Message From Upernavik - Message in a bottle

Message in a bottle washed up on Hebridean beach after 12 year, 2000 mile journey helps tell new global warming story

Message From Upernavik.

It was another bit of plastic in an ocean full of it, but a Coke bottle found washed up on a Hebridean beach has helped tell a new and surprising story of global warming. Inside the bottle lying on the white sands of Baleshare beach in North Uist was a message, a note that sparked a 12-year search for the writer. Andy Mackinnon found the bottle on the beach in 2006 – more than two years and 2,000 miles after it had been buried on a melting ice floe in Baffin Bay, Greenland. But it took more than a ­decade to find Niels Berthelsen, the man who wrote the message during a hunting trip in 2004. Now Andy is turning the story of his dogged quest and the impact of global warming on two remote island communities into a documentary. Andy, arts curator at Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Arts Centre and founder of production company UistFilm, has secured a grant from Screen Scotland for the film Message From Upernavik. He is hoping to show a preview at the COP26 United Nations climate summit in Glasgow in November.

This is a story about the climate crisis and sea level rise linked by a message in a plastic coca-cola bottle from Upernavik, Greenland found on the Isle of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland.

Niels Berthelsen put the message in a bottle on the ice floe off the Greenland coast. Filmmaker Andy Mackinnon found it in the Outer Hebrides. This film is about extreme climate change and resilient islanders on two continents fighting to adapt. This feature documentary is a UistFilm / Hopscotch Films coprodiuction currently in development Synopsis/treatment Niels put a message in a bottle on the ice floe in the summer of 2004. The hunter society in which he was brought up in Upernavik, Greenland is vanishing like the ice, and with it a culture deeply interwoven with its environment. The hunting wasn't good for Niels that year. The glacier ice is melting at a rapidly accelerating rate, and traditional Inuit ways of life are disappearing with it. Everything is disconnected. The old ways are useless now. Niels wonders what hunting there will be for his children in the future. But everything is connected. Our carbon emissions heat the planet. The polar icecaps melt. Sea level rises. Everywhere. On Uist in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, the message was found. Increasing storm surge and projected sea level rise is already having effects. Will this make inhabitation of low-lying islands unsustainable in future? In 2005 in Uist, a 120mph storm raged day and night, the worst in living memory. Five members of the same family in South Uist lost their lives trying to escape flooding seas. Storm defences are woefully inadequate to prevent the sea overtaking the flat landscape on the western side. Taigh Chearsabhagh, the award-winning museum and art centre in North Uist cannot develop anymore on its current shoreside site due to projected sea levels and increased storms. In 2006 Andy Mackinnon found a plastic Coca-Cola bottle on Baile Sear beach during a flotsam foraging walk. Inside the bottle, written in English, but barely decipherable due to UV exposure, was the story of an unsuccessful hunting trip in Baffin Bay high in the Arctic, by Niels Berthelsen, from Upernavik, in north-west Greenland. In this documentary Andy Mackinnon travels from the island of North Uist to the island of Upernavik, to finally meet Niels and his family to learn what the future holds for us all and finds that the reality of climate change is different for everyone. Greenlanders like Niels are learning to adapt to huge changes as year round ice-free seas boost the Upernavik halibut and cod fisheries. Inuit mythology and folklore is rich in its holistic worldview with traditions and ways of life in harmony with environment as Gaelic culture was in Uist. Island life is often hard, making do with scant resources. Traces of the old island resilience remain and that adaptability is key to the future of life in the islands. Can we find a reconnection with our environment and a way back to a more sustainable future?

Sting (author and singer of the massive 1979 hit Message in a Bottle for band The Police) is supporting the Climate Change Message in a Bottle project with this video including a special recording of the song!!

https://www.taigh-chearsabhagh.org/events/cop26messagebottle/