Galya Morrell. Running on ice

If I had not known Galya Morrell personally, I would have decided that she was the heroine of some adventure novel. I was sure that people like her - brave polar explorers, sailors, discoverers - remained somewhere in previous eras, but now such people simply do not exist.

Gali Morrell's love affair with the Arctic began thirty years ago, when she worked as a special correspondent for the Pravda newspaper. Since then, she has been the organizer and participant of many polar expeditions, and several years ago she completely left her wealthy life in Manhattan and now spends almost all her time in Greenland and the Russian north. This beautiful, fragile-looking, but fearless woman goes on extreme expeditions in the northern seas, dances barefoot in the snow, moves on a dog sled, understands the language of icebergs, loves to sleep in emerald moss on Arctic rocks and knows how to cook soup from the intestines of a polar bear, only what the whale ate.

Galya Morrell is a writer, artist, traveler, director, multimedia artist working in the genre of spectacular performance on drifting sea ice. This is not just shocking, through her projects Galya is trying to preserve the heritage of the Arctic, which very soon may disappear from the face of the Earth.

She lives as if she were writing an exciting adventure novel based on ancient northern myths.

Galya, you are a journalist, polar explorer and traveler, multimedia artist, photographer, dancer, the list goes on. Who do you feel like?

One of my friends, virtuoso pianist Elena Kushnerova, who did several projects with me in Greenland, once said: “There are many people with numerous abilities. What sets you apart from everyone else is that you have a main genre - your own life. In German it is called Lebenskünstler. In other words, “someone who lives life as a work of art.”

Do you need to look for the origins of your love of adventure and even extreme sports in your childhood?

As a child, I most likely behaved like a crazy boy. I was a bully, I always had knives, slingshots, bows, and arrows in my hands. I climbed very tall trees and could simply live there. From early childhood I learned to swim well and endure the cold. My grandmother, who lived in the north, forced me to swim in an ice hole in January. I dreamed of growing up and becoming a biologist, and later a traveler. I had a passion - invertebrate reptiles, I knew absolutely everything about them. At the age of nine, I was reading university textbooks and had terrariums with lizards, toads and frogs all over the house.

And every night, in the summer, I set the alarm for two o'clock so as not to miss the dawn. In fact, I’ve never told this to anyone in my life. My grandparents were sleeping, and I left the house and went to the swamps. I had nets and all sorts of instruments with me. Walking through swamps is dangerous, akin to walking on drifting ice. You stumbled, took the wrong step, and that's it. But I was so amazed and attracted by this uneven surface, which is constantly moving under you, and everything depends on how you step from bump to bump. At these moments the world woke up and opened up to the sun. These are probably some of the most divine moments I have had in my life.

You grew up in a fairly wealthy and privileged family, graduated from the prestigious MGIMO and then worked at the most important newspaper of the USSR, Pravda.

My father was the chief of staff of the Prime Minister, with all the attendant circumstances - a state dacha, cars, drivers, cooks and so on. But I hardly lived with my parents, they were too busy. I was raised by my grandparents. With some I lived in Moscow, with others I spent my holidays in the North. At MGIMO I studied to be a journalist, but at that time they did not teach journalism at MGIMO. We went through the standard program for future diplomats, and, of course, we had developed military affairs. After my senior year, I worked for a year at the embassy in Spain and tried my hand at official diplomacy, which I quickly became disillusioned with. And then she returned to the Pravda newspaper, for which she had been writing since she was sixteen. Before that, I worked at the Yunost radio station, where one day my report was heard by the head of the military department of the Pravda newspaper, Timur Gaidar, the son of Arkady and the father of Yegor Gaidar. He was interested in my topic, and he sent me on a business trip from Pravda.

So I became a young war correspondent for an “adult” newspaper, visited garrisons, traveled all over the country, while simultaneously studying at MGIMO. And this was my real school, because at that time such masters as Aitmatov worked at Pravda - people from whom I could learn.

You come from a family of Komi and Pomors, this probably explains your attraction to the North?

Grandfathers and grandmothers often told me incredibly interesting tales of the peoples of the North, which they themselves remembered from their childhood. The world there was completely different from the one I saw with my own eyes in Moscow. It was magical, fabulous, full of incredible harmony, which was missing in the real life of my childhood. In this world there was no boundary between animals and people, life and death, light and darkness.

Timur Gaidar sent me to Salekhard on one of his regular business trips. And there I suddenly realized that I was not far from the place where one of my grandfathers came from. On that trip, I met a family of nomadic Komi, and it was as if a completely different world had opened up for me! The same world that before that I knew only as a fairy tale. This trip changed my life. I traveled thousands of kilometers with the Nenets, Chukchi, Evenks, Yukaghirs, and Yakuts. In those days in the USSR there was a newspaper genre that was rarely touched by censors: life stories not related to politics and ideology. This is what I wrote about.

So, my love affair with the Arctic has lasted for more than thirty years.

Your second husband was an American pilot, who later went into successful business, and you unexpectedly became the mother of six children: two of your own and four from your husband’s first marriage. I know you were very involved in their lives, but what else did you do while living between Norway and New York?

The bulk of my free time was spent on Arctic expeditions. This was my passion. Together with my friend, Dmitry Shparo, the first person in history to reach the North Pole on skis, we organized many projects, including for disabled children. Dmitry and I have always believed that adventure is not only for strong and athletic people, but also for those who are deprived of sight or hearing, who have a broken spine or no legs.

Dmitry was a revolutionary: he conceived marathons across all of Russia for the disabled at a time when everyone still laughed at this idea. Thanks to him, Russian disabled people climbed the peaks of Kilimanjaro, McKinley and Kazbek, and crossed the ice dome of Greenland. Nobody was able to repeat it later.

Few people know about one of our absolutely fantastic projects, which happened almost twenty years ago.

Twenty children took part in that expedition, which lasted two months, five of them were mine, with the exception of the youngest son, Kevin, who was still too young and stayed at home. We climbed Elbrus and cleared it of debris for the first time in history! We had to work with axes; we chopped the ice, because the garbage, of course, was frozen. In total, they lowered seven tons of garbage into the valley on their shoulders. It was sometimes very difficult for my children. Dmitry Shparo treated them as experienced adult polar explorers.

I can't forget one episode. Suddenly, at an altitude of 4000 meters, where our camp was located, a snowstorm blew up. The weather was simply terrible. And my children, Sean and Serge, had their tent blown away. They tried to put it back and got soaked through. Sean was twelve, and Seryozha was nine and a half. A representative of the State Duma, chairman of the ecology committee, Tamara Zlotnikova, took part in the expedition with us. As an important person, she was given a barrel for the night, which in the conditions of northern expeditions is much better than a tent, it is warmer and can accommodate four people. Of course, when Tamara saw the unfortunate children who had lost their tent, she said: “Sean, Seryozha, go into the barrel! Let us dry your laundry and set up a tent in the morning.” So they did. It was probably already after midnight when a completely enraged Dmitry burst into the barrel and started shouting at Tamara, because, in his opinion, this was a violation of all the rules - the children were members of the expedition, and they had to put the tent back, dry everything, secure, and not hide in a barrel. And he drove them back out into the snow, in this terrible weather, and forced them to do everything they were obliged to do. Tamara and I talked until the morning and decided that Dmitry did the wrong thing. But twenty years have passed, and Sean has become one of the best fighter pilots in the Royal Norwegian Air Force. Now he lives in America, in Texas, and teaches young pilots. We just talked to him yesterday and recalled this situation, and he said: “You know, if it weren’t for that incident, I don’t know what path my life would have taken. Because everything was so relaxed and good. But only through such situations do you understand that sometimes you need to take your will into your fist and move forward. Despite everything".

