them over the fire when we got back. It was an awesome time.

But being too involved in a lot of these organizations just doesn't fit into my lifestyle.

PAUL:
Yep.

NOY:
So I greatly appreciate people like you, Paul and Noy, that are willing to put in their time and effort to do something like this.

PAUL:
Well, it's rewarding. You know, like I said, I've been involved with SSTIKS the last decade, helping organize a bit. So it's nice to see that SSTIKS needs a bit more help this year to step forward and keep it going.

It's a pleasure. And to find people like Noy who want to come in with all of her energy is great.

ANDREW:
How have you been going about rebuilding the team, the team of volunteers to have this event?

NOY:
We've been really talking to people. Paul and Joanne have been really good about giving some presentations. And after we hold this event, I think it will start to sell itself again.

But because there are plenty of people who really want to better understand how to use, they want to know more about the culture and history and they want to better understand practically how to use the tool a little bit more effectively. And I think that you have this opportunity for an assemblage of many different people who are very interested in and committed to the Greenland paddle and understanding the history. And you get them, you get them all together there.

And it will end up being with the lineup of people who we have. We have people with a lot of experience and people with not that much experience and people who really use the tools very, very effectively and not all the same. Not everyone has the same approach to the forward stroke.

And so I think that it will be really, really worthwhile for people who attend to get that diversity and the opportunity to kind of come into contact with the mix of people that we will be having there. I'm so excited myself and wish in some ways that I was just going to attend and not to help run it. So there you go.

ANDREW:
Right. Well, excellent. Tell me about the camping situation because don't people, it goes over the weekend. So people stay overnight.

PAUL:
It's one of the nice things about that park is there's quite a few campsites. There's 10 sites, there's RV sites with electricity hookups, and there are lodging as well. There's the Duck Inn, there's the Skamokawa Inn, Vista Inn, which may be sold out at this point.

But it's great lodging there and you can dial it up, dial it down.

ANDREW:
Yeah, great.

NOY:
We're super excited about it. It's not in the South Sound, but it has some other opportunities for us to explore. It's another area with different refuges around.

And I think that there can be, it'll be, it'll be really...

PAUL:
It's going to be, it's interesting this year too. There's going to be a little bit more dynamism there. There's wind there that you don't get on Hood Canal and there's current.

So that'll present new opportunities as well. So that'll be interesting to see how that impacts the event.

ANDREW:
So it's freshwater.

PAUL:
It's freshwater. Yeah, absolutely freshwater, but it's tidal.

ANDREW:
Okay.

PAUL:
We're not that far from the Pacific there. This is definitely tidal. There's quite a bit of tide range actually.

ANDREW:
Okay. Well, for me, this will be, it'll be 20 years since I first attended SSTIK in 2005.

I'm super excited about it. It was a life-changing event for me, introducing me into Greenland style and getting to meet all these people in the community. And over the years, I've met so many just really interesting people who are involved in traditional kayaking and extremely creative people too. Whether they're involved in building kayaks or carving paddles or like Kilii photography. Traditional kayaking just seems to attract a lot of creative people.

PAUL:
I think that's true. I know that's true. Creative types are overrepresented in Greenland kayaking for sure.

And I'm not a master builder, but there are some people who have just exquisite building skills. And part of the fun of the event, as you mentioned, is going there and seeing the boats that people have built, either skin boats or often stitch and glue boats. And they're beautiful works of art.

NOY:
Absolutely.

ANDREW:
Okay. Well, why don't we wrap it up there? One more time. Can you tell people how to find information about SSTIKS online?

PAUL:
The best way is to go to our websit, Qajaq (spelled with Q and a J) PNW. QAJAQPNW.ORG. If you do a Google search for SSTIKS with two “s”s, it'll bring you there as well.

But our website's probably the best way. We're on Facebook. We're soon to be hopefully more aggressively on Instagram and other venues.

But the best way is the website. And that'll tell you a lot, all you need to know about the event. And it's June 6th through 9th at Skamokawa Vista Park in Skamokawa, Washington.

ANDREW:
Awesome. Paul and Noy, thanks so much.

PAUL:
Thank you.

ANDREW
Great talking to you.

PAUL:
Yeah, it's going to be cool to see you there. So looking forward to it.

ANDREW:
Yeah, looking forward to seeing you!

