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Don't Take a Job Dog Sledding Around Greenland if You Like Porn

If you've ever felt like riding a dog sled around Greenland for two years without any access to booze or sex, then this job is for you!

This puppy loving man was sexless for two years, as he rode a dog sled around Greenland's tundra.

If you've been complaining about the Canadian winter, you need to take moment, take a deep breath, and wipe the snow out of your pussy. While you sit in a heated room constantly refreshing your Twitter interactions page there are people dog sledding around the arctic tundra of Greenland for months on end in complete darkness without booze, running water or sex. And here’s the kicker: this isn’t some sort of Danish punishment for not honking their horn before starting your car, these guys are volunteers. Jesper Olsen recently returned to his hometown of Copenhagen, Denmark after spending nearly the last two years as a member of the Royal Danish Navy's Sirius Sledge Patrol team. Their mandate is to send a bunch of dudes out on dog sleds to assert sovereignty over Greenland. In true colonial form, Greenland's got a shit ton of minerals buried underneath all those fjords, and one day Denmark hopes to exploit them for it. Over the course of four years, six sledge teams (which are comprised of two men and about a dozen dogs bred specifically for the task at the Sirius base in Kanglinnguit) cover nearly every square inch of northern Greenland's 16,000-kilometer coastline. I chatted with Jesper to find out why anyone would willingly volunteer for Sirius and how to take a shit when it's -30ºC.

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VICE: What kind of training did you undergo for Sirius?
Jesper: We did eight months of training in Denmark and then one more month of winter training in Greenland. They set-up a test scenario where you go though the ice and lose all of your supplies – you just have some dry clothes. You have to live out in the wilderness for a week by yourself and build a snow cave to sleep in.

Making igloos? That's pretty badass.
Yeah and what sucks is you can still be eliminated from the patrol after all of that.

Did you get along well with your partner?
Yeah. Rasmus, my first rotation partner, and Michael, who was my second partner, and I got along well. We're very good friends, we just spent so much time together that we know basically everything about each other. But it's strange out there, you can go for weeks without really speaking to each other. Everything becomes a routine. It's not because we don't want to speak to each other, we just ran out of subjects to talk about. Everything is autopilot. We journeyed for six months together around the clock – if you were to translate that into a marriage it would be five and a half years, considering most spouses work in different places and have other friends and such.

Wow. And you didn't even get to have sex with each other. What's the most epic story you have that you'll tell to your grandchildren over and over?
I once fell into a crack in the ice. We were on a glacier – you can never sledge on a glacier, but we reached a point where we just had to. It was fall, so it was dark 24/7 at this time. The dogs ran through the crack but my ski got stuck in it and the sled pushed me over so I just fell in. Luckily the crack was pretty narrow so I stopped about 50 centimeters down, just stuck there looking up. I also accidentally stabbed myself in the leg once.

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Oh yeah, no big deal, just a casual leg stabbing. Okay, did you guys ever throw a two-person party?
Well there were no beers in the supply given to us by Sirius. But Rasmus and I brought a half-liter of whiskey with us. We drank it pretty quickly during the start of the journey. But when you get back in the summertime, you meet up with the other guys to have a barbeque before going the last 20 kilometers. And then there you have just one or two beers and you're totally hammered because you haven't been drinking for four months.

Wearing suits in the arctic seems a bit counterproductive but at least there are puppies involved.

I told some friends of mine that I was interviewing you and they were wondering how you did laundry?
When were on the sledge journey, we never washed our clothes. You just wear them all the time.

So you were pretty smelly, eh?
You don't really smell anything because it's so cold. And the bacteria can't survive in those temperatures so it's not super gross. You do smell, but it's not unbearable.

What's the longest you ever went without taking a shower?
Two and a half months. One time I did roll around in the snow naked, but that's about it.

That's impressive.
Yeah well, I'm a policeman now, and I've met homeless people who smelled way worse so…

I've heard that dogs have an intuitive sense for when danger is near. Did your dogs ever save your life from a polar bear or something?
Yeah, the dogs are guards and they will warn you if there's ever a polar bear near. They sleep outside and will make a special sound if there is one close by. They let out a low-pitched “woof” and when the bear gets really, really near they go crazy to make sure we hear them.

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And what the fuck do you do in that case? How do you scare away a polar bear?
With a flare gun. I suppose I saw about twenty polar bears during my time there.

A polar bear photo-bombing a photo of Northern Greenland.

My Mom gets really nervous when I don't text her to tell her I'm alive at least once a day. Did yours totally freak out the whole time you were in Greenland?
Yeah, my Mom was definitely like that. We had a satellite phone but it was very, very expensive. We had to pay for it ourselves because they were private calls. But it's your lifeline, so I still used it to ring home to say that I was okay. When I could tell that she was missing me, I would be sure to check in with her every week, but otherwise I'd speak to her just about once a month or so.

Awww. So on an unrelated note, if you weren't having sex for two years, did you bring a lot of porn with you?
I didn't but along the journey there are several man-made huts that we stopped at. We didn't always sleep in our tent every night. There were porn magazines in some of those huts but they were really old, like from the 70s.

That's even more awesome. I used to date a Marine and he told me that during basic training they drug your coffee a bit to prevent you from being all randy or getting random boners. Do you know if they put saltpeter in your rations to make you less horny?
No I've never heard of that. Apparently it hasn't reached Denmark yet.

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The cutest container on the planet.

In Greenland there is no sunlight between November and February. Can you describe the feeling you had when you saw it again for the first time?
I was really emotional – it was a very special feeling. One I almost can't describe.

Did your eyes burn out of their sockets?
No, not at all. It's a very soft, gradual light. I nearly cried when I saw it though.

And how does one go about taking a shit during a snowstorm?
You've got to go about it the hard way – outdoors. You learn to be really quick when it’s that cold! And you have to prepare everything inside, before you enter the big white toilet.

Did your friends think you were crazy for volunteering to join the sledge patrol?
Oh, definitely. The number one question they always ask me is how did you survive for two years without any girls? When I finally got home to Copenhagen though they threw a huge party for me. I don't remember a thing, I was so hungover the next day.

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