How did you meet the Eskimo Ole Jorgen Hammeken, the man who became your partner in life and various projects?

For this I have my son Kevin to thank. From an early age he studied the arts, including classical ballet. He performed in many off-Broadway plays, for example, he danced the role of a scarlet flower growing in a garbage dump in an ultra-modern production. When Dmitry Shparo came to New York, we invited him to the performance, and when he learned that Kevin portrayed the scarlet flower every evening, he was furious! "What are you thinking about?!" - he told me. And all because Kevin literally grew up in Dmitry’s backpack; during our expeditions, he used it as additional cargo. He dreamed that when Kevin grew up, he would become a real polar explorer. Dmitry immediately decided to send Kevin to the Arctic for the summer as a cabin boy. It was a round-the-world expedition in a small open boat with three Eskimos who needed help on the Russian leg of the journey. One of these travelers was Ole Jorgen, my current husband, whom Kevin introduced me to in 2006, when they both arrived after an expedition in Moscow.

Ole says that our meeting was love at first sight, but at that moment I was grateful to him as a mother for the fact that my son returned from the trip alive. Ole immediately invited me to Greenland, but I was only able to go when Kevin, the youngest, finished school and went to study at university. All the other children were already living independent lives, my husband was constantly traveling, and I was left alone in New York.

Ole Jorgen Hammeken's family in Greenland is similar to the Kennedy family in America. They are perhaps the most famous family this country has ever had. Ole's grandparents were prime ministers, cultural figures, inventors, and many streets in the capital and other places in the country are named after them. As a teenager, Ole was sent to study in Denmark, he studied to become a lawyer, but then decided to return to his homeland, although he could have lived a prosperous and normal life in Europe. He always dreamed of traveling in the Arctic and being a polar explorer.

In 2012, you and Ole made your first joint extreme expedition on a motor boat and traveled four thousand kilometers among drifting ice, without food, in harsh weather conditions. Was this trip the beginning of your love?

When I was little, my brother and I had almost no toys. But I remember a set of small doll figures of different nationalities. My brother took all these figures for himself, and left me only one doll - an Eskimo boy. I never parted with him, and when I went to bed, I talked to him and dreamed how good it would be to meet such a boy in real life. Then these figures burned down in a fire, but little did I know then that I would meet a real Eskimo and fall in love with him. The most interesting thing is that when Ole later showed me his childhood photographs, I realized that in them he looked very much like that doll of mine from childhood. But in these photographs it was taken around the same time when I was playing with my treasured toy.

Five months before this trip we were on a dog sledding expedition and got caught in a big snow storm. There were five of us in a tent; it wasn’t even a tent, but two dog sleds placed side by side and connected by a blanket.

I was the only woman, and Ole and I were lying in the tent so close that he kissed me in my sleep, and maybe in reality, I’m still not sure. After that, he didn’t talk to me for three days, he was so shy. At that time we were both in family relationships.

Our expedition across the Arctic Ocean lasted two months. We decided to get to the most remote Eskimo settlements, completely separated from civilization. The old way of life is still preserved there, and you can only get to them by a small boat, without heating, a toilet or other amenities.

We hunted and fished along the way. Usually there are no problems with water on such expeditions. But due to climate change, in those places that had always been considered an Arctic desert, incessant heavy rains began. And these clear streams that flow from the mountains below turned into terrible muddy streams. It was difficult to extract water from them. We had a small open boat, the coast around was very rocky, and we could not dock, because in such a storm the boat would have been broken on the rocks. Sometimes we spent five days on the water, collecting rainwater for drinking. We caught fish, ate it raw, lay back on the bottom of the boat, covered ourselves with a blue tarp and lay there, telling each other all sorts of stories.

For so many days, in such terrible bad weather, Ole and I lay at the bottom of this boat, hiding from the downpour, we were overwhelmed by icy waves, and we became so close, as if our bodies had grown together, like two organisms merging into one. After this expedition we realized that we wanted to be together.

It was scary to remember all this when the expedition ended. But when you are directly there, in extreme conditions, fear dissipates. Being alone with nature, where death is everywhere, you begin to understand that, in fact, there is no boundary between life and death. You realize that you belong to something whole, that you are part of nature, and you are no longer afraid.

However, Ole’s hand was constantly on the trigger, because a polar bear could climb into the boat at any moment, there were a huge number of them there. And I had pepper spray with me. In my experience, it works better than a shotgun.

Are you saying that you have met a bear more than once?

Certainly! Many years ago I lived in a small village in Canada, this was before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I was pregnant with Kevin, and that was the day I first felt him move. The village was completely empty, because in the summer everyone goes to camps to hunt deer. I walked, thinking about the child - about what he would be like. And suddenly, looking up, she saw a polar bear in front of her. We were separated only by a trench filled with rubbish. The bear stood and looked at me. Over the years in the Arctic, I have studied the habits of polar bears very well. I knew that he could jump seven meters forward from a sitting position. And here he was in front of me, and I didn’t have a gun or even pepper spray with me. My child, who had just been moving briskly, froze. Looks like he got scared before I got scared. And then in one second everything I knew about polar bears flashed through my head. I realized that I had to wait until he made the first movement, which, most likely, would be imperceptible. And he did it. And I repeated after him. He looked at me and suddenly lowered his head. And I did the same. It was as if I was telling him that I was not a threat. However, I could become his prey. What saved me was that there was food in the trash. And then I began to walk very slowly, in small steps, facing him, and thus reached the village itself.

Is all this really worth the risk? Why are you doing all this?

In my understanding, of course it is worth it. I am convinced that every person comes to this earth for something. There are people who do a lot of useful things in cities. But I’m not a city person, I won’t be of much use there. My purpose is to help preserve this vanishing layer of wisdom of the Arctic peoples, without which all of humanity will be impoverished. I think I can do it.

Have you already taken the young Eskimo wife course? Have you learned how to do everything or not yet? I know that you literally broke your teeth gnawing on the granite of this science.

In this life, I was already the wife of a biochemist for five years, then the wife of a US Air Force fighter pilot for twenty years, who later became a businessman. Now I am mastering the role of a tent worker or an Eskimo wife. I have already learned how to do some things, but not everything yet. For a long time and painfully she learned to chew kamiki, her husband’s boots.

When you are not at home, but on the road, someone has to chew the shoes that have died overnight. This is the wife's responsibility. Kamiki cannot be stored in the house; they are hung outside. They will deteriorate indoors because they are made from the skin of a sea animal or polar bear, which does not like heat. I tried hard. The boot didn't fit in my mouth. I felt like a bad student. Then it seemed to me that I had learned, but that was not the case! I heard a terrible sound and decided that I had bitten through my boot. But in fact, I broke two teeth, and that was the end of the story. After that, Ole bought a modern machine that chews kamiki.

What else? An Eskimo wife must know how to butcher an animal. It seemed to me that I knew anatomy and biology well, I was always an excellent student, but when I was cutting up my first seal, I hit it in the gall bladder and ruined everything, leaving everyone without lunch.

You also need to be able to build a snow house. To do this, you need to find the right snow, because the house is built from it, and not from ice. When you are traveling and you need somewhere to spend the night, but your tent is bad, you can build a house because it will be much warmer. Using a special knife, you need to make large bricks out of snow, then put them on top of each other, make a tunnel and a hole in the wall, where you can then insert your transport window. I can do this.

