An Arctic heron has passed away

Ole Jørgen Hammock has fought for all these years to show the world "the Inuit way of life" and the qualities inherent in this life.

He died on it international Inuit Day, very telling on the day that represents all that he has stood for all his life.

Ole Jørgen Hammock has fought for all these years to show the world "the Inuit way of life" and the qualities inherent in this life.

He died on it international Inuit Day, very telling on the day that represents all that he has stood for all his life.

He expanded his territory to include all indigenous peoples and he created a bridge between Amazonian shamans and Inuit angakok.

Like his cohabitant Galya Morrell tells, he put Erfalasorput on Qalasersuaq - The North Pole, in the Amazon jungle and in the tundra of Chukotka, not to claim these places, but to connect these worlds where the living conditions resemble much about each other.

He called even the fight against cancer for his last expedition, which he unfortunately did not could overcome.

He was born in Nuuk as the youngest child in Motzfeldt and Maritha Hammeken's family. Grew up in Nuuk, Qeqertarsuatsiaat and Paamiut with his three sisters, went to secondary school in Qaqortoq, at high school in Denmark and started law school at Copenhagen University and got a place at Regensen.

But he made it never to finish his studies, as the arctic life drew him.

Ole Jørgen managed to complete countless expeditions in Greenland and around most of Arctic and in indigenous peoples of South America.

Like employee at the orphanage in Uummannaq, he twice took the children on dog sleds from Uummannaq to the north, up over Melville Bay to Qaanaaq. An incredible experience and education, especially for the children.

He drove off Uummannaq to Ilulissat over the Inland Ice – the old postal route he told. Up over the dangerous cracks and down again at the end of the road.

He was on expedition with the American polar researcher Dennis Schmitt to Peary Land in North Greenland and climbed the world's northernmost mountain, which was later called Hammeken Point. One name, which, however, has never been approved by the Place Names Board, even though Jonathan Motzfeldt supported it, at least privately.

He sailed in open Poca dinghy in the Arctic Ocean all the way around the North Pole. It took ten years.

Expedition's leader Anders Bilgram published the book about this journey in 2018: Adventyrlig Arctic sea voyage – 26,000 kilometers in an open boat around the North Pole. Here tells he about Ole Jørgen's participation from 2000 to 2008.

In The Explorers Club in New York they asked why it took so long if he couldn't have made it faster, no, he replied, there were people on the road. Galya Morrell explains that his expeditions were not about speed but about people, who live so far away that they have been forgotten. He stopped at every settlement and listened to them.

Ole Jørgen is a Fellow International at The Explorers Club in New York. It is one honorary title given to international explorers and researchers who have made a special effort in exploration and or field research. It answers to a kind of honorary membership at the highest level.

Lars-Emil Johansen has called him the modern Knud Rasmussen, but he achieved much more than that Knud Rasmussen. He was, for example, longer in the settlements in the Russian Arctic than Knud Rasmussen managed to be.

One must hope that one day there will be researchers who will study his audio recordings of these people stories.

Ole Jørgen Hammeken gained a colossal network throughout the Arctic world and in that part of it the rest of the world who are interested in the Arctic and indigenous peoples.

On the social media poured it in with greetings from everywhere during November 7 and thereafter.

One of them was the American composer Lera Auerbach. She says that she and Ole Jørgen composed a libretto called Flights of the Angakok based on the wisdom of the Arctic peoples and the language of the spirits.

On the day of his death she conducted Flights of the Angakok in memory of Ole Jørgen, et work that carries his voice, his laughter and his spirit into the realm of song, as she writes. In Leipzig, Inuit Day was marked with a German concert premiere in honor of Ole Jørgen Hammeken.

He leaves his partner Galya Morrell, son Ludvig, daughter Pipaluk, grandson Lucaeh and sisters Esther and Ane Sofie.

Honor be Ole Jørgen's memory

The family