We have made it to our other destination in Greenland – the town of Ilulissat and it is the farthest north we have ever been. We are roughly 220 miles north of the Arctic Circle and still on the west coast of Greenland. It is chilly here – our temperatures have mainly been in the 40s and we’ve had a mix of sunny days, foggy days, and drizzly days.
Before I get into a recap of our time up here, this place warrants a geographical description of what makes it so amazing. This is the most-visited place in Greenland – and given that Greenland is not the easiest place to visit, that doesn’t mean it is overwhelmed with tourists. What makes Ilulissat geographically rare is the Ilulissat Icefjord (it is labeled as Kangia on the map below and Ilulissat is to the far left). The town is not too far from Greenland’s ice sheet and has quite a few active and productive glaciers in its vicinity. Active meaning that the calving events (when the ice breaks off the face of the glacier) happen frequently and productive meaning that the volume of ice that breaks off is high. On the south side of town, there is a fjord that reaches around 25 miles from the coast inland to the ice sheet. There are two very productive glaciers at the east end of the fjord – one of them is the most productive glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. It is called Sermeq Kujalleq and it produces around 20 billion tons of icebergs every year. It is believed that the iceberg that brought down the Titanic originated from this glacier. So you have this fjord that is 25 miles long and like most fjords would be filled with beautiful water and scenery – the difference is that this fjord is totally filled with ice and icebergs. It is not solid – you cannot walk across the fjord because there are still patches of water. As the ice slowly pushes its way through and out of the fjord, the current first takes the ice north past the town of Ilulissat and then eventually wraps around toward the south along the coast of Canada. This setting is what makes this place so special. It is known as the world’s capital of icebergs and even though we are in the middle of August – the sea is filled with ice and it is beautiful.
Getting to Ilulissat last Friday started with our taxi not showing up at 5am, but another person was also waiting for one across the street and her taxi did show up, so we shared the ride to the airport. Checkin and security were simple and we grabbed cheese sandwiches, skyr, and oats while we awaited our departure, scheduled for 7am.
The flight was easy and we landed in Ilulissat around 8:30. This town is the third largest in Greenland and has around 4,700 people calling it home. Our host at our lodging (Jannik) was there to greet us and drove us to the apartment. It has three rooms and we share a bathroom, common area, and kitchen with the other guests. Jannik and Paa live upstairs. It’s a nice place with great views of the water. A mother and daughter from Indonesia were here when we arrived so we chatted with them a little – they are scheduled to depart tomorrow. We unpacked and headed toward the town center – everything is less than a 30-minute walk and most things are a 15-minute walk from the apartment. We stopped at the church but it was locked – it was built in 1782.
Our first stop after the church was the Ilulissat Museum, which has a great history of the town. It is also the home in which Knud Rasmussen lived and had exhibits related to his life. I am just about finished with his book called People of the Arctic North, which is about his expedition to Greenland in the first part of the 20th century. He was born in Greenland and then moved to Denmark at a young age with his family but later became one of the premier experts on the Inuit people across the Arctic north.
We have an excursion booked tomorrow, so we stopped at the World of Greenland office to confirm our details. We had breakfast at Café Nuka – we had an omelet, dark bread, roll, bacon, meats, cheese, cucumbers, oranges, and mint tea. After breakfast, we went to the Art Museum and enjoyed a mix of historical art pieces and contemporary art. The exhibit on Emanual Petersen’s work was both of our favorites – very well put together with context given for the various paintings on the colonial era of Greenland.
We checked out the local gym – looks like good equipment and this one goes for $6 per person for a day pass. We’ll plan to come back for a workout next week. We picked up some groceries to have at the apartment and then hung out at the apartment for a little while. For dinner, we walked to Hangout Bistro. We both enjoyed a Qajaq dark beer – this is brewed down in the south of Greenland. Very good – probably our favorite beer since we’ve been in Iceland or Greenland. Sandy had fish n chips and an order of American pancakes; I had chicken wings (they were pretty good) and a beef burrito (that was ok, but I’d have preferred it without the barbeque sauce on it). And then it was home – after not a lot of sleep last night, we were both ready to just chill.
Saturday morning, we awoke to drizzly and cloudy weather. We were relieved when the tour company called to let us know that today’s excursion had been postponed until tomorrow. The weather just wouldn’t have been great for a day out in the icefjord. With the unplanned downtime, we both worked on various logistical things and got our journal updated. The Indonesians left before we were up for their early flight out of Ilulissat so that left the whole apartment to us. And it worked out great for us because the rest of our time here, there were no other arrivals. We were quite happy about that. We left around 1:30 in the afternoon and walked to the Icefjord Center. This was some of our chillier weather – we had a feels-like temperature of 23 degrees. As you walk out of the main part of town, you get to the area where the people keep their sled dogs chained up – there are hundreds of them. This is where they stay through the summer awaiting their duty to get back to work pulling the sleds in the winter. They chain them mainly to protect children. The puppies under five months of age do not have to be chained and they wander freely.