I can also cook a very tasty soup from the intestines of a bear that has just eaten a whale that has not yet had time to digest. And not so long ago I learned how to make the delicacy kiwiak. You climb the mountains with a net, where a huge number of birds fly, sit in a crevice and try to catch them. Ninety-year-old women can catch one hundred and twenty birds in an hour. And in two hours I only caught one! But that was at the beginning of my training, now I can catch ten of them in an hour. Then you put these birds in a bag of seal skin with some fat left in it. You tie it up and leave it there for four months, not forgetting to cover it with stones so that the bear doesn’t eat it. The delicacy, of course, smells terrible, but its taste is incomparable! It's like slow-cooked meat, like they do in the most expensive French restaurants. My mouth is even watering while I’m talking about it.

You are such a strong, independent woman. And what is it like for you to be an Eskimo wife? Not a very feminist role, I think. Does not it confuse you?

Women in Greenland are very independent.

And the need to chew shoes?

It's just a division of labor, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not forced to jump on a whale's back with a harpoon.

I know you drink deer blood from time to time?

If the opportunity arises, I definitely drink. You need to drink it on an empty stomach, after a meal it will be poison.

How did the idea for your famous dance on icebergs come about, why did you perform it only in a light dress and with your shoes off?

“Let’s create a small symphony orchestra on ice,” my friend, composer and musician Joel Spiegelman once said. “And we’ll stage a ballet, like you tried to do 20 years ago on the ice of the Canadian Arctic.” We both knew that Eskimo children would be dancing the performance. But they didn't know what ballet was. How can I explain to them what it is? It is as difficult as telling what a tree is. They had never seen either of them.

And so, without hesitation, I put on a little white dress, took off my high boots and fur socks, walked barefoot on the ice and began to dance between the icebergs. Arctic Ballet became a reality.

Then, from this project, others began to sprout from us, in different places throughout the Arctic. For example, we teach children to create completely unique musical compositions using the human voice, animal sounds and nature. After all, even ice can be used as a musical instrument, because it has a very uneven structure and makes different sounds if you hit it with a mitten, bare hand or stick.

What other Arctic-related projects are you involved in?

One day I came up with the idea that ice floes frozen between small icebergs could be a wonderful stage on which local children and I could stage performances and circus performances. All you need to do is cut up all sorts of colored rags, make costumes and masks, and come up with a production based on the ancient Eskimo legends that everyone loves and knows there. So in 1990, in the Canadian Arctic, it was created Ice Circus— Circus on Ice. In 2009, I returned to this idea again when I left for Greenland. We are still continuing this tradition; next season we are going to create a permanent circus in the north of Yakutia. We cooperate with one school called “Arctic”, where children of more than fifteen different Arctic nationalities live, and on the basis of this school we will create a circus. And the second one will appear in Chukotka.

In the project's boundaries "Arctic Arts"(Arctic Arts) Ole and I help artists and all creative people living in the Arctic. We try to find artists living in the most remote and inaccessible villages, organize exhibitions and, if possible, of course, sales of their works both in Greenland itself and in major European cities.

And I, under the name Cold Artist, paint portraits of these artists so that the world can see their faces. My latest exhibition, Arcticanos, is exactly about this.

Through the project "Arctic Without Borders"(Arctic without borders) we are trying to facilitate the movement of all the peoples of the Arctic from one country to another, because now there are many artificial borders there, people need visas, permits, it is difficult for them to visit their families. For thousands of years, people moved freely around the Arctic, but now it is difficult for relatives to meet due to bureaucratic laws. We are trying to fight this, but not through demonstrations and petitions, but through art - we believe in its power more than in the power of words. And, oddly enough, our organization was noticed in Moscow, Washington, and Ottawa.

The purpose of the project "Avannaa"(North) is the organization of various expeditions that take place here all year round. We visit some of the most inaccessible communities in the Arctic and try to build bridges between the people living there. In addition, as part of this project we are trying to preserve the culture and traditions of the indigenous peoples of the North. When I visit the houses of local residents, I see real museum relics there, which in a couple of years will become unusable or will be thrown away! For example, films that were shot in the forties of the last century, photographs, and things made by artists of that time. Based on this, I'm trying to create a database, a kind of living archive. I interview people, record their stories. The project is called “Arcticanos”, I came up with this word to unite all the inhabitants of the Arctic with one common name. It seems to me that universities, museums, and simply interested people will then be able to take advantage of this incredible layer of knowledge, which will very soon disappear from our lives.

On all but very extreme expeditions, a large number of people travel with us. When it is a regular expedition from village to village, we always take children, elders, artists, musicians with us. This happens mainly in Yakutia. We travel on dog and reindeer sleds, on skis, in cars, or in the bucket of a tractor, if it is in the summer - many people can fit there. Children who leave their native village for the first time become ambassadors of their small homeland, and are happy to talk about it in neighboring settlements. But the most important thing is that along the entire journey they draw, sculpt, compose music, and create their own fashion shows at the intersection of many Arctic cultures.

How did you get used to the cold? I heard you say that the icy water of the Arctic is unbearable only for the first seven minutes, and then the body gets used to it.

I have gotten used to the cold since childhood, I love it. You can control all your sensations yourself, because you can get used to the heat and tolerate it; for example, yogis know how to walk on hot coals. But even now, after so many years of living in the Arctic, and with my physical training, when I descend into this icy water between the icebergs, my body hurts a lot at first, but only for the first seven minutes, in any case, this is the formula I personally came up with for myself. Ice water is the best medicine; it cures many diseases, ranging from bad mood to cough. Because all the defense mechanisms that were previously dormant instantly turn on in you. There is a colossal surge of adrenaline, blood and lymph accelerate, the body is instantly washed from the inside. You just have to endure the pain of the first seven minutes.

Describe your typical Greenlandic day. Where do you live there, in what living conditions?

We live in the north of the country, in a wooden house that is well heated. Although old people still complain that their previous homes, made of stone and earth, were warmer because they were heated with seal fat. Some houses have running water and a toilet, but in the village where we live there are none. There is a communal shower where you can wash yourself for ten dollars. And I just douse myself with cold water every day on the street or swim among the icebergs.

During winter we mostly sleep. Not because they are so lazy. Eskimos believe that during sleep our brain continues to work like a computer. And the people there like to sleep in winter, and in between long sleeps they sing a lot and tell each other stories. But in winter I have a lot of work, of course. I paint landscapes, compose music, work on other projects - all post-production is done at this time of year. But in the summer the situation is completely different. We hardly sleep because summer is travel time and we are on the road all the time.

Are there any shops there? And is there a lack of vitamins due to a poor and monotonous diet?

There are shops, but their selection is limited and they are not always open. For example, all last December we ate the same polar bear. For breakfast, lunch and dinner. We just got a big piece, and so we ate it without stopping. Of course, when you eat a polar bear for a whole month, then you can no longer look at it, even if it is very tasty. We eat mainly ringed seal, seal, whale, fish, and shrimp. Vegetables are bad. In Greenland they have learned to grow potatoes - but maybe ten a year. And it is sold for crazy money in the most expensive restaurants in Paris and San Francisco. But this is in the south. And Ole and I are now thinking about our own greenhouse in the north - we are negotiating with scientists from Columbia University. If it works, it will be a revolution!

In general, seafood is a colossal source of amino acids and vitamins; local residents have luxurious skin and hair even at ninety years old. They do not suffer from arthritis or arthrosis. Greenland has the cleanest water in the world because it comes straight from the icebergs.

What is the religion of Greenlanders?

The question is complex. At one time, Norwegian missionaries came there; they wanted to baptize the Vikings who lived there. But it turned out that all the Vikings had already died out by that time, and the missionaries had no choice but to baptize the Eskimos. And the Eskimos were curious and agreed, but at the same time, they managed to preserve all their old beliefs.

Greenlanders are Christians, go to church on Sundays, but still observe primitive customs and traditions. For example, after killing an animal, you need to give it something to drink from your mouth so that it does not have thirst in the next world. An Eskimo still believes that his grandfather is a polar bear. All this is combined in an absolutely incredible way.