NOY:
Absolutely. See you!

THE DUBCAST WITH DUBSIDE: Episode # 69: Greenland’s Road to Independence

 

GOFUNDME: Stories from the Arctic: Help Dubside Return to Greenland

In this episode of The Dubcast with Dubside, Dubside explores Greenland’s evolving path toward independence. Drawing from his personal experiences visiting Greenland over several years, he offers a thoughtful perspective on the island’s complex relationship with the United States—from WWII and the Cold War to the present day.

Dubside dives into the fascinating and often surprising history of Greenland–U.S. relations, discusses the economic and political obstacles Greenland faces in achieving full sovereignty, and explains why, today, Greenland and the U.S. are closer than ever. An insightful, personal look at a country on the brink of transformation.

LINKS:

SSTIKS: The South Sound Traditional Inuit Kayak Symposium

TRAQS: Traditional Qajaqers of the South

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

ANDREW: Hello everybody and welcome! This is the Dubcast with Dubside, exploring the world of traditional kayaking, Greenlandic culture, and the voices that keep the Arctic traditions alive.

DUBSIDE: And I'm Dubside, thanks for joining us.

ANDREW: Well, I'm really blown away by the response we got from our GoFundMe campaign over the last week, and by the incredible generosity of our listeners.

DUBSIDE: Yes, and that means I will be going to Greenland again this summer, and I appreciate everyone's support in that regard. And I do have enough money to go to Copenhagen as well, so another stop in Tivoli to see the music and find people to interview, and I'm really looking forward to that.

ANDREW: Thanks again to everybody who donated and shared the campaign, or just sent us some encouragement. I think this trip to Greenland is important, because there are some very interesting developments happening there right now, and I think we're going to come back with stories that our listeners won't hear anywhere else. Greenland is at a crossroads in a lot of ways, culturally, environmentally, and politically. It's a rare chance to witness and document it in real time.

DUBSIDE: And I will be sending guitar picks out to everybody who requested one. Thank you very much for that.

ANDREW: Hey Dubside, I wanted to also mention that I really liked your interview with Max that we published the last episode.

DUBSIDE: Yes, Max from East Greenland. I'm assuming he will be back at the competition again this coming summer.

ANDREW: Oh, really? Okay.

DUBSIDE: He may have some kids different or some the same, but hopefully I'll run into him again and get the latest on what he's been up to.

ANDREW: What I found really interesting about that interview was that he learned how to build skin-on-frames by looking at Chris Cunningham's book and also from Brian Schultz, from Brian Schultz's videos. I think this is what we're talking about when we're talking about “preserving the tradition”. The knowledge of kayak construction has come full circle from Greenland to America back to Greenland.

DUBSIDE: Yeah, well, I see the Greenlanders always very resourceful. So if you're trying to build a kayak and you could find a book about it, it doesn't matter so much that it might not have been written by Greenland or it might have better pictures in the Greenland books they have, but, you know, whatever. They'll find something that's useful and they'll use it.

And then if they've got something else, they'll use that. So whoever does the documentation, it gets pulled into service. I've seen in Greenland people, on people's bookshelves, they've got Harvey Golden's book with the big, thick “Kayaks of Greenland” with all the surveys in it because, hey, he did the work and they wrote it all down so they can use that to figure things out.

ANDREW: Wow. One more thing I wanted to mention is that I just wrapped up a great interview with Paul Steinberg and Noy Davis, two of the key organizers behind SSTIKS, the South Sound Traditional Inuit Kayak Symposium. We had a fantastic conversation about the history of SSTIKS, what's planned for this year, and why SSTIKS continues to be such a special gathering for the traditional kayaking community in the Pacific Northwest.

So I'll be releasing that full interview soon, so stay tuned. And if you haven't already marked your calendar, SSTIKS is happening June 6th through 9th in Skomakowa, Washington, on the Columbia River. It's shaping up to be a fun and exciting event, especially because Dubside will be in attendance.

DUBSIDE: Yes, indeed. Well, very soon I will be heading down to Florida for the TRAQS, Traditional Qajaqers of the South event. It's a bit south of Orlando, and that is May 1st through the 4th, or 2nd through the 4th.

So anybody who's going to go to that will see me there.

ANDREW: Very good. Okay.

