The three bundled up figures, puny against the vastness of miles of snow, trudged toward a hole they had cut into the ice.

       Their sled was parked nearby, and the woolly dogs that pulled it were huddled on the frozen ground, barking for food.

       Man and dog had to move carefully out here. In some places the ice was three feet thick, in others, it cracked like crystal.

       This trio of Greenlanders, and their hungry, howling sled dogs, were following a tradition — ice fishing in a glacier fjord — that members of the Inuit community have been doing for eons. And this moment out in the clean, white snow was a quiet respite from a world changing around them at dizzying speed.

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       One of the bundled up Greenlanders — Laila Sandgreen — had just hired 10 Filipinos to work at her cafe.

       Her husband, Hans Sandgreen, a hardcore ice fishermen of few words, is investing in a growing fleet of expensive snowmobiles for the family tourist business, which faces more and more competition.

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