How do you feel when you return to New York after a long break?

Culture shock. I am amazed by all this luxury, which, from my point of view, is not at all necessary and not important. The level of consumerism is surprising; people constantly buy something and immediately throw it away. And everyone here suffers because of these tragedies, which are quite petty.

I'm not a material girl at all. Look, the shoes I wear are already full of holes. I've had them since 2003 and have them repaired all the time. I only have two dresses, well, maybe two and a half. But I have everything else to be happy.

What has the Arctic taught you? And how are the residents there different from us, what could we learn from them?

Arctic is the best university I have ever studied at. There you understand that if you are deprived of the cocoon in which you are used to living, you will have nothing left except your body and basic instincts, thanks to which you can accept life as it is and adapt. Or don't accept it and die.

Residents of the Arctic know how to give things new life; there is practically no garbage there. Everything is recycled and something new is created from everything. This is basically a very creative and artistic approach to life. It’s easy to put all the waste in a plastic bag, take it downstairs, where it will be put in a larger bag, and then all these bags will go to a general landfill, and then all the garbage will float to us in Greenland. How many times have we discovered a mountain of plastic inside a bear? And all this plastic comes not from Greenland, but from New York, Shanghai, Paris and other “civilized” capitals of the world.

You can learn resilience from the inhabitants of the Arctic; people there have to solve a huge number of different problems every day. You yourself or your family members can drown at any moment, go under the ice, or not be rescued in time by doctors who are far from many settlements.

We can learn from their attitude towards life. They do not feel offended and deprived, but are happy, despite difficult circumstances and harsh nature. They know how to rise above their fate. And in the big cities of the world, every second person is depressed. Either his mother didn’t like him as a child, or he doesn’t see the meaning in life. Almost every resident of the metropolis visits a personal psychologist who writes out a prescription for pills - a substitute for happiness.

Tell us a little about your plans and projects for the future?

During a National Geographic expedition, Ole proposed to me on the sea ice, near an abandoned Eskimo village. And then he set the condition that the wedding could only take place on the top of the northernmost mountain in the world, which was named after him - Hammeken Point. Ole was the first person to discover and conquer it; this happened twenty years ago. We have been trying to reach this mountain for three years now, but have failed three times: our small open boat was buried in ice. And the summer season is very short. This summer we are going to try again to get to Hammeken Point - along a different route.

In the fall I plan to show the exhibition “Icebergs” in Bern, Switzerland. In addition to paintings, there will be my sculptures of Eskimos, made from garbage that the Yakut children and I collected on the banks of the Lena River. With this exhibition I want to show what the cleanest island, on which there is no industry, is turning into, and what threatens it if people do not treat nature more carefully and protect the environment. And towards the end of the year I am going to bring to New York my exhibitions “Icebergs” and “Arcticanos”, as well as “Arctic Arts” - an exhibition and sale of folk art products of the Arctic residents.

Together with the Young Explorers Club, which was created in New York as part of The Explorers Club, we are planning the first ever children's Arctic expedition to the North Pole. Not teenage, but children's.

Not long ago I came up with another project called Silk Ice— Silk Ice. I've never liked our dog awnings that we sleep under. And I came up with a silk scarf that would look beautiful on the shoulders and, when needed, turn into a house. Silk is an excellent insulator and keeps you cool in the summer. I'm so proud that our travel cabins are now warm. I later discovered that 19th century polar explorers also used silk as a material for their tents. So, I didn't discover anything new.

Since I work in both Central Asia and the Arctic, I see many of the same problems related to climate change and other issues, and I wanted to find some kind of cultural bridge through which the people of Central Asia and the Arctic can be connected. We buy silk in Asia, then I paint pictures on it: icebergs or portraits of local residents. This scarf is not afraid of wind and salt water. You can wrap it around yourself to make a dress. You can put it on your head or hang it on the window if you need a beautiful curtain. Or make a house out of it. These scarves are already in several museums and private collections, such as those of Albert II, the Reigning Prince of Monaco, simply because he is friends with Ole. The prince came to Greenland semi-incognito, and Ole took him around abandoned Eskimo villages on a dog sled. Along the way, they stayed in tents and houses made of earth and stones, of course, without running water or toilets. Prince Albert does a lot to preserve the Arctic, he treats Ole touchingly, it was he who financed the post-production of the film “Inuk”, in which Ole played the main role - a polar bear hunter, that is, in fact, himself.

Most recently, your book “Katya, Dad and the North Pole”, based on real events, was published. What exactly formed its basis?

In 2008, Dmitry Shparo's son, Matvey, together with his friend Boris Smolin, made the first ever ski expedition to the North Pole in conditions of absolute polar night. A couple of weeks after the start of the route, Matvey called us. It happened on Christmas night and it was simply incredible. Then he called often, my children asked him questions, and he answered them. And it was at that moment that the idea for the book was born. The fact is that in Moscow Matvey had a daughter, Katya, who was five years old at that time. And I decided to invent conversations between father and daughter, separated by thousands of kilometers, about the North Pole. “Katya, Dad and the North Pole” was published by the wonderful publishing house Paulsen and is now on sale in Russia.

Tell us about your book “Iceberg(s)/Iceberg(s)”. I know that you have a whole concept whereby you compare people to icebergs and think that they have a lot in common.

This book even looks like an iceberg, it is all white, on each page there is written the name of the iceberg, its coordinates and a weather report at that time. The pages need to be cut with a special knife, like Japanese books, and then my photographs of these icebergs will appear to your eyes. There is another secret in the book - when you open it in the dark and silence, you can hear the sound of a melting iceberg, such a slight crackling sound. The book received several awards at major book fairs.

I'm currently writing a second children's book, which will be called "The Iceberg That Gone Crazy." It is also based on a true story.

You periodically make expeditions from Greenland to the Russian north, don’t you? Are there big differences in the life of northern peoples?

In some ways they are very different, but in others they are similar. People still understand each other perfectly, even if they have different nationalities and languages. The quality of life in Greenland is better than in the Russian north, but, on the other hand, much more culture and traditions have been preserved in the eastern Arctic. People there are more creative.

Are you saying you trust your body more than your mind?

I trust my instincts. Because a rational mind would probably suggest that I do something else. Maybe he would advise me to live in New York and do other useful things. But I feel the call of my body, because for me it is like a musical instrument, like an iceberg. The mind is an iceberg, most of it is not visible, and only the tip rises above the water. We assume that everything we do “logically” is correct, forgetting that our “upper” mind is just a derivative of the lower one, which consists of basic instincts. My body talks to me and lets me know what is best for me. When I don't listen to him, I simply feel lost.

It seems that fears are completely unknown to you. Is this so or are you still afraid of what in life?

I'm afraid for the children. I’m also probably afraid that our world is heading into the abyss. This is, rather, what I fear most—the madness that takes hold of millions of people. They cannot understand that the world can be completely different, that there should be no hatred in it. Greenland has very peaceful people, and my real horizons open up there. In the North I learn more about myself and about life. In a big city (New York, Moscow, Paris) you can go to a museum, to a gallery, see what other people thought about life and realize that you have become richer due to their knowledge. But this is not my hard-won experience, but my own knowledge is achieved the hard way, like every person. This does not mean that I encourage everyone to abandon the benefits of civilization and move to Greenland. Everyone must find themselves and their place in the world.

