Qiteraq Eugenius chased money – now he chases birds and freedom

Blip!

Qiteraq Eugenius has just fired his old Stevens shotgun at an eider flying about a meter above the sea surface.

The shots must have whizzed close past the bird, which briefly has to find its course again, but which straightens up and quickly prances on.

- Shitty birds!

He opens the throttle and the engine pushes a cascade of water after the dinghy, which is roaring forward at about 30 knots.

- That bird was lucky today, Qiteraq Eugenius comments dryly.

Although Qiteraq Eugenius has always been out hunting, his everyday life looks very different today than it did just 3-4 years ago.

Back then, his days were spent doing what most people in their 30s do: work.

- I got up, then the phone typically started ringing. Then I was in the office from nine to five – at least. And then I went home.

Back then, Qiteraq Eugenius worked as a real estate agent in Nuuk.

- There were days when the phone didn’t stop ringing until eight in the evening. That was when the housing market in Nuuk was booming, he says.

When he finally got time off, he spent his time with friends or went hunting. But time was short.

- There was a limit to how much time I could have, he says.

But that was the path in life he had chosen to take. The education he had taken. And money had to be on the table too. I guess that was how it was.

- When I think back on it today, I don't know what kind of freedom I thought I had back then. Maybe the ability to travel – but I got tired of that. Today it makes no sense, says Qiteraq Eugenius.

With the sun on his neck, he stands at the steering wheel, which he holds lightly with one hand, while he has the shotgun in the other. It smells of gunpowder.

The dinghy glides quickly past the snow-covered islands that lie like blobs in the water a little south of Nuuk. The icy wind forces tears out of his eyes, drawing streaks on his cheeks. Office hours, house sales and finances seem like a city in Russia out here.

Suddenly the boat turns sharply to the right.

A flock of birds has just started to take off and Qiteraq Eugenius is heading straight for them. The hunt has only just begun.

A child of the 90s

Qiteraq (Niels Olsen) Eugenius was born on October 31, 1990 – four years after his older brother, and four years before his younger sister.

The parents worked a lot, and the children were often the last to be picked up from kindergarten, he remembers.

However, it was not something that bothered him. He loved kindergarten and school, and his parents' work was not something that filled or was talked about very much at home.

On the other hand, he remembers being a child in Nuuk in the nineties as a true paradise. It was before mobile phones, iPads and streaming services. And before the really big construction projects and the expansion of the capital really took off.

Qiteraq Eugenius and his family have pretty much always lived at Kakillarnat in Nuussuaq (a district in Nuuk, ed.) – close to water and with the mountains right in the backyard.

- You almost had it all to yourself as a child. You were limited in terms of having to go home at ten o'clock in the evening, when the lights went out outside Kangillinnguit Atuarfiat, but otherwise we were free, he says.

When Qiteraq Eugenius wasn't at school, he spent a lot of time playing soccer or snowboarding. Sometimes he also went hunting. While his uncle taught him to fish, his father taught him to hunt.

- I taught him pretty much everything from a child, he says.

Qiteraq Eugenius was good at school. He liked to get good grades and do well, it almost became a competition for him.

- I don't know what it is. There are many people who don't care about grades, but I always have, he says.

- But I can turn almost anything into a competition, I think.

The very first career dream he had was to become a garbage collector. As a child, he thought that garbage collectors only worked on Wednesdays.

- But then I found out that they didn't.

A suit and a hairdo

At a party in 2011, Qiteraq Eugenius asked one of his friends, who was visiting from Denmark and worked in the real estate industry, how much you actually earned as a real estate agent.

- He gave me some numbers that made me think, wow. Then I was hooked, he remembers.

Qiteraq Eugenius was working as a salesman at Videocentret in Nuuk, where he sold DVDs, CDs, candy and soda. Why he then decided to focus on houses, he has no idea.

- It's not because I've had a great interest in appraising houses. It was more about selling. And houses are really the ultimate thing to sell in one way or another – they're the biggest thing you can sell, he says.

- But I also knew there was a lot of money in it. And money was also a big part of what drove me. It was important to me back then, he says.

In 2015, Qiteraq Eugenius decided to move to Denmark to study finance at Copenhagen Business School.

- People wore suits and had slicked-back hair, while I walked around with dreadlocks and huge clothes and blouses that went down to my knees, he says.

- I felt a bit out of place for a while. Until I straightened my dreadlocks myself and got slicked-back hair.

During his education, he met people who had the same interest in becoming a real estate agent as he did. So the dream grew bigger and bigger the further he went in his education.

When he received his diploma and could call himself a financial economist in 2017, he was offered an internship at a real estate agency in Nuuk while he continued his further education in Denmark.

He accepted the offer, moved back to his hometown and after two years of commuting between Nuuk and Denmark, he graduated.

With the job as a real estate agent, he could afford his boat – and to buy his own apartment.

- I didn't become super rich, but I earned well. It wasn't money that I lacked, he says.

When Qiteraq Eugenius wasn't in his office working, he initially spent a lot of time with his friends. But slowly, the work began to drain his strength.

