1000 Places to See Before You Die includes only one entry for the Autonomous Territory of Greenland – Disko Bay.  Nowhere is East Greenland mentioned. Author Patricia Schultz only gives the Faeroe Islands one entry as well while Iceland merits two.  The mother country, Denmark, gets ten.  But as she said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune when she was out promoting her 2019 update of her book; 1000 places, can you really find that many spots?  Her reply, “How can I narrow it down to just 1,000?”

BUCKET LIST

At the time of her interview, Schultz estimated she had personally visited about 80% of the 1000+ spots in her book (“We’re really loose with the count.  In the beginning, it was brought to our attention that we had, like 1,122.  What’s written in stone is there need to be at least 1,000.  That way everyone’s happy.”).  From her brief write up on Disco Bay, I am thinking this probably rates as one of those places not yet visited.

A big problem with writing a list book for a potential bucket list of places to visit is always going to be what to include and what to leave off.  You find an entry for “Madeira” but not the “Azores”; “Picos de Europa” are there but not the magnificent Ordesa Canyon and Monte Perdido in the Pyrenees; and closer to home, Washington State gets two entries for “San Juan Islands” and “Pike Street Market” in Seattle.  Missing areas include the magnificent mountain parks – North Cascades, Olympics, Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens.  A list of such a wide range remains at the whim of the author.  It is not absolute by any means, probably even in the mind of the author.

GREENLANDIC EXPOSURE

But back to Greenland.  If you fly from the western US to Europe, you probably have flown over the world’s largest island.  You might miss it on the way to Europe since you normally fly at night.  On the way back to the US, sitting on the righthand side of the plane, if the weather is clear below – sometimes a big “if” – you can experience Greenland from seven miles high (The sun shines from the lefthand side, so other people around you may complain if you leave the window shade open too long).  The sight is amazing; massive glaciers, rugged mountains, an ocean filled with icebergs liberated from the gargantuan central ice cap that takes an hour to cross even in a jet flying at 500+ miles per hour.

On a flight I returned from working on a series of vision clinics in Albania, my transatlantic flight flew from Frankfurt am Main to Seattle.  We cruised over the east Greenland with the sun low in the sky to the south, the long Arctic night about to begin as we flew in the late autumn of early December.  The view over the wildness of the east coast of Greenland proved simply magical in the fast-approaching sunset over the shortened daylight.

further exposure

We would fly across Greenland leaving the island behind appropriately over Ilulissat and Disko Bay, or at least according to the flight map shown on the little seat screen.  Clouds built up about halfway across the crossing and would not let up until our flight reached across to Baffin Island.

My interest in what I saw further expanded with reading Jon Gertner’s The Ice at the End of the World:  An Epic Journey into Greenland’s Buried Past and our Perilous Future.  His book focuses upon early and later explorers of Greenland and its vast icecap, as well as investigations into what the future might hold for the vast island.

GREENLAND OVERVIEW

Greenland is mostly ice – east Greenland, no exception.  The weight of the ice, according to scientists, has pushed the central parts of the island down creating a huge trough underneath.  Even here in this truly wild country, people live and have lived for centuries.  Greenland was the first meeting of European and native Inuit peoples back as far as 985 when several hundred followed Erik the Red across from Iceland lured by the charisma of their leader banished from his home in Iceland for murder.  They founded a Western and Eastern Settlement where, with time, the population of Greenlandic Norse flourished to some 2,500 inhabitants farming along the southwestern fjords.  Trading routes became established between Greenland, Iceland and Norway with walrus ivory and furs going east in return for fabrics, wood and iron.  It was the Little Ice Age of the 1200s which began to breakdown the attempts at farming.

With cooler climates, the seas became more treacherous for traders and with the ivory from Russia and Africa becoming more available fewer ships made their way to the Norse colonies.  The colonies survived until the early 1400s after which silence reigned.  Several expeditions went out over the succeeding centuries to try to re-discover the old settlements, but the exact locations became lost in the mists of time.

POST-VIKING REDISCOVERY

Searching for the lost Norse, Hans Egede, a Norwegian Lutheran pastor, organized a trip sponsored by the Danish king – Norway part of Denmark at the time – to find the lost colonies.  After a few years after setting up an initial mission on the coastal island of Kangeq – or the Island of Hope, as Egede named it – the pastor moved his mission to the nearby mainland where he set up anew in what became Godthab or today’s Nuuk, the capital today of Greenland. 