Interviewed by Olga Smagarinskaya

May, 2017

Photos from Gali Morrell's personal archive

Galya Morrell is a Cold Artist, writer, artist, theater director and multimedia artist working in the rare genre of spectacular synthetic performance on drifting sea ice. Born in Moscow, she graduated from MGIMO and before the collapse of the USSR worked for the Pravda newspaper as a special correspondent on the Arctic. In 1990, in northern Canada, she founded the pilot project Ice Circus - a circus on drifting ice for children and teenagers living in one of the most remote and inaccessible settlements in the Arctic, a project that later became international. Over the course of thirty years, she organized and took part in many polar expeditions. Currently lives in northern Greenland most of the year. Together with her husband, Greenlandic polar explorer, actor and teacher Ole Jorgen Hammeken, Morrell founded the permanent cultural expedition Avannaa/North, the Arctic Without Borders and Arctic Arts projects, the main goal of which is to preserve the culture and traditions of small-numbered Arctic peoples. peoples

Olga Smagarinskaya. Graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. During her student years, she collaborated with various (at that time still Soviet) publications. She has lived in Chicago, London, Singapore, and currently lives in New York with her husband and two children. Published in Elle Russia, Elegant New York, Ballet Insider, RUNYweb.com, Floors, Musical Seasons.

Ballet dances on drifting ice floes. She dances barefoot, in a light dress, in the cold, in the Arctic. Sometimes he stumbles and falls into the icy water. But he claims that there is nothing wrong with this.

When Gala Morrell was about fifty, she suddenly realized that she spent most of her time sitting in an empty apartment alone. The husband, a military pilot, spent all his time on missions, and for many years they had met extremely rarely, and even then mainly at airfields. Galya did not have a permanent job: for the last fifteen years she had been raising six children. But now all six - two of her own and her husband’s four children from his first marriage - have grown up and gone to universities.

And Galya was surprised to discover that she had absolutely nothing to do with herself. So she realized that the time had come to do not what she needed, but what she liked.

More than anything else, Gala liked the North and dancing.

Dancing has been her favorite pastime since childhood. And she fell in love with the North when in her youth she worked as a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper and often went on business trips beyond the Arctic Circle.

Now it’s difficult to say how Galya came up with the idea of ​​combining these two hobbies. It is reliably known, however, that her first “ice dance” happened thanks to a friend who started a social project: the friend wanted to introduce contemporary art to Eskimo teenagers from the most remote northern villages.

As part of this project, Galya went to Greenland. Of course, there was no stage or decorations - the performance had to be given right in the snow.

“I had to somehow attract attention,” says Galya Morrell, “So I went out to dance in the snow barefoot, in a light dress. It was minus 35 degrees outside. People from all over the village came running to watch me dance. They were shocked - even a dog sled passing by fearfully shied away from me. My hands and feet were terribly cold, but I danced!”

On that first trip, she performed many more times: Galya spent several months in Greenland. And since then he has been driving almost non-stop for three years. He climbs into the most remote northern regions and dances barefoot on drifting ice.

She photographs her dances with a small camera, which she places on a small tripod. Returning from another trip, Galya organizes exhibitions of her photographs. And thus attracts sponsors for future trips.

Of course, dancing on ice floes is not a safe activity; from time to time Galya stumbles and falls into the icy water. She claims that this is completely unearthly bliss. You just have to survive the first seven minutes, when hellish pain permeates your whole body, and it seems that you are about to die. But then, if you don’t die in seven minutes, you get great pleasure from swimming.

Over the past three years, Galya Morrell has walked hundreds of kilometers across Siberia with the Evenks, nomadic reindeer herders. Traveled around Yakutia on horseback. She visited (and danced) the Bering Sea, Chukotka, Alaska, and the northern Canadian province of Nunavut, where the Canadian Eskimos live.

Galya assures that after fifty she seemed to be born again. “The cold teaches us not to fight nature, but to accept it,” she says.

However, the main purpose of her trips is not even to dance on ice floes or enjoy swimming in the Arctic Ocean. She finds the most remote Eskimo settlements that are on the verge of extinction. Communicates with their residents, puts on musical performances with them, dances for them and collects their stories and legends.

On one of these trips, Galya met Oli Jorgen, a professional traveler and Eskimo by birth.

How did their relationship begin? Well, last year Galya and Olya traveled 4,000 kilometers together on a small open motor boat across the Arctic Ocean. That's how we got to know each other better.

The boat was tiny, without a toilet, without a heating system. Galya and Olya slept right at the bottom of the boat, on canisters of gasoline, with which they cooked their food on the burner. We washed ourselves with ice-cold sea water. They lived like this for two months.

Their goal was to reach the most remote settlements of the Eskimos, which were practically inaccessible and, thanks to this, still preserved the old way of life and traditions of life without changes. These settlements, completely cut off from the modern world, can only be reached by small boat and only at certain times of the year.

“On this journey, I found amazing harmony, for the sake of which, probably, I made all these changes in my life,” says Galya. - Harmony of life and death. We found ourselves in severe storms and several times found ourselves without food or drink, far from human settlements. When death is so close, at some point you stop being afraid of it. Life and death become, as it were, a single space. Having survived this hike, Olya and I decided that now we will be together.”

__________

After 50 comes the best time in our lives. After 50, absolutely everything is possible - new love, new career, new experiences and adventures, new friends. You just need to know how. This is the blog of the creator of the “Age of Happiness” project, Vladimir Yakovlev. You can subscribe for free. Don't waste time! At 50 it all just begins!

“When I was young, I often worried that I was missing out on unique opportunities and was very upset about this. Only with age did I understand that the train of luck stops at your station all the time. If you didn’t make it in time, don’t worry, don’t despair and, most importantly, don’t leave the station. The next one will definitely come. You just need to be ready to jump into it the next time it stops at your station.”

Galya Morell

Exhibition by Gali Morell

Galina was born into a wealthy Moscow family in 1961. Wealthy family, MGIMO. Clever beauty. From the age of 17 she worked as a correspondent for the newspaper Pravda,


Galina Morell journalist

She worked there for 13 years, wrote about polar life, as she spent a lot of time at drifting polar stations. And she was happy - her beloved husband (a famous scientist, petrochemist), two children.


Galina Morell with children

And then perestroika happened, which she experienced very hard. The first husband, unable to find himself in Russia in the 90s, left for France. Galina decided to stay in her homeland, because she believed that she would not have so many impressions and such an interesting life anywhere else. Two children remained with her. By the way, she still has a good relationship with her husband; they call each other every two days. Could there be another relationship with this woman? She is so sincere, open and interested in people. She makes everyone fall in love with her.
However, you cannot escape fate. Having met another man in her life, an American fighter pilot, Galina still left Russia for America.

Second husband of Galina Morell

She met her second husband in Siberia, they fell in love at first sight. He had four children from his first marriage (his ex-wife left for another, who was left with 5 small children). Galina became the mother of 6 children. Although she laughs and says that in fact she already had many more children. After all, she is also friends with her second husband’s ex-wife and her new children) Oh, you’ll get confused)) But this is not the main thing, because she believes that the family is never destroyed, it can only expand. Everyone continues to remain close friends and dear people.

Galina Morell with her American husband

Galina lived in New York for 25 years, but constantly traveled around the world with her husband (due to his work). She immersed herself in the role of a mother, enjoyed “attending” school with her children, doing homework together, discovering a new world for herself and raising children, let’s say... not quite typical).

Love a cobra and you won't be afraid.

“I have always considered my main goal of education to be to teach children to look at the world without fear.”


I will give just two examples that made a huge impression on me. When she went to work with her husband in India, she sent the children to a boarding school located in the jungle. The boarding school was organized by her friend for children whose parents would never leave prison - these were the children of the most notorious criminals.

“My children, who by that time all played various musical instruments, thought that they would come to a place where children were sad and ill, who had an unhappy childhood, and would organize various events for them, teach them to play the piano, flute, cello, etc. But it turned out the other way around. These wise orphans with an incredibly terrible fate taught my children a lot.”