Upon arrival at the Icefjord Center, we each had a chicken panini, Sandy had a hot chocolate, and I had a cappuccino and then we spent around three hours – right up until closing time exploring the center, which is a museum dedicated to Greenland’s ice and ice sheet. It was our favorite of the several museums we have visited in Greenland. The building construction reminds you of the curves of the Northern Lights and you can walk along the roof for a nice view of the icefjord. They have all kinds of displays inside that explain the research going into the history of the ice – the ice sheet is two miles deep at its thickest point and the ice at the bottom of that part would be close to a million years old. Scientists can study deep ice to learn what the air was composed of at various points in the earth’s history. Fascinating. They had a fun virtual reality tour of one of the scientific bases out on the ice sheet. Excellent books that educated the reader on the ice, the animals, and society. A cool video presentation of the lifecycle of snow and ice as it relates to the ice sheet and the glaciers. We really enjoyed the whole experience.
We stopped at Hotel Hvide Falk for dinner, but they were full so then we went up the street to Café Ilulaq and the chef agreed to grill halibut for us (instead of deep fried) along with shrimp fried rice and this time we had the Qajaq lager – another good beer choice. After dinner, back home and after showers, we watched a movie that was playing at the Knud Rasmussen house, but there weren’t enough seats to watch while we were there. It is called The Wedding of Palo (we found it on Amazon Prime) and the story was written by Rasmussen. It told the story of two men in love with the same woman in Eastern Greenland. The quality of the filming was excellent considering it was done in the 1930s.
Sunday was much better weather and we headed to our pickup spot at 10:15 where World of Greenland gave us a ride to the airport along with our other two traveling partners for the excursion – a couple from Denmark. Christian was our pilot and we had a 30-minute flight up and across the icefjord, we then circled in front of the massive glacier – the front of the glacier is as high as a 50-story building, and then we landed in a spot to take in the views. We were hoping we would land on the ice sheet, but that wasn’t the case. After 30 minutes there, we got back on the helicopter and made the 30-minute flight back to Ilulissat. The air was so pure, the environment was very quiet, there was sometimes a chilly breeze, but the sun made things warm enough to be able to totally enjoy the weather and the experience. Pretty cool experience.
Back in town, we stopped at Disko Line to make reservations for a boat tour on Tuesday and then we walked to see the harbor. For lunch, we went back to Hotel Hvide Falk and had musk ox burgers and fries – delicious. We tried a couple of different beers here – one was made with crowberries that grow wild in this area. Sandy had seen a picture online of a view in Ilulissat that she wanted to try to replicate. We asked several people if they knew where the spot was and only one of them ended up being able to identify where we might try to find it. The one clue for us was that a SPAR grocery store is in the picture, so we started to hunt down where the picture was taken from. After some searching and comparing of buildings (the picture is from eight years ago so the buildings aren’t necessarily the same color), we nailed it. At the start of the Yellow Trail near the power plant, we were able to get this picture of the town. We love seeing the various colors that people paint their buildings and houses.
We were home at 4:20, took a nap, and just snacked on kiwis, walnuts, and chocolate milk while watching Destination X, America’s Got Talent, and Frasier. We also enjoy just sitting watching the bay out the window. The ice is always changing and there are lots of boats in the area.
Monday was low key. We went to the gym and got our workouts in. Nice because it has good equipment and it wasn’t busy at all. In the late afternoon, we walked over to the Hotel Icefjord because our Indonesian friends had told us how good the snow crabs are. We had to try them, and they were right – so good. They come from across the bay right off Disko Island. We also shared a couple of tapas-type things that are called Smorrebrod in Danish. One was egg and shrimp on top of a piece of dark bread and the other was smoked reindeer on top of a piece of dark bread. The views from the restaurant overlooking the bay were just what you would expect here in Ilulissat – amazing.
Back at the apartment, Jannik and Paa were getting ready to deliver freshly picked crowberries to a couple of local hotels and they offered a bag to us. That was nice and we have enjoyed them the rest of our time here. These are the same berries that one of the beers we tried at Hotel Hviske Feld is made with.
