When she was told she would have to spend two months in a tent far out in nature, her reaction was clear.
She ran away.
She didn’t want to go to Kilaarsarfik.
The thought of two months without a normal home, a bed and the familiar surroundings was completely unfathomable to her.
– I was also in puberty and could not imagine at all how two months in a tent will benefit me then.
This is what Nikoline Naanu Kristiansen tells us.
Today she lives in Denmark with her two children.
But part of her childhood still belongs to Kilaarsarfik, where she spent her summers as a child when she lived in the Tupaarnaq orphanage in Nuuk.
Nikoline left anyway.
The first two weeks she spent almost the entire time inside the tent, she remembers.
She only came out to eat or go to the toilet. The rest of the time she slept.
For almost 20 years, children from the Tupaarnaq orphanage have spent the summer in Kilaarsarfik at the base of Ameralik. Nikoline was one of them. Here, everyday life is turned upside down, where for several months they live close to nature and learn to hunt reindeer.
Slowly she came out
After two weeks something starts to change. She finds the books.
She reads for hours.
– I get completely lost in the books. And I read for many hours.
The change does not come overnight. Just as quietly, little by little she begins to participate in the community. The adults help her out. She begins to take part in the work, go for walks and take part in the conversations.
It’s as if something is slowly loosening inside her.
– It felt a bit like being watered like a flower. Slowly I began to blossom, she says.
Just as quietly, the tent gets smaller. The world outside is getting bigger.
– I changed my psyche. I found that I liked the community, working on something together. I began to feel that I was not alone, she says.
What initially felt strange and unsafe slowly becomes recognizable. She gets to know the paths, the mountains and the places around the camp. She begins to walk further away from the tent and notices everything she hadn’t seen when she was inside.
And then come the experiences.
Funny memories
– Once we went from the camp to Kapisillit. Eight hours we walked. I heard music in my mp3 player. Now! It is unforgettable, she says.
She talks about the times she has fallen into the water from the inflatable boat, about the time she shot her first animal and about the day she suddenly came face to face with a reindeer.
– We were many children who saw the animal and ran towards it. I took another road by the river. Then I saw it. It was eating moss. I hid and waited for the others, but they didn’t come, she says.
Nikoline got up from her hiding place and whistled for the animal. Slowly it started to move towards each other.
– When it got close enough, both I and the reindeer were so startled that we almost scared the life out of each other. Also we just ran.
She laughs as she talks, and it’s clear that the memories are still alive in her.
Kilaarsarfik no longer became the place she was trying to escape from.
It will be the place where she goes for walks, laughs with the others and experiences things she wouldn’t have experienced anywhere else.
She discovers that she actually loves it.
– It was good to be away from the big city. To have the peace to focus only on yourself, she says.
A world no one can touch
It is only when she looks back that she truly understands how much Kilaarsarfik has meant to her.
She says that the place slowly gave her a sense of security. She was told that she was worth something, but she also felt it in the way the others were with her.
– They made me feel that I was worth something. The others acted as if I had something valuable to give. I got that feeling all the time.
She has carried that feeling with her.
– Kilaarsarfik created a world inside me that no one can touch. A great security in me, she says.
She falls silent for a moment as she tells about it. Because today she can feel how much she herself has changed since then.
– It meant a lot to me, and it was developing to live so close to nature in that way. Especially for someone who has trauma.
The adults with the big hearts
When Nikoline Naanu Kristiansen thinks back to Kilaarsarfik today, the staff are a large part of the memories.
She has a big heart for the adults who were around her. She describes them as people with a huge heart – and is deeply grateful for the way they welcomed her.
As an adult, she can see that the security she found in Kilaarsarfik might not have been a part of her life today if she hadn’t spent the years there.
– If I hadn’t been to Kilaarsarfik, I might not have found the security I found there.
But gratitude does not necessarily make it all simple.
Today, it can still be difficult for her to enter the Tupaarnaq orphanage. The place is associated with some of the most important people and experiences in her life, but also with the time in her life when she had a hard time.
Yet it is Kilaarsarfik that she returns to when she has to talk about the place that gave her something that she still carries with her.
As a child, she ran away when she was told she was going to Kilaarsarfik. At the time, she couldn’t understand what two months in a tent would do.
Today it is different.
Now she dreams of one day taking her own children back to Kilaarsarfik. They are even the age she was when she first came to the camp. She imagines how she might have to persuade them to come along – just as the adults once had to persuade her.
Because she knows now what she couldn’t see then.
What Kilaarsarfik gave her. And what she still carries with her.
– Even today, when I feel down, Kilaarsarfik and the staff are my light.