DUBSIDE: So we have here episode number 69, and this is my attempt to cover the latest on Greenland, although it's changing all the time. Greenland is in news, but this is covering what I know about that and my analysis of that up to the present time.

ANDREW: All right, let's get to it.

DUBSIDE: Welcome to the Dubcast. With Dubside. This is Dubcast number 69.

I'm going to tell you about Greenland in regards to international politics. It's been in the news quite a bit lately, and I'll have to tell you for reference, I'm recording this in early April of 2025, so any major events that happened after that will not be included because I do not know about them yet. Last time at episode 68, I talked about an event at the Danish Embassy in Washington, D.C. that took place in November of 2024, and I told you about the entertainment aspect of it. Well, this time we'll look at the political aspects of it, and I'll play you some excerpts of things that occurred there, and I'll review the general past history of Greenland on their path towards independence, which hopefully you know something about if you've been listening to the podcast for a while. And I do have a piece of music. It's a repeat of something I've done some time ago that should be fairly appropriate for these times.

Lately it's been somewhat obligatory for the major news outlets to do a Greenland story, often sending reporters up there to poke around, see what they can find. And so I'd like to give you my version since I've been there for quite a number of times, for quite a number of years, and maybe I've got my own unique perspective. I'm going to begin, as I do sometimes, with something completely off-topic.

Here's a puzzle I'll give you the answer to at the end of this episode, about half an hour from now. You'll have that much time to think about it. When I was a kid, my father took up whitewater canoeing, and my brothers and I enjoyed paddling maybe class two rivers, not really intense whitewater.

And in later years, my father took to maintaining a stretch of a local river to keep it clear so it could be used by whitewater paddlers. And this river was not all that wide, so trees would fall across it and block the entire passage, and then other debris would come down the river and make a big clog that you couldn't get through. In order to keep the river open, my father took to bringing along a chainsaw, and he would cut open the blockages.

But he found that chainsaws are not designed to be used underwater or even partially in water, and if you're cutting the final blockage from the downstream side, when it breaks through, you're going to get in the path of all this oncoming logs, branches, etc., and it's a rather precarious place to be. So the question is, how do you clear a pathway down a river without endangering yourself or ruining your equipment? That's the question.

Now, you may have to think outside the box for this one. I'm going to summarize the major highlights of Greenland history in their path towards independence, going back to 1721, which we could say was the beginning of colonization. This continues for over 200 years, taking us to World War II, when Germany occupies Denmark, leaving Greenland in limbo until the U.S. stepped in to occupy Greenland and prevent any other foreign powers from making any claims on that land. And while that interaction was beneficial to Greenland, the relationship between Greenland and the U.S. has not always been without its issues. In 1951, the air base that the U.S. had set up in World War II was expanded quite a bit, and there were three Greenland villages that were in the way. So they were just relocated rather quickly, and the inhabitants were just told to get out and moved 100 kilometers away, which is very disrupting if you're a hunter who's spent your life living and hunting in a certain area.

In the early 1960s, the U.S. embarked on a secret project to build an underground, or under the ice actually, nuclear missile network. And they got as far as digging it all out. They did not put any actual missiles in there that we know of, but they did have a nuclear reactor to power it.

And it was abandoned due to a number of logistical issues, mainly that the ice was shifting more than they thought it would, so you couldn't keep the tunnels that you dug in the right dimensions for a long period of time. And this project and the nuclear materials imported there was not done with full permission of the Danes or the Greenlanders. And when they abandoned it, they left a lot of waste materials there, which are still there to this day.

In 1968, at the above-ground air base, a B-52 bomber with nuclear weapons aboard crashed, generating significant radioactive contamination, and one of the nuclear bombs was never recovered. Now, back up just a little bit to 1953, when Denmark granted full citizenship to the people of Greenland. And the idea here was cultural assimilation, which they thought was doing the Greenlanders a favor, but assimilation means your own culture gets diluted down to nothing.

And the Inuit are a proud people and did not appreciate this, so this led to a fair amount of agitation. In the 70s, there was a band called Sumé, which I've mentioned before in this Dubcast. They played a big part in that agitation, so in 1979, Greenland was granted home rule, allowing them to govern themselves for quite a few internal matters, but internationally, it would still be Denmark in control.

