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The journey is relatively comfortable and without any mandatory hardships or special requirements for the participants. It is required, though, that you are agile, have a good health and want to experience the nature on its own terms. Please note that the cruise separates itself from ordinary tourist travel, as we do not have the same possibility to plan the cruise in details. Many elements are unpredictable, and winds, weather, ice and ocean currents are of great importance for the route. The travel description should be viewed as the ideal, which is aimed for, but it will probably not unfold according to schedule, even if we should have weeks of blazing sunshine and high pressure. The leader of the expedition sets the course and program for each day in collaboration with the ship’s captain insuring the best utilisation of the possibilities based on the eventual conditions. If we come upon a pod of whales this will most likely alter the program for that day straight away. Important aspects of the journey are the voyage itself and the landings in Zodiac rubber crafts that will transport us ashore on unapproachable stretches of the coast, along glacier fronts and on whale safari. The ship is equipped with an external platform, wherefrom there is direct access to the rubber crafts that carry powerful engines. The ship will bring us as close as possible to sights, glaciers, bird cliffs and villages, and then Zodiac crafts will take over with the purpose of going ashore. This is a relatively easy feat for anyone with full mobility, but can be a problem for the disabled.

 

A finer ship than the Ocean Nova for an arctic expedition does not exist. The ship was built in 1992 as a coastal liner for transporting passengers, and was refitted as a cruise ship in 2006. It is now equipped with 43 large, exterior cabins, all with comfortable furnishings and private bathrooms. The beautiful restaurant can accommodate 90 passengers, and all guests enjoy an unhindered view from the newly built panorama saloon on the top deck. The ship is fitted with 4 Zodiac crafts that may be used for spectacular landings.

 

Day by day travel description

 

Day 1. Departure from Copenhagen

Departure by Air Greenland at noon. After nearly 5 hours of flight we land in Kangerlussuaq early in the afternoon, local Greenlandic time.

 

Kangerlussuaq is the larger of Greenland’s two international airports for civilian transportation. From here, there are connecting flights to the rest of Western and Northern Greenland. Kangerlussuaq – lying within the municipal of Sisimiut – is not a town as such, and actually didn’t receive this status until 2001. Approximately 4-500 people live and work here, most of these work in connection with the airport. In this small town, you will find a supermarket, a post office, a hotel with a restaurant, a couple of cafeterias, a bowling alley and a swimming bath inherited from the Americans.

 

The airport is a relic from the American forces, who during the Second World War established an airbase with the name of Bluie West Eight at the end of the 170 kilometre long Sondre Strom Fiord / Kangerlussuaq. The base was strategically very important, both during the Second World War and the following Cold War. 1400 persons were stationed here when the airbase was at its height. But the base lost its military significance along with the growing technological development, and in 1992 the Americans abandoned the base and handed over the facilities and buildings to the Greenlandic home rule.

 

After you have reclaimed your luggage, Albatros’ excursion busses will take the tour group on a combined sightseeing tour and musk oxen safari. We cross the former American base area and climb the Black Ridge. At the top of the ridge we are rewarded with an outstanding view over the valley and towards the permanent ice cap. Normally, this is where the musk oxen linger, but they may keep some distance from the road because of increased hunting activities. It is a good idea to bring binoculars. On the tour, our guides will tell you about the area and inform you of the program for the coming days.

 

The rest of the time before we board the cruise ship is at your own disposal. Approximately 12 kilometres west of the airport our ship, the M/S Ocean Nova, lies ready for departure. A tender boat will sail the guests in smaller groups the few hundred meters out into the fiord, where the ship lies at anchor. Cabins are allocated, safety procedures gone over, and whilst you enjoy your dinner in the restaurant with the truly magnificent view, the voyage commences out of the long, ice-filled fiord.

 

Day 2. Tuesday: Sisimiut

The ship reaches Sisimiut early in the morning, and after breakfast we are ready to get an impression of modern Greenland. Sisimiut is Greenland’s northernmost town with a harbour free of ice during winter, and at the same time the southernmost town for dog sledding (that is, when the snow settles in November-December). With 5,400 inhabitants Sisimiut is the second largest municipal in Greenland, only surpassed by Nuuk. People have lived in the Sisimiut region for approximately 4,500 years. The people of the Saqqaq, Dorset and Thule cultures all came from Canada, and lived on fish, birds and mammals such as whales, seals and reindeer. In the 17th century, the first European whalers appeared in the Sisimiut region. The Europeans only had sporadic contact with the indigenous inhabitants, and before the Norwegian missionary Hans Egede’s colonisation of Greenland in 1721 there was no regular contact between Inuit and European people.