In the absence of the original Norse settlers, Egede concentrated his missionary work on the local Inuit.  With their help, he continued his search for the Norse colonies.  He rediscovered ruins of the old colonists at Hvalsey in the far southwest, about 300 miles south of Godthab.  His expedition sponsors wanted him to try and cross the ice to the east to discover the location of the Eastern Settlement, which he wisely rejected because of the difficulty of the terrain – mountains, snow and ice.

VIKING AGE

Egede’s discovery was in fact the Eastern Settlement.  This eventually proved the main Norse settlement with eventually some 500 groups of ruins of Norse farms rediscovered along with the ruins of 16 churches.   In this area, Erik the Red established his home – Brattahlið – next to the present settlement of Qassiarsuk.  The site lies a mile across the Tunulliarfik Fjord from the larger village of Narsarsuaq where a airfield left over from World War 2 serves as the principal airfield for southwestern Greenland with seasonal service to Iceland via Icelandair.  The location 60 miles inland – all part of the Kujataa UNESCO World Heritage Site – from the ocean sheltered the Norse and today’s inhabitants from much of the worst of storms coming in off the ocean. 

A reconstruction of a church stands there today – Þjóðhildarkirkja (Thjoldhild’s Church).  The church was named after the wife of Erik the Red.  Erik’s son, Leif, had gone to Norway where he converted to Christianity – Roman Catholic.  On his return to Greenland, to introduce Christianity to the Norse, his ship became blown off course.  He ended up in what he called Vinland down south near the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  Eventually, he made his way back to Greenland where he was able to convert his mother, Þjóðhildr, while in one saga, his father remains true to the old Norse gods.

a bishop of the farthest outpost of the new world

A first bishop arrived in 1126.  He had a small cathedral dedicated to St. Nicholas built at Garðar – Igaliku today, about six miles straight south from Brattahlið.  Norwegian-born bishops served the Eastern Settlement – Eystribyggð – with its 200-300 farms until the end of the 14^th century.  About the same time, the Thule people, ancestors to today’s Inuit, also reached Greenland encountering the Norse Greenlanders. 

western settlement

Meanwhile, the Western Settlement – Vestribygð – was actually set up to the northwest of Eystribyggð boasting about 95 farms and about a quarter of the number of inhabitants with about 1,000 people.  The smaller population was due to the shorter agricultural season.  The Western Settlement seems to have disappeared in the mid-14^th century probably because of the onset of the Little Ice Age which began in the late 13^th and early 14^th centuries.  The western farms were located further up the fjords around Nuuk in grounds less hammered by ocean storms.

GREENLAND TODAY

Nuuk boasts of a population of almost 20,000, a rapidly increasing number with the highest number of non-Inuit people in any town of Greenland.  The town accounts for half of Greenland’s immigrants and a quarter of the Inuit population of the country – 9 out of 10 Greenlanders live in towns.

But my flight went over the east Greenland region included within the municipality of Sermersooq.  This municipality includes Nuuk but also reaches over to the eastern part of the island accounting for the Ammassalik area.  This is the main population center on the eastern shores.  Further to the northeast of Ammassalik but still within the municipality is the Ittoqqortoormiit area – Scoresbysund – with its 345 inhabitants, described as one of the most remote settlements on Earth.

EAST GREENLAND – TUNU

East Greenland exudes wildness.  The area simply accentuates the region in which man can actually survive long term.  The Inuit people living in the area came slowly from the north about or just a bit later than the Norse set up settlements on the southwestern areas of Greenland.  Cold, eternal fog combined it to make the Norse head west where they had a chance to raise grains for their livestock.  In eastern Greenland, they had no such ground.  Even the Inuit, while there are relics of Inuit inhabitation along the coast, only found permanence here in the fjords around Sermaliik and Scoresby Sound. 

The Ammassalik area has over 3,000 people with most in the town of Tasillaq – over 2,000 inhabitants.  There is no airport in Tasiilaq though only a heliport.  The only airport in the area is found on the nearby island of Kulusuk from which the helicopter ride takes 15 minutes or summer boat transfers – 30-45 minutes.  The airport on Kulusuk is left over from World War 2 – one of several major runways built by American forces, three of which serve Greenlandic civil transport needs. Another – Thule – in the far north remains the American Pituffik Space Base.