When Galina brought the children to the boarding school, a huge cobra lay in the yard. The children got scared and started asking to go back. So the orphanage residents taught her the first lesson to her children, taking them to the cobra. They said that the cobra will not do anything if you do not touch it and are not afraid of it. She lives here and doesn't want to harm anyone. You just have to love her. Another lesson is the attitude towards food. The choice of not only dishes, but also products was very poor. They collected every crumb from the table. Of course, they learned to appreciate food. And there were many such lessons.


photo of the Arctic by Gali Morell

Galina says that she knows that these were difficult conditions, but she is sure that this was one of the main and necessary periods of personal development in the lives of her children. And she did this deliberately so that her children could discover new horizons for themselves. And the children are grateful to her for this.


Son and Galya Morell in the photo

And here is another (and by no means the last) period in the formation of her youngest son. He went to a very prestigious cowboy college in Death Valley. He wanted to, prepared hard and entered. For 2 years he was cut off from the world. The students lived like hermits. They did everything with their own hands - they grew wheat, raised livestock, cooked and served themselves. Family and friends were not allowed to come here (mothers might faint when they saw the living conditions).

Death Valley is a harsh and merciless land. For 5 months of the year, heat dominates this territory, and over the next 7 months the sultry weather only slightly weakens its strength. Temperatures in summer are usually above 50 °C. But getting into college is incredibly difficult. But the students organized their own studies. They chose their teachers, and any professor, at their request, would fly to them and give lessons - these could be dance classes or lectures on nuclear physics (for every taste). The college pays for everything.

A new cool turn in the life of Gali Morell

As a child, Brother Galya had a collection of wooden dolls of different nationalities. In the end, they were all lost, and the girl was left with only one doll - an Eskimo. She took great care of this doll. But there was a fire, the whole house and the doll burned down along with it. She bitterly mourned this loss and did not suspect that fate, many years later, would prepare for her a meeting with a real Eskimo, who would become her beloved man.


Ole Jorgen Hammeken

Eskimo Ole Jorgen Hammeken is a lawyer, Greenlandic explorer and traveler. He was brought to his dacha near Moscow by Galina’s son Kevin, who became Ole’s assistant on an expedition to the Russian Arctic. The son was full of impressions after the expedition and wanted to introduce his mother to an incredible person. They met and realized that they were made for each other. This is how Ole remembers his first meeting with Galina.


Ole Jorgen Hammeken Eskimo life

I looked into her eyes and felt that my proud Eskimo heart had fallen into the abyss, somewhere to the South Pole - to Antarctica. If I didn't know Kevin, I would have mistaken her for a teenager. But in reality she was only five years younger than me. It turned out that she had been to the Arctic before. For two hours we talked with her about ice, about whales, narwhals, seals and polar bears, about what we both loved and understood, and when the time came to leave, I realized that I couldn’t leave. But it was impossible to stay. She was married to a serious American entrepreneur, a millionaire, and a fighter pilot in her youth. She lived in a Manhattan skyscraper and, of course, was not going to change her way of life for the sake of me - an Eskimo born on an ice island, whose ancestors walked in skins and only recently stepped out of the great glaciation into the modern age.


Ole Jorgen Hammeken and Galya Morell

But Galya Morell, at over 50 years old, changed her lifestyle. Now Galina lives between Moscow, Oslo, Greenland and New York.


She is ready to become a real Eskimo wife. And this is a whole science that is learned from a very early age.

The Science of Being an Eskimo Wife - Galina Morell


The Eskimo husband is a hunter, and all life rests with the wife. The first gift that Ole gave me was a round ulu knife with a bone handle, which is passed down from generation to generation in their family. With the help of this knife, an Eskimo wife builds a house out of solid snow. She carries the window for the ice house with her on the sled. Previously, the stomach of a seal was used as glass, but now it is a piece of plastic. She uses the same round knife to cut up the seal. This is a woman's job. I was taught this skill, and I will say that it is oh so difficult to do. If you cut a seal in the wrong place, the bile will spread and the entire carcass can be thrown away. But before you start butchering the animal, you need to perform a ritual. You need to take a little water, warm it in your mouth and pour it into the mouth of the seal, which lies with its head turned towards the sun. The Eskimos thus thank the animal for giving them its body.
Also, an Eskimo wife must sew clothes, cook food, think about supplies and please her husband so that he is in a good mood.

Previously, the wife got up an hour before her husband got up to soften his boots with her teeth - light, like socks, kamiks, which are most often sewn from seal skin. During the night they froze and became stiff. The wife, chewing the skin for 30-40 minutes so that it became soft, made sure that her husband’s first step into the new day was comfortable

Galina entered a period of extreme Arctic expeditions. Here are small excerpts of her impressions.

We wear animal skins and hunt with a harpoon. We drink living blood and sometimes don’t wash for months. In our country, a third of the year is night, a third is day, and the rest of the year is twilight. My friends sincerely feel sorry for me. They view my move from Manhattan to northern Greenland as a reckless step back into the Stone Age, into Anthropocene time, into the Great Glaciation. But this, of course, depends on which way you look at it - if from space, then you don’t need to be Einstein to see that I was very lucky. After all, now I live where the real elite of the world lives. Because no one lives above us


the journey of Ole Jorgen Hammeken and Galina Morell

Together with Ole, they traveled 4,000 km across the Arctic Ocean in a small open boat. For two months they lived side by side, washing themselves with icy sea water, being careful of polar bears, skirting icebergs, falling asleep at the bottom of the boat, and getting caught in a strong storm. “Having survived this campaign, we became united and realized that we would be together”

Projects by Galina Morell.


Circus on Ice - photo G. Morell

One of Galina's first projects was ice dancing. She dances in a dress, barefoot in minus 35 degrees.


Sometimes he stumbles and falls into the icy water... “If you survive the first 7 minutes, when monstrous pain arises, then then it’s no longer cold, but, on the contrary, you feel unearthly bliss”


Galina visited Chukotka, Alaska, and Yakutia. She finds the most remote, endangered Eskimo settlements, collects their stories and legends, organizes musical performances, circus performances, using drifting ice as a stage and involving local residents in these performances.
Galina Morell and Ole founded the Avannaa Cultural Expedition. The purpose of the expedition is to help creative people living in isolated settlements, as well as to combat the epidemic of suicide among teenagers in northern settlements.


They became real parents for hundreds of children, they became friends for people who had lost faith in life.

“People from newspapers who have seen my Arctic photographs often contact me and ask me to do a social report about alcoholism and drug addiction. But they don't understand that I don't do this. I work with a lot of people - former alcoholics, and I know for sure that if a person is shown as an alcoholic, a terrible, terrible person, then it will only make him worse. For example, I did a colossal project - very large portraits of former alcoholics and simply alcoholics measuring two meters by meter, in which they looked like the most beautiful people in the world. They looked at these portraits and said: “God, for the first time in my life someone saw me like this, it’s really me.”

After 50 years, if you don't love, you will very soon become old.

Galya Morell loves the North and is grateful to it for the fact that it returns a person to his true self. She learned to appreciate every moment and to be very, very patient.
photo of dogs of the north Galya Morell


“In general, you learn everything in Greenland. Walk on thin ice and don't fall through. Live a long time without food. Don't freeze. Don't be harmful. Don't complain. Don't look at the world through the glasses of stereotypes"


“I enter each new stage of life without tragedy and try to live it as well as I can. I don't know what will happen to me tomorrow. I never plan because we have a better planner (looks up) than ourselves. I just try to do my job honestly, well and give my all.”


Ice circus project

Definitely a must love! Yourself, people, the world around you. After 50, if you don't love, you will very soon become old. And under no circumstances should you be offended by life and complain.

