Enchanting landscapes, exciting wildlife and new airports opening… is Greenland the new Iceland?
Oh dear. I am lost, alone and surrounded by hundreds of howling dogs. Solidly built with pricked ears and wedge-shaped faces, they look like a huge pack of wolves, barking and straining against their chains.
I’ve hiked the nine-mile Kangia Icefjord Trail, traversing rocky moraines past semi-frozen lakes and rugged valleys dotted with hardy purple flowers of dwarf fireweed: little else seems to survive at this latitude.
About 75 percent of Greenland – the world’s largest island – is covered in ice, but in summer the landscape around the coast, where there are cities and settlements, thaws. Without ice, the sled dogs fight boredom. “They just want you to challenge them,” says a small Inuit man, emerging from a tiny shack along the trail as I pass.
Looking at the white expanse from an airplane window, it seems as untamed and reminiscent of the golden age of polar exploration as Antarctica or the North Pole. Nearly nine times the size of the United Kingdom, but with a population of 57,000, it’s a country that evokes images of polar bears, pristine Inuit culture and humble fish ice holes.
In reality, Greenland is much more complicated: geographically North American, politically European (it is a territory of Denmark), and culturally Inuit. Long before Brexit, Greenland had its own Grexit referendum in 1982, after which the EU regained control of marine resources three years later. Fishing accounts for 89 percent of exports.
Vibrant: James Draven travels to Greenland and discovers that while about 75 percent of the island is covered in ice, the landscape thaws in summer around the coast, where there are cities and settlements. Above is the colorful town of Tasiilaq
“We export prawns to Denmark and the UK, and the halibut goes to China,” says a fisherman at Ilulissat harbour. He is baiting improbably long fishing lines. The sapphire blue water around him crowds with boats.
‘We’ve been fishing for halibut here for 100 years, but because of climate change, the cold-water fish are now moving north. Nowadays you see a lot more whales coming to eat plankton in these waters. There are 30 or 40 whales here.’
On the hill above, a polar bear skin is stretched out on a drying rack in the sun.
Icebreaker: James says Greenland ‘seems as untamed and reminiscent of the golden age of polar exploration as Antarctica or the North Pole’
“In the 1990s the sea froze in winter, but it doesn’t anymore, which is good for fishermen, but hunters can’t use dog sleds as often, so they’re slowly becoming fishermen too.”
About 4,500 people – and about the same number of sled dogs – live in Ilulissat, Greenland’s third largest settlement. One in three inhabitants earns a living from fishing. However, since the Ilulissat Icefjord was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2004, a secondary industry has been steadily growing: tourism.
It is hoped that it will become big business. The government of Greenland wants to open three new airports by 2025. Meanwhile, a new Northern Lights observatory is being built just south of Ilulissat.
No wonder the country is hailed as the new Iceland.
Arriving in this small town 220 miles north of the Arctic Circle, my accommodation isn’t an igloo, but the 78-room Best Western Plus, complete with a rooftop restaurant and Wi-Fi throughout.
Above, local women wear traditional clothes. Greenland is geographically North American, politically European (it’s a territory of Denmark) and culturally Inuit, James explains
Ilulissat is full of surprises. On the other side of the Kangia Icefjord, the small 50-person settlement of Ilimanaq is the temporary home of KOKS, a restaurant that remarkably holds two Michelin stars.
Housed in a restored 18th century lodge, the restaurant serves haute cuisine portions of whale blubber, seaweed and musk ox. It can only be reached by helicopter or boat.
The fourth series of Denmark’s political success drama, Borgen, I’m told was filmed on location in Ilulissat, meaning many landmarks, such as the remote wooden church, seem unexpectedly familiar.
Majestic: Three new airports are planned, allowing more visitors to spot Greenland’s polar bears (file photo)
‘The Zionkerk was built in 1779, there on the coast,’ says Palle Jeremiassen, mayor of the municipality of Avannaata. “But in 1929 they had to move the whole structure uphill, because every time an iceberg capsized in the bay, it would be submerged. That happens quite often, so the municipality has had wet feet for 150 years.’
The city’s brightly colored, prefabricated wooden buildings are each color-coded to identify their original function: yellow for medical services, red for schools, green for engineering, blue for fish factories.
Ilulissat is now teeming with cafes, gift shops and tour operators who organize boat trips across Disko Bay to see calving (breaking) icebergs and breaching whales.
James stays at the 78-room Best Western Plus in Illuissat, a hotel with a rooftop restaurant and Wi-Fi throughout
Above is Zion Church in Illuissat, which was built next to the shore in 1779
‘After the Second World War, the Danish government decided to make Greenland more modern,’ says my young Danish guide, Karen Buus. She stands in front of a squatted apartment building, where fish hang to dry on balconies next to Hello Kitty bedding. ‘The buildings behind me were put here because we wanted to move the local population out of their sod huts into apartments. It was quite a culture shock for the Inuit. The floors of their apartments would be soaked in blood all the time because they would still cut seal meat.’
Ilulissat’s latest piece of architecture is the £17.5 million Icefjord Centre, just outside the town and inspired by the image of a snowy owl soaring above the landscape.
The building is a museum and meeting place, designed to provide protection from the biting wind on the way to the Unesco-listed Icefjord. Inside, visitors will find delicate exhibits, each encased in pieces of glass to look like tiny icebergs. They describe in miniature the local wildlife, Inuit culture and the retreat of the Jakobshavn Glacier. In the gift shop, I notice thin blue lines on the saleswoman’s knuckles, a visible reminder of her Inuit heritage, and she explains that “they represent Takannaaluk, the mother of marine mammals. The story goes that her father cut off her fingers when she tried to cling to his boat during a storm at sea, and they turned into all the sea creatures we know today.’
A wooden boardwalk leads from the visitor center through a rugged landscape of charcoal gray and sage green, before ending at the abandoned 19th-century hamlet of Sermermiut. Beyond are panoramic views of the vast ice fjord, choked by frozen formations: towering, frigid cliffs framing vast expanses of ice and “ice sculptures,” snow-blind white and electric blue.
The landscape is fascinating. This is where the ice from the 250,000-year-old Jakobshavn Glacier enters the sea, with over 46 km3 of ice calving into the water each year with these spectacular but disturbing results – alarming because of the climate change they represent.
Greenland is on the verge of change, but the country is investing heavily in tourism to cope with the upcoming changes.