Expedition Avannaa was founded by the Greenlandic polar explorer, educator, author and actor Ole Jorgen Hammeken and by the Russian-American performance and multimedia artist, reporter and photographer Galya Morrell.

Expedition Avannaa. Greenland. Photo © 2012 Galya Morrell

Ole Jorgen Hammeken has led and participated in many expeditions in the Arctic. Among them are the Dogsled Expedition from Uummannaq to Qaanaaq 1997, The Polar Passage 2000 – a circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean in a small open boat, The Global Warming Dogsled Expedition 2007 which helped to find an alternative route from Uummannaq and Ikerasak to Ilulissat through the ice-cap, The Euro-American North Greenland Expedition to Peary Land, 2012 Boat Expedition Avannaa in Northern Greenland, 2013 Expedition Middle World in Siberia (Yakutia and Chukotka) and others. Ole Jorgen is a fellow at The Explorers Cub in New York. To the general audience he is known as a lead actor playing the Great polar bear hunter Ikuma in the Greenlandic film INUK that has won over 20 prizes at international film festivals. He is also a master story-teller, a journalist and a motivational speaker with a long experience of presenting to international audiences.

Ole Jorgen Hammeken. Greenlandic polar explorer and actor. Photo © 2012 Galya Morrell

Following in the steps of her grandfather, a nomadic Komi caribou herder, Galya Morrell spent more than twenty-five years in the Arctic. As a polar correspondent of Soviet Pravda, Galya worked on the Soviet polar drifting stations “SP” (North Pole), lived and travelled with Chukchi, Nenets, Khanti, and other indigenous peoples of the North since 1984. Morrell co-founded a series of cultural projects in the Arctic that aim to revive the spirit of the community and to reduce the epidemic of suicides among the region’s youth brought about by the stresses of abrupt climate and societal change, among them Uummannaq Music, Greenland Week in NYC and Greenland Week in Central Asia. Under the stage name ColdArtist, Galya Morrell explores the limits of the body and the possibilities of the mind in the harsh environment of the Arctic. She works in visual synthetic performance on drifting ice floes, creating carnival fantasias and interactive installations inspired by ancient Arctic myths and legends.

Galya Morrell, ColdArtist. Photo © 2010 Ole Jorgen Hammeken