Travel Guide

Places To See

The Southern Fjords

Astonishingly grand spires of granite soar straight out of Greenland's southernmost fjords like the teeth of an interplanetary crocodile. Climbers rate the rock faces of peaks like Uiluit Qaaqa (Ketil), Ulamertorsuaq (Uli) and The Baroness as among the world's finest challenges.

For the less active it's easy to put your head right in the crocodile's mouth by simply cruising down one of the fjords.

Most visits start from Nanortalik, itself a truly delightful village whose entire old town area has been preserved as a heart-burstingly picturesque living museum. The main choice is between Tasermiut, a truly grand fjord leading to a nose of glacier, or the shorter but arguably more spectacular Torssuqatoq which culminates with the extraordinarily photogenic village of Aappilattoq. With more time and patience there are yet more fabulous fjords to discover beyond Aappilattoq, though there's always a danger that all access is blocked by pesky floating ice-floes.

Although public ferries go down some lovely fjords from Nanortalik, the very finest require boat-hires, tours or hitching a ride with local hunters

Upernavik Old Town Museum

The entire historical district of Upernavik is basically an outdoor museum. The museum itself, Greenland's oldest, is a real surprise. Most interesting is the original qajaq ensemble complete with harpoon, throwing stick, bird skewer, knife, seal-stomach float (to prevent seals diving or sinking after being hit) and a line made of leather thong.

Ilulissat Kangerlua

The greatest tourist attraction in all of Greenland is the astonishing Ilulissat Kangerlua (Ilulissat Icefjord), a berg-packed bay fed by the 5km (3mi) wide and 1100m (3608ft) thick glacier Sermeq Kujalleq. The glacier flows an average of 25m (82ft) daily and is the world's most prolific outside Antarctica.

A Unesco World Heritage site since 2004, the bay's mouth is filled with bergs the size of apartment blocks or whole towns. There's no sight more mesmerising than gazing upon these monsters and listening to the almighty thunderclap roars that they emit when they fissure or explode in the warmth of the summer sun. Best of all the whole spectacle can be seen without the expense and organisation of a boat or helicopter rental that you'll need to see other ice-fjords around Greenland. From November to April Ilulissat is also a possible base for organising dog-sled tours.

Pre-Departure Information

When to go?

Paris in the spring? Don't even think about it - the Arctic is where you really want to be. For that dreamy fantasy of dogsleds, ice fishing and vast blue skies, the Arctic spring brings long days, bearable temperatures, good snow cover and the buzz of a land shaking off a long, dark winter. The best time for dogsledding and skiing tours is between late March and early May, and most trips to the North Pole take place in April.

The summer months (mid-July to the first week in September) are peak time for tourists and feel-good time for Greenlanders; the days are long, the tundra is a riot of wild flowers and red berries and there is a general feeling of wellbeing and contentment throughout the land. The trade off for these fabulous Arctic summers is mind-bending plagues of mosquitoes that sting all the way through late June to early August.

The most spectacular displays of the aurora borealis can be seen from August to mid-November, and mid-February to early April. Just about all Greenlandic festivals and events occur in the summer months. Going in the harsh winter months between December, January and February is just not a good idea unless you're a scientist studying seasonal effects, or a masochist, or both. However, welcoming the return of the sun after experiencing a winter up north is a truly momentous occasion, with festivals held in every town and village for the light that heralds the coming of spring.

Travel Visa Overview

Citizens of Nordic countries require only an identification card; citizens of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, the US and EU countries require a valid passport but no visa for a maximum stay of 90 days. Most other countries require a visa. Such visas are processed by Danish embassies but just to confuse you a normal Danish or Schengen visa is not usually valid: you'll need a special one specifically mentioning Greenland.

Electricity

220V

50Hz

Electrical Plugs

European plug with two circular metal pins

Health Information

Hypothermia

This occurs when the body loses heat faster than it can produce it and the core temperature of the body falls.

It is frighteningly easy to progress from very cold to dangerously cold due to a combination of wind, wet clothing, fatigue and hunger, even if the air temperature is above freezing. If the weather deteriorates, put on extra layers of warm clothing immediately: a windproof and/or waterproof jacket, plus wool or fleece hat and gloves, are all essential. Have something energy-giving to eat and ensure that everyone in your group is fit, and feeling well and alert.

Symptoms of hypothermia are exhaustion, numb skin (particularly toes and fingers), shivering, slurred speech, irrational or violent behaviour, lethargy, stumbling, dizzy spells, muscle cramps and violent bursts of energy. Irrationality may take the form of sufferers claiming they are warm and trying to take off their clothes.

To treat mild hypothermia, first get the person out of the wind and/or rain, remove their clothing if it's wet and replace it with dry, warm clothing. Give them hot liquids - not alcohol - and some high-energy, easily digestible food. Do not rub victims: instead, allow them to slowly warm themselves. This should be enough to treat the early stages of hypothermia. The early recognition and treatment of mild hypothermia is the only way to prevent severe hypothermia, which is a critical condition.

Weather Information

Things are summer-ish between May and mid-August, when the thermometer busts a gut to climb over 20°C (68°F) on the southwest coast. It can be wet and windy, though, and coastal fog is common. By late August, nights are getting colder and by mid-September, there's new snow and genuinely cold weather. Arctic winters - any time from mid-October to March - are long, harsh and very, very dark. In the far north the sun disappears for months on end, and a perpetual night descends. In the far south, temperatures of -20°C (-4°F) can be expected, but further north it can be -40°C (-40°F) or lower for weeks.