 

In 1756 a colony named Holsteinsborg (Danish for Sisimiut) after Count Johan Ludvig Holstein was established, and the houses in Sisimiut’s historic part of town date back to the colony’s first hundred years. The oldest remaining house was built in 1756, and another characteristic building is the blue church from 1775. Today Sisimiut is an important industrial town and place of education. A major factory, that should be pointed out, is the Royal Greenland fish factory, the largest of its kind in Greenland and one of the most modern in the world.

 

Naturally, we are going for a walk around town, primarily visiting the historic colonial section, its museum and the beautiful church. But we also step by the busy town centre with an array of modern stores and shops. The tour guides will inform you of possible explorations on your own and of the additional guided excursions that you can purchase. In the afternoon we return to the harbour, board the ship again and proceed on our northbound voyage. During the evening we pass the Sisimiut Isortuat Fiord, the Northern Strom Fiord, the villages Attu and Ikerasaarsuk, and the small town Kangaatsiaq. In the course of the bright night we enter the southern part of Disko Bay, pass by Aasiaat, and on our portside the famous Disko Island will come into view with its characteristic 1,000-meter tall, layered mountains.

 

We are far north of the Arctic Polar Circle, and even if the midnight sun has ceased to shine the night is fair - at least until the end of August. If you rise early, you can enjoy the sight of icebergs – the Giants of Disko Bay – being squeezed out from Jakobshavn Ice fiord.

 

Day 3. Disko Island, Qeqertarsuaq

In cover of Disko Island’s 1,000-meter tall mountains we put into port in a protected natural harbour. The place is aptly named Godhavn (”Good harbour”) in Danish, while its Greenlandic name “Qeqertarsuaq” simply means ”The Big Island”. 

 

Up to 1950, Godhavn was the most important town north of Nuuk, solely because of the many whales that the whaling boats towed here after catching them in Disko Bay. This bestowed the town with much wealth, starting already in the 16th century. Now the town is on its way to oblivion as it gets harder and harder to find work here, and the island is poorly connected to the mainland. We walk through town to the characteristic, octagonal church, nicknamed “the inkpot of God”. During our stay in Qeqertarsuaq, we will visit Greenlandic families treating us with traditional Greenlandic “kaffemik” (a get-together in the home with coffee, cake and story-telling).

 

The flat mountains on the island are volcanic and belong to the youngest of Greenland’s geological formations. The mountains contain some special occurrences of pure iron and coal. For a number of years, the coal was mined from Qullissat on the northern coast of the island. In 1972 the mine and the town was closed by Danish decree, which awoke a strong political consciousness amongst the Greenlandic youth. This ultimately led to the forming of Greenland’s own parliament in 1979.

 

When the day wanes, Ocean Nova again heads into the bay on a northbound course. In the evening, the ship sails through Vaigat Sound between the tall mountains on Disko Island and Nuussuaq peninsular. Early in the morning, we round the small cliffs at the tip of Nuussuaq and enter Uummannaq Bay. On the whole trip we will pass numerous icebergs, one more dramatic and extraordinary than the other.

 

Day 4. Upernavik

Our route lies far to sea, but Svartenhuk’s black mountains are still in sight to the east, and the ship’s crew (and ourselves) will continuously keep an eye out for the large whales known to pass through these waters. The little storm bird, the fulmar petrel, is our loyal companion switching between lee and windward to gain speed and dynamics in its flight after the ship.

Upernavik municipal is almost the size of Great Britain. 3,000 inhabitants live in the town of Upernavik and 10 smaller villages. In Upernavik you will find the northernmost open-air museum with well-preserved buildings dating back to the colonial days. Commercially Upernavik is a mixture of the indigenous hunting culture and a modern high technological fishing industry. Here the traditional dog sledge and the modern snow scooter work side by side.

 

The town itself was founded in 1772 as a Danish colonial station, but the history of the region, along with the rest of western Greenland, goes about 4,500 years back, to when groups of hunter-gatherers travelled along the coasts of Alaska, through Canada and finally to Greenland. We go ashore and experience the town and the small but also interesting museum.

 

Day 5. Kullorsuaq, Melville Bay

After a fine day we reach the distinctive rock pillar “The Devil’s Thumb” which raises itself 540 metres up from the flat surroundings. The island is home to the 400 inhabitants living in the village of Kullorsuaq. The Greenlandic name of the village obviously means ”The Big Thumb” indicating the rock, which marks the entrance to the Melville Bay. We have arrived in polar bear territory, and the citizens of the village each year bring down several bears. Their skins are used for the much sought after polar bear pants, and the tasty (to the local palates) meat is shared amongst everybody in the village.

 

The cruise then starts on one of the most interesting legs of the voyage in terms of the route. We have to cross the 400-kilometre long Melville Bay. Calving glaciers characterize the entire distance. This lack of firm ground made the polar Inuit isolated from the rest of western Greenland as recently as 100-120 years ago. For that reason the polar Inuit are more closely connected to the Canadian Inuit and have their own dialect, which differs significantly from the southern Greenlandic dialects.