And the idea of being a completely independent nation kept on growing. There are a number of people in Greenland who are happy to still be part of Denmark, but the predominant sentiment is that Greenland should be completely independent. In 2009, the vote indicated as much, but they couldn't be completely independent and maintain their standard of living without coming up with some alternative form of income to replace the large subsidy that Denmark would provide every year.

Seafood exports have always been a good source of income, not providing for everything, but the thinking at the time was that the exploratory oil drilling will yield a huge amount of oil, and that'll pay all the bills, and everything will be fine. Well, the oil didn't really pan out, and there are environmental concerns. It's very expensive to bring stuff all the way back from the Arctic, and you have seasonal considerations.

The mining done in Greenland, there's been a limited amount. There's rubies, lead, zinc, a little bit of gold, and the price of that fluctuates, so sometimes it's profitable to mine that. Other times they close down the mines because it's not making any money.

So Greenland has opted to push tourism, maybe not to pay all the bills, but to significantly increase the income in that sector, and so they embarked on building three airports, and the first one has opened up this past November in Nuuk, and they're looking to seriously boost tourism and help with the economy that way. In the fall of 2023, on this podcast, I interviewed Kenneth Høegh, Greenland's top diplomat in Washington, D.C., and we were discussing Greenland's striving towards full independence. I'll play back for you now one of his significant comments in that regard.

KENNETH HØEGH: Well, any nation, beside a very few ones, can't be totally on their own. You need to have some close allies, some countries that you work closely with, and that's, of course, the process that Greenland will be in in the decades to come about defining who we should work closely with, because Greenland, being such a tiny nation in an enormous country, needs some good friends. Needs some good friends.

DUBSIDE: Now I'm going to take you to the reception at the Danish Embassy held in November of 2024, celebrating the opening of the new international airport in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Here are the remarks made by Jesper Sorensen, the Danish ambassador to the U.S. This took place one day before the U.S. presidential elections in the fall of 2024.

JESPER SORENSEN: Tonight we celebrate the Greenland-American relationship, and at the same time the close relationship between the Kingdom of Denmark and the United States. A relationship that goes way back.

A relationship so close that we are so proud to call the United States our friend and our closest ally.

And a relationship that will only be closer now with the new international airport. You have already seen that. From Nuuk to Nuuk.

It could be the title of a book or a movie. Maybe it will be someday. For now it is the title, from New York to Nuuk, of a new beginning where a direct flight from the United States to Greenland will strengthen not only the relationship between the two countries, but also create options for economic growth and development.

It will open up opportunities for many Americans to visit and explore the beautiful country of Greenland. To see whales, northern lights, and an amazing culture, which we will all get a glimpse of this evening with the visitor flight. These are just a few of the things you can explore when visiting.

And the new airport will also open up the door for Greenlanders to visit the United States and explore this amazing country.

In the U.S. we also have very important developments to follow. None of us know what the situation will be politically after tomorrow. If anyone does, please tell me.

I'm really dying to know. But one thing is certain. If the United States sneezes, we all catch a cold.

We share many of the same interests and face many of the same challenges. Even though today is a celebration, we have to remember that we are not living in peaceful times. We have to remember the importance of the geopolitical position, strategic position of Greenland, and the role of the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark in securing the safety of all of us.

We need to stay close. And with the airport and the new direct flight, we are closer than ever. In fact, only 4 hours and 15 minutes to be exact.

We have never been this close. Before giving the floor to the Minister, I would like to give the floor to someone.

DUBSIDE: All right, so at this point, the Ambassador introduces Kenneth Høegh, who makes a few remarks and then he introduces Greenland's Minister of Business, Trade, Mineral Resources, Justice and Gender Equality. Naya Nathanielson is her name.

NAYA NATHANIELSON: A very warm welcome to tonight. I'm so grateful for your participation in this evening's event, in which we celebrate the upcoming opening of the new international airport in Nuuk. A lot of opportunities arise.

Amongst these opportunities is a new direct air route, as mentioned, to the United States. In 2026, two more airports will open, based in Qaqortoq in the south and Ilulissat in the north. And it will be the first step of our ongoing update of our airport's infrastructure.

So we hope to see you in all of these three cities in the future. One of these sectors that is set to gain a lot from this new airport is, of course, our tourism sector. It is a sector that holds enormous potential for growth and is already presenting itself as an important factor into our economy.

