Newbridge, Co Kildare writer's remarkable tale of life above the Arctic Circle

Newbridge, Co Kildare native, Dr Geraldine Osborne knows what it's like to be cold. In 1989, herself, artist husband Danny and their three young children spent a year living in the tiny Inuit settlement of Grise Fiord, over 1000km above the Arctic Circle.

Geraldine's family's exploits form the background to her new travel memoir, 'Somewhere Cold', which details the hardships they endured living in one of the most isolated places on Earth, and the bonds they forged with the indigenous Inuit people along the way.

“My husband, Danny had been to the Arctic twice, so he was quite familiar with it. He went first in 1977 for three months, he's an artist and he went up there to paint, and then in 1981 he and two other guys organised the first Irish Arctic exhibition and spent six months there doing various projects”, Geraldine tells Kildare Now.

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“So I met him just before that, I was a medical student in Dublin at the time and he had a warehouse close by to where I was living at the time. Then two years later we were married, I was in my final year I think of medical school. But I was fascinated by it as well, and I was always interested in travel, so that's how it came about.”

Geraldine explains that after she and Danny got married, they embarked on some travelling, but could not take their children as they were too young. The young couple travelled on expeditions to the Andes and Himalayas, but it wasn't until their third child was born that they decided to take the whole family on their next adventure, to the High Arctic.

“After our third child was born, the time was right to go to the Arctic, and the trip was very much designed around the children. We went and stayed in an Inuit community where there were other young kids as well.

“They were all very small, the eldest was five, then was a two-year-old and a one-year old, so the five-year-old sort of remembers some of it, but the other two don't really remember it at all. When they were there they just accepted everything. They didn't complain or remark about the cold, it was just what the children there put up with too, and so long as their needs were met they didn't really...they just accepted it as normal."

Conditions
“We stayed in a very small isolated community 1000km above the Arctic Circle, so it's very northern, about 76 degrees latitude. So in winter you get three months of complete darkness, and it's very cold of course, -40 degrees on average and if you have winds it's even lower. So it's very cold and dark in the winter, and then in early February the sun comes back and the time of daylight lengthens dramatically every day, and by April you're into continuous daylight almost. The lack of a 24-hour clock was hard to adapt to.

“The Inuits are very nice people to live with, really nice; they're a bit reserved but very generous and kind, and they've a great sense of humour as well. They have a lot of community events, celebratory community events and things. It was nice for us to be in that particular community because it was very small, and we got to know everybody. There were a lot of cultural things I had to get used to as well.”

Geraldine explains that 'Somewhere Cold' is a book she always wanted to write but never got around to. With three young children and a demanding job at the time, she simply did not have the time resources available. Since retiring two years ago, however, found that the time was right to gather her thoughts and present them on the printed page.

The result is the story of a remarkable Irish family who chose to live in the harshest of conditions for one year, and who were embraced into a local Inuit community as one of their own.

'Somewhere Cold' by Geraldine Osborne is available now in all good bookshops and is published by Mercier Press.