Tethered between pastel-colored wooden houses in the Greenlandic village of Kulusuk and on hills nearby, the island’s famous sled dogs wait through the summer for the ice to form so their hunting season can begin.

Greenlanders prize the dogs for their endurance, using them to pull their sleds to hunt seals, whales and polar bears in the winter months when temperatures can drop to minus 35 degrees Celsius (minus 31 Fahrenheit).

But as the ice that covers 85 percent of Greenland melts and its winters grow unpredictable, climate change is casting a shadow over the much loved tradition in Denmark’s autonomous territory. “The ice is changing,” says Moses Bajare, a 59-year-old musher from the village.

Snowmobiles are not used to hunt in east Greenland as hunting from boats has long been seen as an easier way to track seals and whales in these parts of the North Atlantic.

In winter, when the sea ice freezes, Bajare’s team of 12 dogs pulls his wooden sled out to the edge of the sea ice. From there, he kayaks out with a rifle to hunt seals.

But, he says, in the 35 years he has kept dogs, sea ice patterns have become less predictable. The ice used to be thick enough to sled on from February until June or July. Now, it’s freezing later and thinning earlier, and the areas where it’s safe to sled vary frequently.

Sledding is a way to get back to nature, says Bajare.

“When I have a problem, with the family, or life, I go with the dogs into nature.

“And in a day, two days, when I come back, it’s gone,” he says, his face covered by a mosquito net as he cleans his dogs’ enclosure on a rocky outcrop outside the village.

The dogs loll about Bajare, cleaning their distinctive woolly coats and wagging their curled tails under the mild summer sun.

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