That is the first time, really, that we have seen a sector that can not compete but play along with our fishery industry. So it's a lot for us. For Greenland, tourism is a great sector to develop, since it has strong ties to both nature and culture, which is so important to us.

Another sector worth mentioning in relation to the airport is our mineral sector. And yet another is our fishery sector. These sectors all stand to gain from the investments in infrastructure, which again strengthens both the local as well as the society as a whole.

We have long been celebrating for our breathtaking landscapes, rich cultural heritage, great natural resources, and we are so looking forward to share these with everybody else in the world. So we are not shy about that. We want to share everything we've got.

We want to communicate, we want to travel, we want to connect. But tonight is more than just business. It's also about deepening the relationship with the United States.

As you mentioned, we have many shared interests and are able to look back on many years of working together for a stronger and safer Arctic, especially in times as these. So tonight I also want to nod to those of you that in a very concrete way, on an everyday level, collaborate with us and help us and work together with us. So thank you.

In closing, I would like to extend my gratitude to our many partners for their tireless effort to bring opportunities to life, including Royal Greenland, who are providing the wonderful Greenlandic seafood we are going to consume tonight, Greenland Airports, the builders of a new international airport represented by Mr. Dylan Vogt, as well as Air Greenland and Vis Greenland. And finally, thank you Ambassador for letting us use your wonderful settings here in your beautiful home. So I wish you all a wonderful evening.

Thank you. And in Greenland we do enjoy to eat, sing and laugh. I'm sure we will get to all of that tonight, but we will start by the singing.

So I will leave the floor to the choir.

DUBSIDE: And for a little more context, we were in the residence where the ambassador Jasper lives, which is quite ornate. And they had some Greenlandic food laid out very nicely on tables with fine dinnerware.

And it was like the Greenlandic shrimp and other seafood. And everybody was dressed up. I had to get dressed up to go to this.

And this is, I guess, how Washington DC works. The schmoozing that goes on after things and you meet the important people and you exchange information so you can get back to them to do your lobbying or business or whatever goes on there. This is not really my world, but I had stepped into it for that evening.

And listening to the remarks that I just played, this was a happy celebration of the opening of an airport with the expectation of closer ties to the U.S. You know, as Jasper said, we're closer than we've ever been before. We're only four and a half hours away from New York. And the Greenland minister talking about increased trade possibilities and the expectation of more commerce going on.

And a few mentions of the wars going on in the world and the need to stay close together and be a real partnership. And don't forget that Greenland has the objective of being completely independent from Denmark. So increasing trade and tourism will pay for things and a good partnership with the U.S. would allow them, perhaps, to make that reality come even sooner.

Well, the next day the election was held and we know the results of that election and come into January, February. And the statements made about acquiring Greenland and not ruling out military force changed the entire equation there. And the entity that Greenlanders thought would be their best friend, the United States, now looks like a potential enemy and there's all sorts of apprehension.

And there are, the prevailing sentiment by far in Greenland is, we are not for sale. You cannot buy us. Greenland is not for sale.

Well, in that interview I did with Kenneth Hoog, that I just played an excerpt of, we talked at length about owning land in Greenland. And he described how to this day they don't do private ownership of land in Greenland. They are worldly enough at this point to understand the concept, but they just don't do it in Greenland.

Greenland has a prime minister and a full complement of government officials. So when someone says, I want that island, I got to have it. And if I can't buy it, I'll just take it.

And not even asking an official person in Greenland, just putting that statement out and the Greenlanders hear about it secondhand. Well, perhaps I can convey how they feel about that. If you're not a parent, imagine you are one.

And if you are a parent, think of when your kid or kids were preteen, you know, seven, eight, nine, 10 years old. And someone said, I need those kids. I'll buy them.

If I can't buy them, I'll just take them. And they didn't even ask you that. They just put that word out to your, say your boss or your landlord or some other person that had influence over you.

Now, no self-respecting parent is going to accept any amount of money for their child. You know that phrase, it doesn't hurt to ask. It doesn't hurt to ask.

The worst they can do is say no. Well, there are times when it does hurt to ask. And in this situation, it wasn't even a question.

It was a statement. I need that island. I need Greenland.

We'll buy it or we'll just take it. That is deeply offensive to the people of Greenland. I realize this is not the first time the current president has indicated a desire for Greenland.