History and Culture

Pre-20th Centure History

Greenland's history would read something like this: 'Nothing much happened, nothing much happened, nothing much happened. A couple of blokes arrived but left pretty much straight away. Several decades went past - nothing much happened - and then another bloke with red hair arrived and stayed a bit longer but then after that, for about four centuries, things got really quiet and nothing much happened.' As an historical entity Greenland lacks the Grand Narratives: it's light on when it comes to all-out bloody wars, pukka colonels with muttonchop whiskers, tinpot dictators, throne-wrestling and other Shakespearian dramas. This can be put down to two things: a minuscule population spread over a vast area, and the effort of surviving under hostile conditions that left precious little time for politicking.

Greenlandic history is a slippery beast, an amalgam of legendary sagas, anecdotal evidence, scientific fact and supposition. Best guesses are that, 5000 years ago, there were two distinct tribes that either melted into each other or sequentially died out, although not much is known about either of them. They were followed by the Saqqaq tribe, who kindly left behind a plethora of artefacts that were subsequently dug up and fussed over by the archaeologists. Scientific data and hypotheses have failed to explain why they also died out.

Time passed...and then a bit more time passed...and then in the 10th century Greenlandic history lumbered to its feet again when the Thule culture arrived on the scene and rapidly spread eastward. This is when, culturally and historically speaking, things really got going. The Thule were relatively sophisticated, responsible for introducing those two Greenland icons, the qajaq (kayak) and the dogsled, and it was probably these two inventions that saved them from going the same way as the hapless tribes before them. The Thule are direct ancestors of the modern-day Greenlandic Inuit.

Greenland did not have sustained contact with Europeans until Eric the Red, the legendary Viking turned up. With a black temper and a dangerous sword he'd already been kicked out of Norway and Iceland and had nowhere else left to run. It was Eric the Red who called the country Greenland as a marketing gimmick to persuade a gang of fellow settlers to follow him voluntarily to his land of exile. Of course the name proved to be more lyrical than factual; most of the time Greenland was anything but. But the trick work and boatloads of Icelanders promptly set about colonising the grassy fringes along the western coast. For a couple of centuries the colonists herded, farmed and hunted while the country slipped back into its usual comatose state. Norway got around to annexing the Greenland in 1261, but it was a futile attempt at control; 130 years later a big chill set in and by the time the country thawed out and the outside world made contact again, the colonists had disappeared, either fully acculturated into, or killed by, the Thule.

Greenland slipped out of mind for another three hundred years until a combination of interest in a passage between Europe and the Far East, the lure of money to be made in whaling and missionary zeal put it back on the map. The conversion rate for the missionaries was fairly high: to the ice-suffering Inuit any religion that punished wrongdoers with heat surely had a lot going for it.

Norway had lost its claim on Greenland in 1605, when Denmark sent an expedition to claim the country in the king's name. Shortly after this it became the focal point for mad dogs, Englishman and Americans, as every explorer worth his salt raced toward the farthest point north. The history books record American overachiever Robert Peary as the first person to reach the North Pole, although his claim remains largely unsubstantiated, and there is enough doubt about the veracity of the trip to suggest that Frederick Cook may have beaten him to it. The Inuit reserve their admiration for a Greenland-born expeditionist by the name of Knud Rasmussen. Not only was he a skilled explorer possessed of enormous stamina and survival skills, he was genuinely attached to the Inuit and their culture.

Modern History

Although Danish sovereignty was established in the 1600s, in 1924 Norway made an ambitious claim for Greenland based on the Icelandic colonists of the second century. The claim was lost and in 1953 the international court ratified Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland. This state of affairs lasted for another 20 years before Greenland agitated for, and received, more autonomy.

While the territory's status was unravelling as fast as an avalanche tobogganing down a mountainside, Greenland unwittingly became a pawn in the Cold War. US bases established in WWII became permanent within the framework of Denmark's membership of NATO, and when the Danes joined the EU, so too did the Greenlanders, even though they'd voted against doing so.

In 1979 the Danish parliament granted Greenland home rule, and in 1985 Greenland pulled out of the EU, a vital move for keeping pesky German, Spanish and British fishing fleets from scooping up the island's greatest asset - fish. Internationally, most of Greenland's political energies have been focused on gaining economic independence from Denmark who for now still pays roughly half of the housekeeping.

Recent History

The coalition government is vigorously pro-independence, but faces the uncomfortable truth that without Danish assistance the country would be effectively bankrupt. But fishing, the biggest money-spinner, is notoriously fickle. So the search is on for new sources of income. Figures weren't widely published, but doubtless budgetary incentives encouraged Greenland to extend the US military's lease on the Thule air base in 2004, despite the very belated admission that the US had somehow 'lost' a hydrogen bomb in nearby fjord. Whoops, cancer, sorry! Meanwhile exploration for valuable minerals and oil continues: a gold mine has opened in the beautiful Kirkespirdalen near Nanortalik but pollution-fearing locals have managed to stop anyone returning to dig uranium from a source at Narsaq. More eccentric money-spinning ideas have included tapping the island's most obvious resource: ice. The heart of its glaciers are centuries old and dateable. One day consumers might pay a premium to chill their cocktails on millennium-old cubes. Or misguided Christian millionaires might pay to baptise their kids in defrosted water that had been preserved from the time of Jesus' life. Well, maybe.