Ice Jewish boy! Greenland’s only known Jew discusses life among the glaciers

Narsaq, which has a population of just 1,300 people, is “a very quiet place”, he says, but for those in the region it is seen as more of a city because there is a hospital and a catering college in the town where Greenlanders train to become butchers and bakers.

Cohen, 61, speaks English, French and German but when he and Monika — who is from Germany — moved to the island, Danish was not on that list.

The couple, who speak German to each other, realised they would need to learn the language quickly, as few people in their town speak English. They were seen as “outsiders” but picked up the language working together as house painters and the locals eventually saw they were “normal”, Cohen says.

Cohen is not religious, and never has been, but he is culturally Jewish — both his parents were New York Jews and all his blood relatives are Jewish.

“[Judaism] doesn’t play an active role in my life but it’s deep-seated, it’s my cultural heritage,” he says. Recently a friend asked Cohen if, living in Greenland and cut off from all aspects of Jewish culture, he thought he might end up becoming a “non-Jew”.

His response was unequivocal: “I said, ‘It doesn’t work that way. I am Jewish. And when I meet someone else who is Jewish there is a connection there.’ It’s a cultural connection.”

The California-born, Wisconsin-raised adventurer does make those connections from time to time, despite his remote location. Occasionally Jewish visitors rent properties in his town for their holidays, and they recognise Cohen’s Jewishness instantaneously thanks to his surname. Recalling an Israeli couple he met once, Cohen says his background was immediately obvious to them “as it is to most people in the rest of the world”.

However, the absence of Jews from the island means Greenlanders are oblivious to the Jewish origins of the name “Cohen”. He says: “Most people in this town have no awareness of Judaism whatsoever and don’t even know that I’m Jewish [even though] my name is about as Jewish as it gets. The few times I’ve dropped a comment around Christmas saying, ‘All of this is fairly foreign to me’, people look at me [as if to say], what am I talking about? They say, ‘Oh you’re Jewish?’

“Sometimes I say [my name is] spelled like ‘Leonard Cohen’, but they don’t realise that Leonard Cohen was also Jewish,” he says.

“It’s a bit strange. I think there is very little awareness of other religions here because it’s a Protestant country.

“In some ways it’s refreshing — you’re not being put in a box.”

Cohen keeps his Jewish heritage alive in his own, personal way. As perhaps the only Greenlander to have Chanukah marked on his calendar, he celebrates the Festival of Lights with his family back in the US via video call.

“The lighting of the candles at Chanukah is such a festive [occasion],” he says.

“[My mother] started doing Zoom calls about two years ago. We all get together and light the candles. It was a throwback to when I was a kid and we celebrated Chanukah… It’s a way to stay in touch with them and to see my stepbrothers and stepsisters and their children and grandchildren.”

He might not be religious but that hasn’t stopped Cohen putting up a mezuzah at his home — though he has broken with tradition when it comes to its placement: “We have it inside the house on the entrance of one of the doorways. It would have been exposed to the salt and air on the outside,” Cohen says. “Perhaps it’s the Greenlandic way of doing it.”