The Royal Danish Navy recently changed out the flag at remote Isbjørneø in Baffin Bay, some 60 miles from Thule AB in Greenland. Uninhabited except for seabirds for at least the past 170 years, the windswept rock is part of the desolate Carey Islands. Importantly for the sake of geography, it is the westernmost point of Greenland and, by extension, the Realm of Denmark. The distance in a straight line from Copenhagen is 2,448 miles, roughly.
The 1,700-ton Knud Rasmussen class offshore patrol vessel HDMS Lauge Koch (P 572)— appropriately named for a Danish geologist and Arctic explorer who led two dozen expeditions to Greenland in the 1920s and 30s– visited the island on 4 September to swap out the flags.
The annual mission involved heading ashore through the iceberg-filled waters from the OPV by survey launch, climbing a nearly 500-foot cliff, shimmying up the flagpoles, and swapping out the old weather-beaten Dannebrog and Kalaallit erfalasuat for new.
To render honors, the eight-member detachment, led by Captain Per Skov Madsen, changed into the parade uniforms they brought and delivered a proper salute, observed by arctic puffins and seagulls– and the ship’s UAV.