 

The ice does not clear from Melville Bay every summer. But we are constantly in contact with the Greenlandic Ice Services and receive satellite images that supply the captain with information on the best route to the Thule region. Anyhow, the voyage amongst the ice will provide a unique opportunity for observing seals at close range, and most likely also its main enemy, the polar bear!

 

Day 6-8. Dundas and Qaanaaq

We expect to have left Melville Bay during early morning and to have reached inhabited areas again. We pass the Meteor Island and Avannaarsuaq/Thule’s largest village, Savissivik. The name means ”the place for sharpening your knife” and refers to the iron meteor, which for many thousands of years ago exploded in the atmosphere and struck the area in a north-west/south-easterly line. Many generations of Inuit have laboriously chipped off small pieces of this rock and used it for arrowheads and knives. The largest iron blocks were (re)discovered by Robert Peary and brought to Washington, and a fifth block was found by Danish V.F. Buchwald in 1963 and is found in Copenhagen.

 

We pass close by Uummannaq/Pittufik and behold the characteristic Dundas Mountain. At the foot of this mountain Knud Rasmussen established his legendary trade station. Here, the polar Inuit from Cape York could sell their skins for the very first time, not just trading them for a few glass beads and the like, as the former whalers and explorers beneficially had accustomed them to. The main part of the profits made at the station were actually returned to the community through the many expeditions, that Knud Rasmussen made to places such as Peary Land and along the Canadian coastline to Alaska. The local Inuit always participated on the journeys on equal footing with the Danish explorers.

 

Furthermore it was in this place that Knud Rasmussen met the one-eyed Meqqusaaq, who around 1865 arrived from Baffin Island together with the “angakok” (shaman) Qillarsuaq and 20 other Canadian Inuit. Their dramatic account is vividly described in several of the books, for example in the splendid book ”The last kings in Thule” by Jean Malaurie.

 

We round Steensby Land with the small village Moriusaq on the south side and the beautiful Politiken glacier on the north side, and we enter into Inglefield Bay, where we pass some of Greenland’s biggest bird cliffs. We dock at Qaanaaq, the largest town that is still object for many disputes about the placement of responsibility. The town was founded in 1953, when the Americans built their base near the original settlement town of Uummannaq, and forcibly moved away the inhabitants. Today, a landing strip has been constructed, which twice weekly receives Air Greenland’s Dash-7 aeroplanes. But it is not cheap to board the plane. Dropping in at Hans Jensen’s fine little red hotel, the Hotel Qaanaaq, is always a good idea.

 

Depending on ice and weather conditions, and as a consequence of this, available time, we come to the world’s northernmost ”natural” settlement, Siorapaluk. Unlike Qaanaaq, Siorapaluk is comparatively more a hunting community, where the boys can handle a pack of dogs shortly after they have learnt to walk.

 

Day 9. Cape York, Melville Bay

We turn the ship around, and after passing Pittifuk and Dundas we sail close to Cape York and Savisivik. We say goodbye to Avannaarsuaq/Thule and turns the stem towards southeast across Melville Bay.

 

Day 10-11. Melville Bay, Uummannaq

We spend most of day 10 crossing Melville Bay, and the following day reaching Uummannaq, so that we can land in this fascinating town early in the morning.

 

The entrance towards the impressive 1,175-meter tall, Uummannaq-mountain is simply a world-class view and should be enjoyed from the deck no matter what time the clock shows. The town is situated on a 12 km2-large island, and the heart-shaped mountain that has given the town its name dominates the view (Uummannaq means “a place where the heart is”). From the town there is an extraordinary vista comprising the island’s 1,000-meter tall rock faces, the snow-covered peaks on Nuussuaq peninsula to the south, and out across the fiord. In the fiord, icebergs of all shapes and sizes majestically float by on a course set by wind and current. As much as 5 active glaciers at the bottom of the fiord ensure that we can observe plenty of icebergs.

Uummannaq was founded as a colony in 1758 on the Nuussuaq mainland, but shortly thereafter, in 1763, it was moved to the nearby island, as seal hunting was more bountiful here. On our walk along the town’s steep streets we visit the historic train-oil building, built in 1860. Inside its yellow walls, whale and seal blubber used to be stored. Because of the horrid stench, the blubber was not boiled here, but well outside town! Behind the train-oil storage we will find a peat hut, which was still in use a few years ago.

 

We spend most of the day in Uummannaq, and the more agile may want to hike to “Santa Claus’ house” – another traditional Greenlandic peat hut, that has taken part in some Christmas television shows.

The dry and settled arctic climate has around 2,000 hours of sunshine and 100 millimetres of precipitation per year, and Uummannaq can rightly call itself the Greenlandic Riviera!

