"Holy mackerel"

When the Humpback Whale turned sixty he changed his life and the lives of the rest of us. Our more than complicated tax system gave him a refund from tax he paid around forty years before. It’s not something you can understand you just accept it. Bottom line was that he suddenly had money to spend so he bought a boat.

The Humpback Whale had spent a good part of his youth in southern Greenland. Life was simple; sleep, eat, work, hunt, fish and sail. Since there are no roads there and most of the coastline is one big archipelago, you sail in the big fjords and around the islands.

There are three reasons to sail up there. You’re going to visit somebody, on a hunting trip or, most important, on your way to go fishing. The two latter are not only for the fun of it. There’s always room in the freezer for another reindeer or a bunch of arctic char. When you’re on your way in a boat in Greenland, wind in the hair and sailing in the breathtaking scenery, you’ve got two feelings. The first is the sense of being very small. It makes you humble. The other is freedom and it’s filling your soul. The Humpback Whale had been missing that feeling since he went back to the Baltic, now he could get it back.

• This podcast is written by Danish photojournalist Søren Skarby and voiced by Patrick Johnson