Polar Podcasts

In this episode, we hear from Kent Brooks, emeritus Professor at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen, and Bjørn Thomassen, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about the summers of 1970 and 71 working for the Nordic Mining Company in East Greenland, when they discovered Flammefjeld, a spectacular red and yellow mountain that hides a buried mineral deposit, still undrilled fifty years later.

In this episode, we hear more from Niels Henriksen, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about his years spent mapping the Caledonian Fold Belt, an ancient mountain belt in remote parts of northeast Greenland.

In this episode, we hear more from Kent Brooks – Emeritus Professor at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen – about the Skaergaard Intrusion, which he first encountered on a geological expedition in 1966, and which was to become the focus of his long career working in east Greenland. About his move away from Oxford to Copenhagen, forays into studying the unique geology of south Greenland, and being drawn back to east Greenland where his research interests would be firmly rooted for the decades ahead.

In this episode, we hear more from Brian Upton, Professor of geology at the University of Edinburgh, about his early years as a researcher when the theory of plate tectonics was being developed, his time at Caltech, in Iceland, La Reunion, and his experiences on returning to Greenland investigating plate tectonic links between in northwest Greenland and Arctic Canada.

In this episode, we hear more from Niels Henriksen, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about the late 1960s, when the survey embarked on an ambitious and very successful campaign of systematic geological mapping in remote east Greenland, a completely different undertaking from their work on the west coast. 

In this episode, we hear from Kent Brooks, Emeritus Professor at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen, about a chance discovery while on a geological expedition to east Greenland in 1966, the implications of which followed him over forty years.

In this episode, we hear more from Brian Upton, Emeritus Professor of Geology at the University of Edinburgh, about working on the unusual alkaline igneous rocks of the Gardar Province in in South Greenland in the 1950s and later.

In this episode we hear from Bjørn Thomassen, Emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about what drew him to Greenland and kept him coming back for 42 summers, working as an economic geologist and mineral prospector.

In this episode we hear from Kent Brooks, Emeritus Professor from the Geological Museum in Copenhagen, about how his fifty year career studying the geology of Greenland, was kindled. And about his first – very memorable – field season in east Greenland in 1965.

In this episode, we hear from Brian Upton, Emeritus Professor of Geology at the University of Edinburgh, about starting out in South Greenland with the Geological Survey of Greenland in 1955, and what became a lifelong passion for researching and understanding the unique rare earth element-rich rocks of the Gardar Province, on which Brian would become a world expert, still publishing his research on their remarkable geology more than 60 years later.