Travel guide
Featured on October 5, 2026
No road connects Greenland’s towns.
Places
Go to walk the boardwalks from Sermermiut above a fjord packed with icebergs, then take a boat out among them and listen for the crack of calving ice from Jakobshavn Glacier.
Tip: Best from June to September; give it at least half a day on foot, longer if you add a boat trip.
Come for a capital that still works like a port: buy fish, berries or dried meat at Brættet, walk the old harbour, then take a boat into Nuuk Fjord under Sermitsiaq and see how quickly the city gives way to rock and water.
Tip: Give it two days if you can: one for town, one for the fjord.
Walk from Kangerlussuaq to Sisimiut through tundra, lakes and low hills, sleeping in simple huts with no roads or settlements between the two ends.
Tip: Go from late June to early September; allow about a week and do not start without proper gear and weather margin.
Stand at the site of Erik the Red’s Brattahlíð, see reconstructed Norse turf buildings, and understand at a glance why settlers stayed in the green south for centuries.
Tip: Best in summer, when boats run easily from Narsarsuaq; give it half a day.
Come for East Greenland: bright houses under steep mountains, boats into Sermilik Fjord among icebergs, and in late winter the sight of dog teams heading out over the snow.
Tip: Late winter is best for sleds; August and September are better for boats and hiking. Keep your schedule loose for weather delays.
Eat
A soup often made with seal or reindeer, simmered with onion, potato and rice or barley.
Where: At family tables in cold months, and on the fixed hot lunch menu in small cafés in Nuuk and Sisimiut.
Raw cubes of whale skin with a layer of blubber, eaten for their clean taste and firm chew.
Where: At a kaffemik, the open-house spread for birthdays, confirmations and other family days, where cold platters keep circulating.
A pink-fleshed fish served pan-fried, baked or smoked.
Where: On lunch plates in small cafés by the harbour in Ilulissat and Sisimiut, or smoked at home after a stop at Brættet, Nuuk’s open-air market.
Dark, lean meat usually served as steak or made into burgers.
Where: In Kangerlussuaq grill rooms and hotel cafés, often after a hike, because the inland hub is one of the easier places to find it.
Story
In Ilulissat, the harbour smells of salt, diesel and halibut hung to dry. In Nuuk, people leave their shoes by the door and talk about weather by fjord, wind and ice, not by forecast. At Eqip Sermia, a wall of glacier falls into the water, and the sound reaches you a beat later.
Around the 13th century, Thule people came east from Arctic Canada with dog sleds, umiaks and harpoons. They hunted at the ice edge and moved with the seasons. In the south, Erik the Red had already reached Brattahlíð after exile from Iceland in 985. Turf farms, cattle and a small church stood above the fjord. Two Arctic worlds lived on the same island.
In 1721 Hans Egede sailed in looking for lost Norse Christians and instead found Inuit communities near where Nuuk stands. Mission, trade and Danish rule followed by ship and storehouse. The sharper break came after the war, when policy tried to pull scattered lives into larger towns. In 1972 the coal town of Qullissat was closed and its residents were told to move. That scene stayed in memory, and so did the question of who got to decide.
Home rule came in 1979. Self-government followed in 2009, and Kalaallisut became the sole official language. In Nuuk, parliament argues over fishing, mining and independence while teenagers switch languages on the bus. Outside town, the old arithmetic still rules. Weather, fuel, catch, boat.
Surprises
Ivittuut once held the world’s only commercially worked deposit of cryolite. That obscure mineral made a tiny southwest settlement important to aluminium production far beyond the Arctic.
The Qilakitsoq mummies were found by hunters in 1972. Eight 15th-century Inuit bodies, preserved by cold and dry air, changed what scholars knew about clothing, hair and tattooing.
In northwest Greenland, Inuit once hammered iron from the Cape York meteorite into tools. Robert Peary later shipped the largest pieces to New York, where they still stand in the American Museum of Natural History.
Quiz
Who made the first successful crossing of Greenland’s ice sheet?
Nansen did it in 1888. He deliberately started on the uninhabited east coast so there would be no easy retreat; the only practical way out was to keep going west.
3 days
Day 1
Morning in Ilulissat town and the old harbour; afternoon on the Sermermiut boardwalk along Ilulissat Icefjord; evening boat among the icebergs.
Day 2
Take the boat north to Eqip Sermia, watch the glacier face from the water or shore, and return to Ilulissat for dinner.
Day 3
Boat or hike to Oqaatsut for a slow afternoon by the bay, then back to Ilulissat for a last look at the midnight-light ice.
At a glance
At a glance
Listen
Before you go, watch or read
The Ice at the End of the World
Book
It gives the ice sheet its proper scale, and makes the explorers, scientists and obsessions around it feel human.
From the community
🇬🇱 Today's country is Greenland. No road connects Greenland’s towns. In Ilulissat, the harbour smells of salt, diesel and halibut hung to dry. In Nuuk, people leave their shoes by the door and talk about weather by fjord, wind and ice, not by forecast. At Eqip Sermia, a wall of glacier falls into the water, and the sound reaches you a beat later. 📍 Places to visit • Ilulissat Icefjord — Go to walk the boardwalks from Sermermiut above a fjord packed with icebergs, then take a boat out…
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