AMMASSALIK

Kulusuk airfield was built in 1956 to support a Distant Early Warning Line station.  Some of the equipment used by the US military is still used to maintain the airfield.  The airfield serves as the international entry point for visitors to east Greenland via Icelandair flights from Reykavik.  Incoming flights – Icelandair serves Kulusuk from Keflavik while Air Greenland sends flights over from Nuuk – are timed to meet transfers to Air Greenland services to Nuuk, Tasiilaq and Nerlerit Inaat – serving Ittoqqortoormiit via helicopter.  There are calls to open a newer airport in Tasiilaq.  Kulusuk – along with Kangerlussuaq – would then be downgraded.

Tasiilaq sits as the main town for the region.  Like all other villages in east Greenland, Tasiilaq lies isolated with the longest road leading just under two miles leading to the local hydropower plant.  Situated on the south end of Ammassalik Island, Tasillaq is one of the fastest growing towns in Greenland. 

language and populations

The language here is Tunumiisut or East Greenlandic.  UNESCO classifies the language as “definitely endangered” with only 3,000 to 3,500 speakers.  The language is closely related to Kalaallisut – Greenlandic – but probably due to the isolated nature of the area, the East Greenlandic, often considered a dialect but verges onto its own separate language.  Both are related to the other Inuit languages found across the Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska. 

If you look at a map of Greenland, you will notice very few areas where the ice allows possible development by man.  The region around Tasiilaq and the Sermilik Fjord shows some of the most unique ruggedness found in the world – glaciers, mountains, fjords.  Glaciers coming off the main ice cap like Knud Rasmussen and Karale show wide tidewater faces true drama. 

Within the five municipalities, eastern Greenland – Ammassalik and Illoqqortoormiut (Ittoqqortoormiit) were combined with the western regions around Nuuk into the new municipality of Sermersooq.  The most populous municipality, of the over 23,000 people, only about 3,000 live in the east.

DREAMS

But as I sit in my airplane seat at 40,000 feet flying at 500+ mph against the jet stream looking down onto the dramatic late winter sunshine coming off the mountains, fjords and glaciers of eastern Greenland it seems a dream wrapped in an enigma.  The enigma simply exists as how does one get to experience such magic personally instead of just from a window seat on an airplane.  Of course, on a probably rare sunny day in early December, maybe eastern Greenland is better observed from on high?

Unless you live there, the season for visiting is a bit short – July-August, maybe September.  Northern lights and dogsledding experiences open a second season into winter, but then weather can play havoc with the best laid plans.  I spent two weeks tramping across the Jotunheimen of Norway one summer with half of the time walking in rain and snow.  We summited Galdhopiggen – Norway’s highest peak – in a white out.  Thankfully, there was a restaurant at the top to get out of the weather briefly before heading out and down a bit.  Then there was the ten-day kayak trip up in Glacier Bay, Alaska with about a third of the days without full Scottish conditions. 

HELHEIM – VIKING HELL ON EARTH

In Norse mythology, the goddess Hel ruled over Helheim one of the Nine Worlds.  Helheim consisted of the endstage for people dying of natural causes – age or disease – and not those dying in battle (Those folks hoped for Valhalla, one of the halls of the realm of Aasgard).  The realm of Helheim once entered souls remained in perpetuity.  Hel hails from the mischievous god Loki and the giantess Angboða.  She greeted the dead when they arrived – a perilous journey to begin with.  Located far to the north and guarded by another giantess Garm, Helheim could only be entered by the dead.

Like the other Worlds, Helheim was divided into subsections; one section for those dying of disease, another for those dying of old age; another was reserved for those dying dishonorable deaths.  Somber and dark, Helheim still gave a place where spirits endured after life on earth.

The glacier

One of the biggest glaciers in this land of giants is Helheim Glacier which pours off the central ice cap as a gargantuan superhighway of ice running into the northern head of Sermalik Fjord.  From 37,000 feet up, the glacier is truly awe-inspiring.  It is also the site of research into glacial retreat in the time of climactic changes.  YouTube videos show a little of the natural drama happening here in east Greenland.  The collapsing of the ice is reminiscent of the scenes from the movie Inception. 

