This is a story about a young man from East Greenland with lots of courage and ambitions. The name is Aqqaluk Christensen, who was born and raised in Tasiilaq.
– My goal is to become captain of a trawler. I think it will succeed, says the 31-year-old Aqqaluk Christensen to Sermitsiaq. The captain is the person in charge of a fishing vessel.
One of Aqqaluk’s ancestors was the great and well-known spirit man Maratse, who lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the Tasiilaq area.
Since 2019, Aqqaluk Christensen has been the coxswain of the company Polar Pelagic’s two trawlers, Polar Amaroq and Polar Ammassak. Both are natives of Tasiilaq. Polar Pelagic has Polar Seafood Greenland as its main shareholder, while an Icelandic company is a minority shareholder.
When he is on the first vessel, he has the job of 1st Mate, and when he is on the second ship, he is the 2nd Mate.
Part of graduate program
Polar Seafood is always looking for new talent for the company’s aspirant program. It focuses on learning, responsibility, development and a long-term career at sea.
Therefore, young people can themselves apply for a place on the program or be recommended by a captain, writes Steve Sonberg Egede from Polar Seafood on the company’s Facebook profile.
Aqqaluk Christensen is one of the successful young people from Tasiilaq who, at the request of a captain on the Polar Amaroq and with the support of Polar Seafood, has taken a maritime management course in Greenland. Since 2019, Aqqaluk has managed to make it far in the Polar empire.
We asked the helmsman how he has come so far in his career at the age of just 31.
The answer comes promptly:
– I just worked hard. My late uncle told me that you should always do your best, no matter where you are and no matter what you do. Then you probably have to go far. Therefore, my motto is that I will do my best.
– I would like to be a role model for other young people from Tasiilaq and East Greenland, says Aqqaluk Christensen.
Speaks four languages
Being a coxswain requires a solid education and good navigation and leadership skills.
Most of the helmsmen and captains on Polar Amaroq and Polar Ammassak are Icelanders, he says.
Aqqaluk Christensen’s strength in addition to his leadership training is that, in addition to Greenlandic and Danish, he is good at English and Icelandic. He doesn’t hide that.
Over a number of years, Aqqaluk Christensen has been on many fishing trips in the North Atlantic for mackerel, blue whiting, herring and capelin.
– For me, of course, there is money in it all. I earn most when we fish for mackerel and capelin. The fishing has been very good this year, he says.
Maratse
His great-great-great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side was the famous and powerful East Greenlandic spirit shaman Maratse, who ended up being baptized. It happened in 1900.
– My mother and grandmother have told me a lot about him, says Aqqaluk Christensen.
Aqqaluk’s Danish father worked as a nurse at the hospital in Tasiilaq. From when Aqqaluk was only a few months old, the father often took his son in his dinghy fishing in the waters around the town.
– I was hunting and fishing with my father when I was very small. When I think back, I have been on trips at sea almost all my life. When I was 14, I started sailing with tourists in my father’s charter boat company, says Aqqaluk Christensen.
Trained as a carpenter
He was trained as a carpenter in 2014 and was offered jobs for 125 kroner an hour with a master carpenter in Tasiilaq, while Danish craftsmen received over 200 kroner an hour. He said no thanks to that.
The prospect of being able to get a significantly better salary in Polar Pelagic led him in 2015 to take a job as a fisherman on Polar Amaroq, where his younger brother worked. The brother asked him if he wanted a job on the trawler.
– It was impulsive that I applied to hire there. Because I didn’t want to go for a low salary as a carpenter, so rather start from scratch in fishing. After two months, the ship’s captain asked if I wanted to stand at the packing machine. I did that. I was quickly promoted to chairman at Polar Amaroq. And then the captain asked if I wanted to go to school and take a pilot’s course, he says.
Polar Seafood established an aspirant program in 2016 to train and develop new key employees, including helmsmen for the company’s large fleet.
Polar’s graduate program
Aqqaluk Christensen seized the opportunity, with support from Polar Seafood, to study for a 1st degree master, i.e. coxswain, at Greenland’s Maritime School.
Polar’s aspirant program gives young people the opportunity to take a maritime education with support from the group, both dangerously, personally and financially.
Aqqaluk received the coxswain’s training in 2019, and the following year he was employed in a position as second coxswain in Polar Pelagic.
After a few busy months at sea, the trawlers Polar Amaroq and Polar Ammassak have fished up their mackerel quotas, and this year’s mackerel season is thus over, Polar Seafood wrote on Facebook at the beginning of October.
Since the end of June, the two ships have been fishing together for mackerel in the North Atlantic between Greenland, Iceland, Norway and the Faroe Islands. Otherwise, they fish i.a. capelin and blue whiting when it is in season.
On Polar Amaroq and Polar Ammassak respectively, 18 men have gone on the latest mackerel fishing, including Aqqaluk Christensen.
The majority of the crews are from Tasiilaq, and the crew has been a mixture of experienced forces and youngsters who are still learning the work at sea.
– Now the quotas have been fished up, and we can put an end to another successful mackerel season, wrote Polar Seafood.
Currently, Aqqaluk Christensen is taking time off and is at home with his family in Nuuk, where he lives with his girlfriend and their two children live in a cooperative housing. The children are a girl aged six and a boy aged eight.
– I am at work for six to eight weeks at a time and then at home for the same amount of time. We are at sea six months and have six months off a year. We earn well, so we can afford to get a bigger home, he says.
Would like to buy a house
Aqqaluk Christensen hopes to be able to get his girlfriend to buy his own house in Nuuk.
When you’re a fisherman, you’re probably always a fisherman. He thus uses some of his spare time at home in Greenland’s capital to fish for cod from his small boat.
After a few days’ holiday in Denmark, Aqqaluk Christensen and his family went on holiday to Gran Canaria.
– We travel there twice a year. We spent Christmas 2025 on Gran Canaria. Snow has just fallen in Nuuk. So it will be nice to get down in the heat, he says.
This summer the family was on holiday in Denmark and France. So Aqqaluk Christensen’s good salary gives opportunities for pleasures outside of Greenland.
Before the interview ends, I ask him if he has any good advice for young people from Tasiilaq:
– In any case, you shouldn’t be shy and reticent. It is important to get an education. You have to absorb knowledge and learn as much as possible. For my own part, Polar Seafood has given me everything, but I have also been there when the fishing has been bad, says Aqqaluk Christensen.
His heart beats for the youth of Tasiilaq. He supports the young players from the city’s football club ATA with private money when they are travelling.
– I support both U-13, U-15 and U-18 with money so that they can get some good food at pizzerias and come to places where they can play, says Aqqaluk Christensen.
