Greenland Itineraries

Greenland is the world's largest island and its most sparsely populated country — a vast Arctic wilderness roughly the size of Western Europe but home to just 56,000 people, 90% of whom are indigenous Inuit. Its ice sheet, the second-largest body of ice on Earth after Antarctica, covers 80% of the country and rises nearly three kilometres thick in its centre. For travellers, this translates into landscapes that feel closer to another planet than to anywhere else in Europe: icebergs the size of apartment blocks drifting through pristine fjords, tiny coastal settlements of brightly painted wooden houses clinging to rocky shores, vast tundra where musk oxen and reindeer graze, and a sky that in winter becomes one of the world's great stages for the Northern Lights. Nuuk, the capital, is a compact city of about 19,000 people where modernist Nordic architecture mixes with the brightly coloured houses of the colonial old harbour. The National Museum preserves remarkably well-preserved 15th-century Inuit mummies. From Nuuk, boats run year-round to spot whales, seals, and sea eagles. Ilulissat, north of the Arctic Circle, is the headline destination. The Ilulissat Icefjord — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — is the most productive glacier in the Northern Hemisphere, calving more than 20 billion tonnes of ice each year. Boat tours through the iceberg-strewn Disko Bay offer some of the most extraordinary scenery any traveller can experience, and the midnight sun of May through July creates otherworldly golden light. Further south, in the UNESCO-listed region around Qaqortoq, Viking settlers from Iceland lived from around 985 CE for nearly 500 years; the ruins of Erik the Red's farm at Brattahlíð can still be visited. Kangerlussuaq sits at the edge of the Greenland ice sheet and offers some of the country's best aurora viewing, along with the chance to walk on the ice sheet itself. The east coast, around Tasiilaq and Ittoqqortoormiit, is more remote and more traditional, with Inuit hunting culture still vibrant and some of the world's best opportunities to see polar bears, walruses, and narwhals. There are no roads between Greenlandic towns — all travel is by boat, helicopter, or small plane, which keeps visitor numbers low and the sense of wilderness intact. Food is based on what the land and sea provide: muskox, reindeer, seal, whale, fish (halibut, cod, Arctic char), and in summer surprisingly sweet berries and Arctic herbs. Recent years have seen the first Michelin-aware restaurants in Nuuk embracing this New Nordic bounty. Summer (June–August) is the window for iceberg tours, hiking, and midnight sun; late winter (February–April) offers dogsledding, aurora, and skiing. Travelling in Greenland requires flexibility — weather controls schedules here — but the reward is unmatched.