Scoresbysund is identified as the place where Peter Føjl brought a fellow former navy serviceman after rescuing him during a winter exercise in Greenland. The brief recollection gives the location a specific narrative role: it is the destination reached after an emergency under the ice and a prolonged wait for help.

Setting in the Recollection

Scoresbysund appears in a conversation between Smilla and a Danish Navy officer as the answer to her question about where Peter Føjl took him. The officer recalls that they were on exercises in Greenland and that the cold suited Føjl. The passage establishes Scoresbysund as a Greenland setting in the men’s service history, without describing the town itself or its wider surroundings.

The Navy Exercise and Rescue

The officer recounts that he and Føjl served together in the Seals, a Danish Navy unit, when they were in their early twenties. Their training included demanding physical exercises and a winter dive beneath sea ice, where a hole had been opened with explosives. During that dive, the officer’s breathing equipment failed after freezing water blocked its valves; he had not yet attached the line used to find the way back to the opening in the ice.

Føjl rescued him and continued resuscitation while they waited for transportation. The weather was bad, and the available helicopter was small, so the return was delayed. In response to Smilla’s question about where the rescue ended, the officer names Scoresbysund. The place is thus linked not just to a military exercise but to the outcome of Føjl’s intervention and the journey back to safety.

Narrative Significance

The memory presents Scoresbysund through the practical facts of an emergency rather than as a scenic or descriptive location. Its name closes an account of danger, rescue, and endurance, while the officer’s recollection emphasizes Føjl’s reliability under pressure. Later, Smilla says that Føjl has disappeared and that she has been unable to reach him, giving the remembered history of their friendship an uneasy present-tense relevance.