A one-week season, -18°C temps – Greenlandic football is gruelling, but growing

On the last day of the year every year, two amateur teams in Greenland play a football match.

They don’t play much football in Greenland – not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t. This is a part of the world, 40km above the Arctic Circle, where temperates of -18°C are considered normal in winter.

None of this matters to GSS and NÛK, though. Come rain or shine (or snow or ice, more likely) they play on the frozen ground every New Year’s Eve.

It is tradition, as is the march to the match through the territory’s capital city of Nuuk. The rivalry between the two clubs is a friendly one, but football in Greenland is a serious matter.

Greenlandic football is certainly unglamorous, but that’s part of what makes it so special. The game has no right to thrive in such a challenging environment – and yet it does. How?

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE SOCCER DISPATCH