In 2019, he voiced a similar sentiment. And back then it was kind of dismissed as a joke. He couldn't have been serious.

But now we don't look at it that way. And the effect of this statement has been to throw a giant monkey wrench into the prospect of a very friendly working relationship as initiated by the opening of the new airport. The country they most thought would be their best friend now looks like it could be their enemy.

Well, here's my assessment. It's not what anybody should do, but just here's my observation. These people, the Inuit, are not fazed by monkey wrenches.

Last minute changes, complete alteration of plans, that's when they step up. And the Greenland way is we'll figure out something to make it work. On the fly, seat of our pants, we can do this.

And so I am very curious to see what will happen here. And I have complete confidence that they will come out on top, getting what they want, however they need to. And for us outsiders, this is a golden opportunity to learn something if we watch closely.

And trying to predict, you know, how all these different players are going to interact with Russia and the U.S. and the Chinese and Denmark and Greenland, it's a very complex situation. And it's a situation that bears very little resemblance to the situation that existed when those remarks were made at the embassy. But when plans go awry, the Inuit Greenland way is not to get discouraged or disillusioned, but to get resourceful and creative.

They will find a way. That's what they've been doing for thousands of years. It may not be orthodox.

It may not be the most efficient. From an outsider's perspective, it may not seem logical, elegant, or efficient. But it will have one all-important characteristic.

It will work. I'd like to play a song from Dubcast number 25. And this is what I would consider to be a rallying cry for Greenlandic pride, fairly appropriate these days.

And so this was done originally by a band called Hey, H-E-J, and then later done by Chili Friday. It's called Kalaallit Nunaaput.

Well, I don't have the entire translation of every verse, but the general idea is it's talking about what a beautiful and wonderful place Greenland is, and the amazing scenery, and how much the people love the land there, and the chorus…that just means, our Greenland.

Greenland recently held elections and has a new prime minister now whose position on independence and international situation is not substantially different from the previous prime minister. But caught in the middle of all this fuss is my friend Kenneth Høegh. Being the top representative to the U.S. of Greenland, he is right in the middle of it.

And I have tried to stay in touch with him. He's been extremely busy. But the few times I have been able to talk to him, he has indicated that he would like Greenland's right to self-determination to be respected.

And we can lend our concern and support for that idea. As to the idea that the U.S. needs Greenland for security purposes, well, Kenneth was pointing out that the U.S. has the base there that they've had since World War II. There have been over a dozen additional military installations in Greenland over the years that the U.S. has seen fit to shut down.

And this was not due to anything the Greenlanders indicated, but action initiated by the U.S. alone. If before all this went down, the U.S. had wanted to increase their military presence, pretty much all they had to do was ask, or ask politely and respectfully. Another big point has been the rare earth minerals that Greenland is known to have, but they're not just on the surface of the ground somewhere ready to be picked up.

There's considerable investment and exploration that needs to be done, and Greenland has issued several permits to a number of operations, but very few of them have been American. So if the U.S. wants some of these mineral resources, they've got to show some investment initiative to make that happen. As events continue to develop, I may very well have to do a Part 2 of this episode in the near future.

All right, back to the question I posed at the beginning. How do you safely clear the debris blocking a river without endangering yourself or damaging your chainsaw? Bearing in mind the idea of thinking outside the box and making full use of available resources, my father would find the major components of an obstruction, the biggest branch or the main trunk of the tree, and he would cut through them almost completely, but not all the way. Then he would paddle on down the river, goodbye, looking for the next obstruction to work on.

So the resource that he used here was the natural power of the river. Due to the fluctuations of the water level, a week or so later he would come back and it was all clear. The river itself had done the last little part of the job.

Now when he first started doing this, sometimes he would come back and the obstruction would still be there, but he learned over time just exactly how much to cut to ensure that it would be clear given time. And the other way of thinking outside the box was to realize that the task did not include an immediate deadline. You didn't actually have to be there as the job was completed.

My father is no longer alive, but I certainly appreciate all his wisdom. Whatever river you're paddling on, whatever box you're thinking inside of or outside of, whatever international diplomacy situation you may find yourself in, thank you for listening to The Dubcast with Dubside.