Another video shows the vast river of ice from a helicopter.  Still another gives a NASA visualization of the glacier and its surroundings.  Landsat photos have been compiled over the years to further evaluate glacial retreat.

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS

Bugs and boggy ground conditions also come into play.  In Alaska and Norway, the bugs did not play a huge factor, but on the island of Skye in Scotland, the famous midges said hello.  As well as in Scotland, what looked like a nice cross-country walk could easily become bogged down literally.  Rubber boots can be a godsend, but they also add space in your gear.

Finally, there are the costs.  They are substantial.  If you think traveling in Scandinavia or worse, Iceland, is expensive, Greenland takes it up several notches.  You can fly into Kusuluk – the only main airport in eastern Greenland with the exception of a few flights into Nerlerit Inaat if you want to really get away from it all up farther north into Scoresby Sound.  Then, you either deal with the travel providers in Kulusuk or its off by helicopter to Tasiilaq or wherever you are beginning from.

You can go self-supported, taking maybe a folding kayak and a drone like Viktor Poznov – see some of his video posts on his travels here in east Greenland as well as many other spectacular locations around the world.  Most of us will probably go with some tour or another at first to gain a better understanding of the potential difficulties surrounding Greenland travel – weather, few flights and/or boats, costs.

Those three difficulties add up quickly.  Fog, rain, snow, wind and cold can all change an itinerary quickly – or prolong it.  The same weather conditions can alter transportation possibilities or lack thereof.  And then there are the costs.

GREENLAND’S PUSH TO INCREASE TOURISM

Greenland’s government is interested in using tourism – about 130,000 visitors came in 2023 – as a second pillar to add to the country’s economic base after fisheries.  The country would like to figure in on a small bit of the tourist apple which neighboring Iceland has eaten in full.  A first big step happens with the new international airport in Nuuk scheduled to open this year allowing direct flights from both North America and Europe.  The runway at Kangerlussuaq stands presently as Greenland’s major international airport.  The runway in Nuuk, like most other runways in Greenland, is too short for international traffic.  Kangerlussuaq – population almost 600 – sits roughly halfway between Nuuk to the south and Ilulissat – Jacobshavn – to the north on Disko Bay.

As noted, international flights to western Greenland have operated up to now out of Kangerlussuaq meaning another transfer on a much smaller plane to Nuuk.  The company responsible for building the Nuuk airport also is building a larger runway/airport at Ilulissat and Qaqortoq in southern Greenland.  Qaqortoq replaces the old American runway at Narsarsuaq which will downsize to a heliport.  The new airports will undoubtedly spur tourism in Nuuk, up at Disko Bay, as well as in the south, but for the eastern part of the country, air travel remains tied to the old American airfields at both Nerlerit Inaat – occasional flights to Iceland – and especially Kulusuk.

working to avoid some of iceland’s problems

And there is always the old adage “Be careful of what you wish for.”  Iceland, again, is a great example.  There are only 300,000 Icelanders, but there were over 2.3 million overnight visitors to the island nation in 2023.  Of course, Iceland has been pushing tourism as their own way of expanding their local economy for some years now.  Similar to what happened in New Zealand after The Lord of the Rings trilogies, The Game of Thrones helped boost Iceland’s tourist numbers.  One problem arising is the lack of airplane seats for locals.  Most tickets end up reserved by tour groups.

DREAMS OF WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN

The cost of a trip to Greenland, lack of interest in my travel partner and age, all represent factors moving an epic trip to Tunu probably out of my ballpark.  I will have to satisfy myself with glimpses from transatlantic flights, gazing down on wild wonders out of my plane window.  Amazed at what lies beneath.

a list of local tour operators running tours in east greenland

Tasiilaq:  Arctic Dream; Arctic Wonderland Tours – also run hotels in both Tasillaq and Kulusuk; Dines Tours – specialize in dogsled trips.  You can obtain your own dogsled license after a couple days of training; Pirhuk – operates out of Kulusuk where they also have a lodge; Tasiilaq Tours

Ittoqqortoormiit:  Nanutravel – for trips in the far northeast out of Scorseby Sound Greenland:  Greenland Tours – check their east Greenland section

There are many foreign tour operators which operate in Greenland, as well. Tours can be quite elaborate with prices to match.