- The surplus I used to have for being social disappeared more and more as time went on, he says.

However, the desire to sail persisted – out on the water and in the fjord, Qiteraq Eugenius could escape the pressure of work for a while. At least partially.

- You gather strength out in nature – even if you work hard, he says.

- But as soon as my phone got connected, it started to vibrate.

It wasn't every time Qiteraq Eugenius answered the phone – but the thought that something important was happening at work was hard to completely let go of.

- Sometimes I went to bed still thinking about work, and woke up thinking about work.

As time went on, it wasn't just the social surplus that disappeared. My health began to falter. He often got headaches and stomachaches.

- I woke up with nosebleeds and chest pains, and was often sick, he remembers.

At first he pushed it aside, but one day in 2022, after he woke up again with a nosebleed and chest pain, he went to the doctor.

You have stress, was the conclusion.

Qiteraq Eugenius was called in sick. To start with, he had to go down for half the time, and slowly work his way back up. But he couldn't see very much.

- I had periods where I just wanted to lie in the fetal position for a long time. And didn't have the energy to get up. I almost felt nervous about coming to work.

Qiteraq Eugenius was called in sick several times. He didn't get any better or worse.

- There was a long pause, he remembers.

Fired and free

Another miss.

- No!

Back on the water, about eight eiders and a single king eider fly further and further away from the dinghy. The old shotgun is teasing, and Qiteraq Eugenius changes weapons to a newer model.

- What is it that they say in Pokémon. You can’t catch them all, or something like that?, he says, laughing.

The dinghy sails quietly forward. The engine hums. Through the binoculars, Qiteraq Eugenius keeps an eye out and points out the various birds he spots.

The guillemot, which can almost seem invisible in the murky water, an appa (arctic guillemot, ed.), which is whiter than the guillemot – and a merganser, one of his favorite birds.

- The male merganser has such a long tail feather. It's gorgeous. And their feet are tiger-striped. Blue. And it has a pink beak. It flies really elegantly, he says.

One day at the end of 2022, Qiteraq Eugenius showed up at his office and saw that there was a dismissal notice on the desk.

- It came as a shock. It set a lot of thoughts going through my head, he says.

Qiteraq Eugenius pulled the plug. He sold his apartment, moved back to his parents' childhood home, bought his dog, Kalle, and then he took time off.

- I lived off the profits I had from the sale of my apartment and sailed back and forth between Nuuk and my family's cabin in Kapisillit with my dog. That's basically what I did, he says.

After a couple of years, he was scrolling around Instagram one day when his finger and gaze stopped at an advertisement for a brand new education program at Ilisimartusarfik. It was called SILA.

It was a bachelor's degree program in biology that, based on Greenlandic culture, nature, and practical experience, was supposed to prepare students to become future researchers and nature educators.

- I read the curriculum and thought, fuck, that sounds really cool!

Now 34-year-old Qiteraq Eugenius was faced with a decision: Should he return to his old life of economics and finance or start over with something completely different. He chose the latter. 

On February 3rd of last year, he enrolled with twelve other students at the university, as the very first year of the new biology program.

- And I have never regretted it.

Back between the islands south of Nuuk, Qiteraq Eugenius has spotted a lone eider. He moves his sunglasses up to his forehead and calmly picks up the shotgun without letting it out of his sight.

You can barely make out the bird's head above the dark waves. Suddenly it starts flying and whips away over the water.

Qiteraq Eugenius follows the bird with the barrel of his gun. He shoots.

It's all about keeping it free

- It's dead, Qiteraq Eugenius states as the dinghy approaches.

The bird floats on the surface of the water. He leans over the edge of the dinghy to grab it by the neck.

The waves splash and hit the hull of the boat. He removes the plumage of the young eider and begins to cut out the breast pieces. His hands are quickly smeared with blood and down.

Since Qiteraq Eugenius began his biology studies, he hasn't looked back. His everyday life has been transformed.

- Today it's all about taking time off. I value free time so much. Much more than I did when I was a real estate agent.

When he's not at school or doing his student job at Pinngortitaleriffik, he's sailing.

- I find it hard to stay indoors when the weather is nice, and I always dream of going out, he says.

And outside, he shoots. Or kills, as he says.

He provides himself and his family with his catch. What he takes out and catches determines the season – currently it's seabirds. Stonechat season will start soon.

- That's what I love about living here. I can make time pass all year round, he says.

Money means almost nothing to Qiteraq Eugenius these days. He just needs to be able to afford his car, his boat and his dog.

- Money means nothing anyway if you don't feel good, he says.

In 2028, Qiteraq Eugenius will be able to call himself a bachelor in biology. He dreams of using the education to communicate and show the world about Greenland and the nature here.

In line with the entire basis of the SILA education, he also hopes that he can combine his professionalism and his practical experience as a hunter to become a link between the fishing and trapping world and the research world.

- The thing about being able to stand in the middle between a biologist and a trapper, and communicate, so that you have a better dialogue instead of being angry at each other, he says.

- It just feels so right.