THE DUBCAST WITH DUBSIDE: Max in East Greenland: Teaching, Kayaking, and Living the Old Ways

 

GOFUNDME: Stories from the Arctic: Help Dubside Return to Greenland

In this episode of The Dubcast with Dubside, Dubside sits down for a conversation with Max at the 2024 Greenland National Qajaq Championship in Qaqortoq. Listeners may remember Max from our April 23, 2022 interview with Brian Schulz, who raised over $16,000 to bring Max and his students to the championships.

Originally from France, Max moved to the tiny, remote village of Tiniteqilaaq in East Greenland to learn firsthand how the Greenlanders lived—immersing himself in traditional practices like hunting, dog sledding, and kayaking. He has lived there ever since and now serves as the headmaster of the local school, where he passes on traditional kayaking knowledge to the next generation.

In this conversation, Max reflects on how East Greenlanders adapt to scarcity by building kayaks with whatever materials are available, and how he learned traditional techniques in the most unexpected ways—through Chris Cunningham’s book Building the Greenland Kayak, YouTube videos, Brian Schulz’s tutorials, and in-person instruction from Eichi Ito in Japan.

Now a bridge between generations, Max is inspiring his village’s youth to embrace kayaking from an early age and helping to keep Greenland’s qajaq heritage alive.

THE DUBCAST WITH DUBSIDE: Episode #68: Encounters with Jens Peter Kielsen: Culture, Choirs, and Kayaks

CLICK HERE TO HELP DUBSIDE RETURN TO GREENLAND!

In this episode of The Dubcast with Dubside, Dubside shares stories and reflections on his recent encounters with the charismatic Jens Peter Kielsen, professional hunter, fisherman, founder of Qajaq Qaqortoq, and member of the Vilhelm Lynge Choir. Previously featured in Dubcast #20 (“The Narwhal Tusk Polar Bear Head Necklace”), Jens continues to be a fascinating figure in Greenland’s traditional kayaking and cultural landscape.

Dubside recounts Jens’ presence as the honored guest at the 2024 Greenland National Qajaq Championships dinner and explores the significance of Greenlandic choral singing as both a beloved leisure activity and a deep expression of national identity.

The episode also touches on new discoveries related to the elusive high-speed paddling technique known as kussarsarluni paarneq, including surprising details about how kayak design may have played a role in its effectiveness. A thoughtful and engaging look into the people, culture, and traditions of Greenland.

LINKS:

GOFUNDME: Stories from the Arctic: Help Dubside Return to Greenland

Hunter’s Eye in South Greenland, experienced local trophy hunting and fishing guide offering a wide range of trophy hunting, fishing and sightseeing tours in southern part of Greenland. 

THE DUBCAST WITH DUBSIDE: Special Guest Taagi

IN THIS EPISODE:

Dubside sits down with Taagi, a master craftsman and wood carver from Qaqortoq. Taagi shares his firsthand observations of the resurgence of traditional kayaking in his hometown, home to Greenland's oldest kayaking club. He reflects on the legacy of seal hunters and recounts ancient legends of violent encounters between the Inuit and Norsemen. The conversation delves into Taagi's candid thoughts on Greenland's readiness for independence and the unique challenges posed by climate change, from its impact on maritime transportation to the booming tourism industry. This is an episode rich with history, culture, and a thought-provoking look at Greenland's evolving identity.

THE DUBCAST WITH DUBSIDE: Episode #67: Exploring "Greenland in Tivoli"

HELP DUBSIDE RETURN TO GREENLAND!

In this episode of The Dubcast with Dubside, Dubside travels to Copenhagen for Greenland in Tivoli, the largest Greenlandic cultural event outside of Greenland. Held annually in the iconic Tivoli Gardens, this vibrant festival brings together Greenlandic musicians, artists, designers, and performers to showcase the rich traditions and evolving culture of Greenland.

Dubside dives into the heart of the festivities, attending concerts, talking with Greenlandic musicians, and soaking in the unique fusion of ancient traditions and modern Arctic life. Along the way, he searches for familiar faces, including Ole Paulson, the crusty old photographer he last encountered in Qaqortoq.

Join us as we explore how Greenland’s culture comes to life in the heart of Copenhagen, offering a rare opportunity to experience the spirit of the Arctic far from its icy shores.

Kaar! by DDR

Pop Uummataaruffimmi by Ole Kristiansen

GOFUNDME: Stories from the Arctic: Help Dubside Return to Greenland