And, finally, an interview between Yulia Menshova and Galya Morell. Be sure to check it out!

Thank you very much to my friend Lyusenka for the link!!!

“When I was young, I often worried that I was missing out on unique opportunities and was very upset about this. Only with age did I understand that the train of luck stops at your station all the time. If you didn’t make it in time, don’t worry, don’t despair and, most importantly, don’t leave the station. The next one will definitely come. You just need to be ready to jump into it the next time it stops at your station.”

Galya Morrell

I learned about this amazing woman in the winter of this year. Much has been said and written about her photo exhibition in Moscow dedicated to icebergs. I was impressed by the colorful photographs, and I thought that I should put them on the blog and show these amazingly beautiful shots.

Photos of icebergs by Galina Morrell.

Who is Galya Morrell?

Galina Morrell is a traveler, author of numerous social projects, organizer and participant of polar expeditions, photographer, artist, author of performances, journalist. She dances on ice, works in the jungles of India, swims for months on an open boat in the ocean among icebergs and polar bears, and helps orphans. But that’s not what impressed me so much (although that too). Galina is an amazing person, beautiful, energetic, subtle, sincere, brave and at the same time gentle and soft. It expands the boundaries of the usual consciousness, charges with energy and gives positivity, hope and joy, even from the realization that there are such people in our world.


Galina was born into a wealthy Moscow family in 1961. Wealthy family, MGIMO. Clever beauty. From the age of 17 she worked as a correspondent for the newspaper Pravda,


I worked there for 13 years, wrote about polar life, as I spent a lot of time at drifting polar stations. And she was happy - her beloved husband (a famous scientist, petrochemist), two children.


And then perestroika happened, which she experienced very hard. The first husband, unable to find himself in Russia in the 90s, left for France. Galina decided to stay in her homeland, because she believed that she would not have so many impressions and such an interesting life anywhere else. Two children remained with her. By the way, she still has a good relationship with her husband; they call each other every two days. Could there be another relationship with this woman? She is so sincere, open and interested in people. She makes everyone fall in love with her.
However, you cannot escape fate. Having met another man in her life, an American fighter pilot, Galina still left Russia for America.

She met her second husband in Siberia, they fell in love at first sight. He had four children from his first marriage (his ex-wife left for another, who was left with 5 small children). Galina became the mother of 6 children. Although she laughs and says that in fact she already had many more children. After all, she is also friends with her second husband’s ex-wife and her new children) Oh, you’ll get confused)) But this is not the main thing, because she believes that the family is never destroyed, it can only expand. Everyone continues to remain close friends and dear people.

Galina lived in New York for 25 years, but constantly traveled around the world with her husband (due to his work). She immersed herself in the role of a mother, happily “attended” school with her children, doing homework together, discovering a new world for herself and raising children, let’s say... not quite typical)

Love a cobra and you won't be afraid.

“I have always considered my main goal of education to be to teach children to look at the world without fear.”

I will give just two examples that made a huge impression on me. When Galina went to work with her husband in India, she sent the children to a boarding school located in the jungle. The boarding school was organized by her friend for children whose parents would never leave prison - these were the children of the most notorious criminals.

“My children, who by that time all played various musical instruments, thought that they would come to a place where children were sad and ill, who had an unhappy childhood, and would organize various events for them, teach them to play the piano, flute, cello, etc. But it turned out the other way around. These wise orphans with an incredibly terrible fate taught my children a lot.”

When Galina brought the children to the boarding school, a huge cobra lay in the yard. The children got scared and started asking to go back. So the orphanage residents taught her the first lesson to her children, taking them to the cobra. They said that the cobra will not do anything if you do not touch it and are not afraid of it. She lives here and doesn't want to harm anyone. You just have to love her. Another lesson is the attitude towards food. The choice of not only dishes, but also products was very poor. They collected every crumb from the table. Of course, they learned to appreciate food. And there were many such lessons.


Galina says that she knows that these were difficult conditions, but she is sure that this was one of the main and necessary periods of personal development in the lives of her children. And she did this deliberately so that her children could discover new horizons for themselves. And the children are grateful to her for this.


And here is another (and by no means the last) period in the formation of her youngest son. He went to a very prestigious cowboy college in Death Valley. He wanted to, prepared hard and entered. For 2 years he was cut off from the world. The students lived like hermits. They did everything with their own hands - they grew wheat, raised livestock, cooked and served themselves. Family and friends were not allowed to come here (mothers might faint when they saw the living conditions).

Death Valley is a harsh and unforgiving land. For 5 months of the year, heat dominates this territory, and over the next 7 months the sultry weather only slightly weakens its strength. Temperatures in summer are usually above 50 °C. But getting into college is incredibly difficult. But the students organized their own studies. They chose their teachers, and any professor, at their request, would fly to them and give lessons - these could be dance classes or lectures on nuclear physics (for every taste). The college pays for everything.

A new cool turn in the life of Gali Morrell

As a child, Brother Galya had a collection of wooden dolls of different nationalities. In the end, they were all lost, and the girl was left with only one doll - an Eskimo. She took great care of this doll. But there was a fire, the whole house and the doll burned down along with it. She bitterly mourned this loss and did not suspect that fate, many years later, would prepare for her a meeting with a real Eskimo, who would become her beloved man.


Eskimo Ole Jorgen Hammeken is a lawyer, Greenlandic explorer and traveler. He was brought to his dacha near Moscow by Galina’s son Kevin, who became Ole’s assistant on an expedition to the Russian Arctic. The son was full of impressions after the expedition and wanted to introduce his mother to an incredible person. They met and realized that they were made for each other. This is how Ole remembers his first meeting with Galina.

I looked into her eyes and felt that my proud Eskimo heart had fallen into the abyss, somewhere to the South Pole - to Antarctica. If I didn't know Kevin, I would have mistaken her for a teenager. But in reality she was only five years younger than me. It turned out that she had been to the Arctic before. For two hours we talked with her about ice, about whales, narwhals, seals and polar bears, about what we both loved and understood, and when the time came to leave, I realized that I couldn’t leave. But it was impossible to stay. She was married to a serious American entrepreneur, a millionaire, and a fighter pilot in her youth. She lived in a Manhattan skyscraper and, of course, was not going to change her way of life for the sake of me - an Eskimo born on an ice island, whose ancestors walked in skins and only recently stepped out of the great glaciation into the modern age.

But Galya Morrell, at over 50 years old, changed her lifestyle. Now Galina lives between Moscow, Oslo, Greenland and New York.


She is ready to become a real Eskimo wife. And this is a whole science that is learned from a very early age.

The science of being an Eskimo wife.

The Eskimo husband is a hunter, and all life rests with the wife. The first gift that Ole gave me was a round ulu knife with a bone handle, which is passed down from generation to generation in their family. With the help of this knife, an Eskimo wife builds a house out of solid snow. She carries the window for the ice house with her on the sled. Previously, the stomach of a seal was used as glass, but now it is a piece of plastic. She uses the same round knife to cut up the seal. This is a woman's job. I was taught this skill, and I will say that it is oh so difficult to do. If you cut a seal in the wrong place, the bile will spread and the entire carcass can be thrown away. But before you start butchering the animal, you need to perform a ritual. You need to take a little water, warm it in your mouth and pour it into the mouth of the seal, which lies with its head turned towards the sun. The Eskimos thus thank the animal for giving them its body.
Also, an Eskimo wife must sew clothes, cook food, think about supplies and please her husband so that he is in a good mood.