Tuesday was another excursion day. We left the apartment at 8:45 and then Disko Lines drove the group in vans to the dock and we boarded our 60-passenger boat (it was full) at 9:30. This tour started with a three hour journey north. We passed a small settlement north of Ilulissat and went by a couple of fjords. The second fjord we passed granted us an audience with two or three humpback whales. They tend to hang out at the fjord openings because that is where the fresh water is coming out to meet the sea water and it stirs up the food source (mostly plankton and krill). Next up, we passed a waterfall and then turned inland to the highlight of the excursion – the Eqip Glacier. This is one of the most active glaciers in Greenland and its face is as high as a 60-story building. An active glacier means that it calves often, not necessarily producing the most ice like the one at the icefjord. We spent two hours idling in front of the glacier – staying more than a half-mile away – and it was calving on average every five minutes, I would guess. You would first see large chunks of ice tumbling down from the glacier and then shortly after that you would hear the thunderous sound that took a few seconds to reach the ship. Shortly after that, the boat would start to rock a little from the waves. This is why you stay far enough away and keep the boat engine idling – if a significant chunk breaks off, it can create a tsunami that can overwhelm boats. Our guides gave great information about the glacier and glaciers in general. Here are some tidbits:
- Hanging glaciers are those that have their faces on land attached to bedrock and they typically calve smaller pieces of ice; floating glaciers extend out over the water and they are the ones that calve the huge icebergs that take years to melt
- The Eqip glacier calves often but it is also constantly pushed (as all glaciers in Greenland) by the weight of the ice sheet; the glacial loss is attributed more to rain than sun melting the ice – the rain instead of snow causes more calving and the ice sheet can’t replenish the ice as fast
- All glaciers in Greenland are currently shrinking – none are growing – in terms of the eras of the world, we are currently in an interglacial time period and this time period known as Holocene started approximately 11,700 years ago – these time periods occur roughly every 100,000 years in the last 800,000 years
- It is projected that the Eqip glacier will no longer be seen from the water in about 15 years
We were served an adequate lunch on board – chicken, pasta salad, potatoes, and a granola bar. We did this excursion to see the glacier, but then we got the bonus of getting to meet with and talk with Emi and George from Switzerland. We really enjoyed getting to know them and we hope we get to stay in touch with them. They had just been on the east side of Greenland and as they were sailing around that area, they saw 11 polar bears – awesome!
They were staying at the lodge out by the glacier overnight along with around half of the boat, so after the glacier we dropped them off and picked up new people who had stayed at the lodge and then headed back to Ilulissat. We were back around 6:30 and then stopped at Hangout Bistro for dinner. Sandy had an Italian omelet, toast, and pancakes. I had the English breakfast and pancakes.
We had more fun planned for Wednesday. We left the apartment at 10:30 and the first stop was the hospital. We were hoping to get our blood pressure checked – just our normal monthly check. Unfortunately, they only help people if they are sick, so the nurse promptly escorted us out telling us it was a pity that we didn’t call ahead first. It was only a ten-minute walk so we didn’t think it was a pity that we didn’t call. We thought it was a pity that they only help you if you are sick instead of taking proactive measures for people like us. Next, we went to the grocery store to pick up sandwiches and crackers for today’s hike. The Ilulissat Icefjord is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it has three excellent walking trails. We had the time while we were here, so we opted for the longer trail – called the Blue Trail. It’s a little more than four miles and has plenty of ups and downs and rocks, but it is very well marked and is a great walk. Much of the walk is right along the icefjord and the views are spectacular for the entire walking route. With our stops for photos, bananas, and sandwiches, the walk took us around 3.5 hours. We were thankful for our mosquito nets because the weather was nice and warm and not windy – the perfect recipe for great views and lots of bugs. I felt bad for the people who didn’t have mosquito nets. The trail is well-traveled, but not overly – until we got close to the end and the Icefjord Center, we only saw around 20 people on the trail The air was clean and crisp and it was quiet. As we were walking along the icefjord, several times we heard thunderous booms of ice calving and falling apart. We couldn’t see any of the calving, but the sounds were fantastic.
Following the hike, we treated ourselves to hot chocolate at the Icefjord Center, then stopped at the grocery store and picked up soup for dinner at home along with more of the crowberries from Jannik and Paa.
Other than traveling tomorrow through Sunday to our next destination, this brings our time in Greenland to a close. It’s only been two and a half weeks, but we both feel like we were able to get a good sense of the country and we are feeling like we are ready to move on. It’s quite difficult and expensive to get around the country so that led us to eliminate some of our other planned stops, which I am sure we would have enjoyed, but getting to spend time in the capital and then up here in Ilulissat has been perfect.