 

In the district of Uummannaq on the Nuussuaq peninsula five mummies were found in 1972. Four women and a child are meant to have drowned and buried in a dry and cool cave 600-700 years ago. The mummies are kept in Nuuk.

 

Day 12. Saqqaq, Eqip Sermia

We round Nuussuaq again, go through Vaigat and reach one of the most well-run, small villages in Greenland, Saqqaq. The village is also known as ‘The sunny side’, and was governed firmly but kindly by legendary Hannibal Fenger until his death in 1988. One of the world’s most northerly situated greenhouses is found by his house. Several anthropologists have published books on the village’s inhabitants and their hunting methods.

 

Peculiarly, the village has no drinking water. The villagers gather floes of ice by the water’s edge to get water for their households. The large Torsukkataq glacier in the far end of the fiord makes sure that no one runs dry of ice to thaw.

 

We sail to the beautiful glacier Eqip Sermia. Situated approximately 50 nautical miles north of Ilulissat, this glacier-front is somewhat renowned, and many tourist boats come here every day. Also the legendary arctic explorers had their base here; the Frenchman de Quervain built a winter hut here as a base for his expeditions onto the inland ice cap.

 

Day 13. Ilulissat

Ilulissat is possibly the most marvellously situated town in Greenland. Ilulissat means icebergs in Greenlandic, and the nickname of the town is rightly “the iceberg capital”. In Disko Bay just off the coast of Ilulissat, gigantic icebergs linger. The icebergs come from the Ice fiord – located a good half hour hike south of Ilulissat – and they are born 32 kilometres deeper in the fiord by the enormous Sermeq Kujalleq glacier. This 10-kilometre wide and 1,000 meter thick glacier is the most productive glacier outside of Antarctica. Whereas most glaciers only calve at a rate of approximately 1 metre per day, the Ilulissat glacier calves at a rate of 25 metres per day. The icebergs produced by the glacier represent more than 10% of all icebergs in Greenland, corresponding to 20 million tonnes of ice per day. These facts have together with the fiord’s extreme beauty ensured the Ice fiord a spot at UNESCO’s World Heritage List, an honour the fiord and town of Ilulissat share with Mount Everest, Yellowstone and only 166 other nature sceneries in the world.

 

For more than the 250 years that have passed since the foundation of Ilulissat, the town has steadily grown and today it is Greenland’s third largest with more than 4,300 inhabitants. Most of the inhabitants make their living by fishing or otherwise in the fishing industry. The town is very vibrant and welcoming, with a wide range of cultural attractions – according to Greenlandic standards. The polar explorer Knud Rasmussen and his good friend Joergen Broenlund were both born in Ilulissat. Joergen Broenlund was an eminent dog sledge driver who perished during The Denmark Expedition. In the town itself we will take a closer look at the wonderfully located church, at Knud Rasmussen’s beautiful old house, and at Emanuel A. Petersen’s collection of paintings.

 

 

A little hike will take us to the Sermermiut plain, about 2 kilometres south of Ilulissat. Sermermiut means ”the people by the ice”, and the plain has been inhabited since 1400 B.C. When the first Danish merchants arrived in the Ice fiord in 1727 and “discovered” Sermermiut, approximately 250 people lived here, making it the most densely populated area in Greenland at the time. Today the old settlement appears as a row of grassy square pits, which are the remnants of the foundations of the houses, the inhabitants lived in. Everywhere in the surrounding earth-slopes, plenty of bones from seals, birds, fish and whales stick out – it is not difficult to figure out what their diet was made up of. A little further north of Sermermiut, where the conditions for docking were more suitable, the colony Ilulissat was founded in 1741 by the Danish squire, Jakob Severin.

 

The Ice fiord, the coast along the fiord and the Sermermiut plain are laid out as a conservation area, and hiking in the area is restricted to the marked paths. Also in the old settlement area, no walking outside the paths is permitted.

 

We say goodbye to the iceberg capital in the evening.

 

Day 14. Itilleq

Going southward, the ship has made good headway, and it reaches the village Itilleq, in Sisimiut municipal, around noon. Previously we have visited the “major” town of Sisimiut and now we get an impression of a typical Greenlandic village for comparison. Itilleq is delightfully situated in a hollow (called ”Itilleq” in Greenlandic) on an island without any fresh water. Therefore, an osmosis water system, which converts saltwater into potable water, was built a few years ago. Previously, the town’s inhabitants fetched their water on the mainland by means of a barge. The village has approximately 130 inhabitants.

 

By night time, we head for Kangerlussuaq.

 

Day 15. Kangerlussuaq

During the bright night, the ship passes through one of the world’s longest fiords and arrives at Kangerlussuaq in the morning. We sail by zodiacs into Kangerlussuaq’s harbour.

 

The buses are waiting to take us to the airport.

 

Day 16. Arrival at Copenhagen

After 4½ hours of flight we arrive to Copenhagen at 06.30, Danish time.