Previously, the wife got up an hour before her husband got up to soften his boots with her teeth - light, like socks, kamiks, which are most often sewn from seal skin. During the night they froze and became stiff. The wife, chewing the skin for 30-40 minutes so that it became soft, made sure that her husband’s first step into the new day was comfortable

Galina entered a period of extreme Arctic expeditions. Here are small excerpts of her impressions.

We wear animal skins and hunt with a harpoon. We drink living blood and sometimes don’t wash for months. In our country, a third of the year is night, a third is day, and the rest of the year is twilight. My friends sincerely feel sorry for me. They view my move from Manhattan to northern Greenland as a reckless step back into the Stone Age, into Anthropocene time, into the Great Glaciation. But this, of course, depends on which way you look at it - if from space, then you don’t need to be Einstein to see that I was very lucky. After all, now I live where the real elite of the world lives. Because no one lives above us

Together with Ole, they traveled 4,000 km across the Arctic Ocean in a small open boat. For two months they lived side by side, washing themselves with icy sea water, being careful of polar bears, skirting icebergs, falling asleep at the bottom of the boat, and getting caught in a strong storm. “Having survived this campaign, we became united and realized that we would be together”

One of Galina's first projects was ice dancing. She dances in a dress, barefoot in minus 35 degrees.

Sometimes he stumbles and falls into the icy water... “If you survive the first 7 minutes, when monstrous pain arises, then then it’s no longer cold, but, on the contrary, you feel unearthly bliss”


Galina visited Chukotka, Alaska, and Yakutia. She finds the most remote, endangered Eskimo settlements, collects their stories and legends, organizes musical performances, circus performances, using drifting ice as a stage and involving local residents in these performances.
Galina Morrell and Ole founded the Avannaa Cultural Expedition. The purpose of the expedition is to help creative people living in isolated settlements, as well as to combat the epidemic of suicide among teenagers in northern settlements.


They became real parents for hundreds of children, they became friends for people who had lost faith in life.

“People from newspapers who have seen my Arctic photographs often contact me and ask me to do a social report about alcoholism and drug addiction. But they don't understand that I don't do this. I work with a lot of people - former alcoholics, and I know for sure that if a person is shown as an alcoholic, a terrible, terrible person, then it will only make him worse. For example, I did a colossal project - very large portraits of former alcoholics and simply alcoholics measuring two meters by meter, in which they looked like the most beautiful people in the world. They looked at these portraits and said: “God, for the first time in my life someone saw me like this, it’s really me.”

After 50 years, if you don't love, you will very soon become old.

Galya Morrell loves the North and is grateful to it for the fact that it returns a person to his true self. She learned to appreciate every moment and to be very, very patient.

“In general, you learn everything in Greenland. Walk on thin ice and don't fall through. Live a long time without food. Don't freeze. Don't be harmful. Don't complain. Don't look at the world through the glasses of stereotypes"

“I enter each new stage of life without tragedy and try to live it as well as I can. I don't know what will happen to me tomorrow. I never plan because we have a better planner (looks up) than ourselves. I just try to do my job honestly, well and give my all.”

Definitely a must love! Yourself, people, the world around you. After 50, if you don't love, you will very soon become old. And under no circumstances should you be offended by life and complain.

And, finally, an interview between Yulia Menshova and Galya Morrell. Be sure to check it out!

The article uses materials from the article “Lifelong Performance” and from the blog (which I recommend) “The Age of Happiness”. At the end of the article dedicated to Gala, you can read her responses to all comments. By the way, here

Tells the amazing life story of Gali Morrell.

At 53 years old, this cheerful woman dances ballet on drifting ice floes! She dances barefoot, in a light dress, in the cold, in the Arctic. Sometimes he stumbles and falls into the icy water. But he claims that there is nothing wrong with this.

When Gala Morrell was about fifty, she suddenly realized that she spent most of her time sitting in an empty apartment alone. The husband, a military pilot, spent all his time on missions, and for many years they had met extremely rarely, and even then mainly at airfields. Galya did not have a permanent job: for the last fifteen years she had been raising six children. But now all six - two of her own and her husband’s four children from his first marriage - have grown up and gone to universities.

And Galya was surprised to discover that she had absolutely nothing to do with herself. So she realized that the time had come to do not what she needed, but what she liked.

More than anything else, Gala liked the North and dancing.

Dancing has been her favorite pastime since childhood. And she fell in love with the North when in her youth she worked as a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper and often went on business trips beyond the Arctic Circle.

Now it’s difficult to say how Galya came up with the idea of ​​combining these two hobbies. It is reliably known, however, that her first “ice dance” happened thanks to a friend who started a social project: the friend wanted to introduce contemporary art to Eskimo teenagers from the most remote northern villages.

As part of this project, Galya went to Greenland. Of course, there was no stage or decorations - the performance had to be given right in the snow.

“I had to somehow attract attention,” says Galya Morrell, “So I went out to dance in the snow barefoot, in a light dress. It was minus 35 degrees outside. People from all over the village came running to watch me dance. They were shocked - even the dog sled passing by fearfully shied away from me. My hands and feet were terribly cold, but I danced!”

On that first trip, she performed many more times: Galya spent several months in Greenland. And since then he has been driving almost non-stop for three years. He climbs into the most remote northern regions and dances barefoot on drifting ice.

She photographs her dances with a small camera, which she places on a small tripod. Returning from another trip, Galya organizes exhibitions of her photographs. And thus attracts sponsors for future trips.

Of course, dancing on ice floes is not a safe activity; from time to time Galya stumbles and falls into the icy water. She claims that this is completely unearthly bliss. You just have to survive the first seven minutes, when hellish pain permeates your whole body, and it seems that you are about to die. But then, if you don’t die in seven minutes, you get great pleasure from swimming.

Over the past three years, Galya Morrell has walked hundreds of kilometers across Siberia with the Evenks, nomadic reindeer herders. Traveled around Yakutia on horseback. She visited (and danced) the Bering Sea, Chukotka, Alaska, and the northern Canadian province of Nunavut, where the Canadian Eskimos live.

Galya assures that after fifty she seemed to be born again. “The cold teaches us not to fight nature, but to accept it,” she says.

However, the main purpose of her trips is not even to dance on ice floes or enjoy swimming in the Arctic Ocean. She finds the most remote Eskimo settlements that are on the verge of extinction. Communicates with their residents, puts on musical performances with them, dances for them and collects their stories and legends.

On one of these trips, Galya met Ole Jorgen, a professional traveler and Arctic mountaineer, an Eskimo by birth.

How did their relationship begin? Well, last year Galya and Olya traveled 4,000 kilometers together on a small open motor boat across the Arctic Ocean. That's how we got to know each other better.

The boat was tiny, without a toilet, without a heating system. Galya and Olya slept right at the bottom of the boat, spreading a mattress on gas cylinders, with which they cooked their food on the burner. We washed ourselves with ice-cold sea water. They lived like this for two months.

Their goal was to reach the most remote settlements of the Eskimos, which were practically inaccessible and, thanks to this, still preserved the old way of life and traditions of life without changes. These settlements, completely cut off from the modern world, can only be reached by small boat and only at certain times of the year.

“On this journey, I found amazing harmony, for the sake of which, probably, I made all these changes in my life,” says Galya. - Harmony of life and death. We found ourselves in severe storms and several times found ourselves without food or drink, far from human settlements. When death is so close, at some point you stop being afraid of it. Life and death become, as it were, a single space. Having survived this hike, Olya and I decided that now we will be together.”

What can you do now that you couldn’t at 35?

Dancing on Ice! Firstly, I am now in much better physical shape than I was at 35 years old. Only with age did I understand that our body is a sacred vessel that must be respected and protected, otherwise it will break.

Secondly, because now I am not at all afraid that someone will think or say bad things about me. Now it doesn't bother me at all.

Would you like to be young again?