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Greenland wilderness holidays

Discover our Greenland wilderness holidays. Wilderness is easy to come by in Greenland, and wilderness holidays can be a unique experience you won’t forget, as our adventurous overland trips on the world’s second largest fjord system shows. You could also take a small ship cruise: to see ice up close, the water’s wildlife, and the rarely visited east coast. Discover more in our guide to wilderness holidays in Greenland.

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Greenland wilderness holidays

Learning about Greenland’s wilderness means learning about Greenlanders – the country, its weather and its wildness continues to shape how people live here.

What is wilderness? It’s having no path to follow.

In Greenland, the roads stop on the outskirts of the towns. People get around by boat, sled, snowmobile, or by air. To the naked eye, the wilderness is pathless, and the wilderness is the whole island.

Greenland has a population of just over 56,000, on the largest non-continental island in the world, making it the least densely populated country on earth.

Whilst few people experience Greenland, it is embedded in our collective imagination. Viewed on a standard map, the Mercator projection makes it enormous – the size of Africa, when it’s closer to the size of Algeria.

The land is, for the most part, almost impossible to farm – and therefore left broadly alone. Greenland has uncharted waters, and mountains that have not been climbed. The world’s biggest national park, Northeast Greenland National Park, occupies a quarter of the country.

In Greenland’s centre, the astounding Ice Sheet, second only to Antarctica’s in size, contains eight percent of the world’s fresh water. Rising temperatures mean we have already lost an ice area the size of Albania.

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You think you’re seeing clouds on the horizon but it’s actually the ice cap.

“When you look to your right up the fjord you think you’re seeing clouds on the horizon but it’s actually the ice cap – it’s 30km away, but you can see it; it’s incredible.”

Jim Young, founder and co-director of our partner Adventurous Ewe, runs our Greenland wilderness expedition in the capital region of Greenland.

In summer, a strong burst of Arctic flowers and herbs burst through the melting snow and it’s a great time for walkers. You can go into the wilderness from June to September, when the days stretch out into the nights.

The adventure starts in a small hostel in Nuuk from where a boat piloted by a local captain takes trekkers out to a peninsula for walking. “We get dropped off on the peninsula. Then we hike over to the other side to one of the most incredible views you can imagine, of the fjord, the ice – the ice is just indescribable. All you hear is the lapping of the water, the moving of the ice, the rolling, the cracking, all this incredible sound.”

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All you hear is the lapping of the water, the moving of the ice, the rolling, the cracking, all this incredible sound.

Jim and co-director Sue Blunt decided to run trekking expeditions on the west coast of Greenland because it means that they can collaborate with talented local guides. Theirs are based in Aasiaat and Maniitsoq. “The local guides tell us about their lives, what they’ve hunted in the area, their stories from living there. You end up learning all about Greenland, they’re so passionate about it,” says Jim.

You need a sense of adventure and a respect for the land to venture overland in Greenland. The ground is uneven; a mix of hard rock, meltwater rivers, spongy tussocks of grasses and moss – and, if you’re lucky enough to find them, herbs, berries, mushrooms. You’ll refill your water bottle from streams – and you can take your swimming costume along, should you want to brave a cold-water plunge. But you should also bring snacks that are easy to open, and in a convenient pocket: so you can eat them on the go without taking your gloves off and getting cold.

Life is unpredictable up here. Expeditions often have an extra day or two built in, to account for weather changes, and they often end up using them, or alternative routes, in case rivers are too high to cross.

“That’s what makes it so unique and exciting,” says Sue. “So many trips these days are so scripted but this one isn’t. It’s a proper expedition.”

The unpredictability can lead to delays, or trips cut short. But it can also mean unexpected surprises.

“Due to fog one morning and the presence of polar bears our planned landings were not an option,” says Dorothy Small, in her review of her East Greenland cruise. “New, unknown ones were found.” Her group ended up venturing up a fjord that was unknown to both crew and guests, because prevailing sea conditions normally make it inaccessible.

Weather is becoming even more unreliable in the Greenland wilderness. Climate change means Greenland has seen summers in the high 20°Cs (the average maximum in Nuuk in July is 10°C). The use of sled dogs has plummeted as winters get less ice-sure, and people forgo their sealskin snowsuits and sleds. Whilst the country is famously misnamed – except for South Greenland, it’s not very green compared to neighbour Iceland – climate change has led to tree planting projects in the south, and vegetation cover is increasing as the ice sheet shrinks.

Where wilderness & culture meet

Greenlanders are very used to their plans changing because of the weather. “People are prepared for things not happening or to happen a bit later,” says Jim. “You go when the environment allows you to go. Things change: the sea can be too rough, the weather too bad, and you just work with it, and work around it. You have you be flexible.” It leads to a relaxed pace of life; if plans change and you can’t go out, there’s always coffee. Being weathered-in together over a long winter storm fosters a community spirit, as well as lots of creativity.

Because this is the other side to Greenland wilderness – its custodians. Our trips are designed with the help of local people, who know how to play by the rules set by the weather and the terrain.

Whilst the wilderness makes life unpredictable, it can also provide the majority of Greenlanders’ food, which they hunt, forage and fish. You’ll taste the wilderness before you even meet it in the capital, Nuuk, where you might eat a musk ox burger, or a hunter’s pie with minced reindeer meat. Guides might bring a rifle out on expeditions in case they find suitable quarry on the way.

“Our guide was telling us he hunts and gathers for almost 80 percent of his diet,” says Jim. You might learn how to catch Arctic char with your hands in the river, or be shown the best place to catch a surfeit of cod. “If you put your rod in, you’d catch them,” says Jim.

Where once people lived closer to the wilderness, so they could access it readily by canoe, motorised boats have brought people into the capital, leaving their properties in the surrounding villages as summer bases for fishing and hunting.

There’s a lot of new construction in Nuuk, including a new airport. “When I was there my hotel was newly built,” says Jim. “But when you looked out the window all that was around you was fishing boats, old shipping containers, old corrugated buildings. It felt like a real outpost, like you see in the movies.” The new airport is set to bring more tourism, but for now, out on the peninsula, with the ice cap looming above, the wilderness prevails.

Ways to experience the Greenland wilderness

Expeditions

These expeditions in Greenland aren’t physically intimidating – you’ll walk maybe 4km a day – but you do carry your own pack and need to be prepared to face all weathers. Trips are designed so that you can take your time and really drink in the scenery. The rewards are waking up in the middle of the wilderness, and having a hot drink with a ptarmigan outside your tent.

Small ship cruises

Disko Bay is rightly popular with small cruise ships, but for even more wilderness, head to one of the hardest to reach places on the planet: East Greenland, best reached from Iceland. There’s no ferry between the two, so the only way is on a small ship cruise. Cruising up Scoresby Sound you’ll pass icebergs the size of houses. Up the coast, you can visit the edge of the vast Northeast Greenland National Park, home to thousands of musk ox, plus polar bears.

Visiting the ice sheet

In some places extending all the way to the coast, in others set a few kilometres inland, the Greenland Ice Sheet covers most of the country. If you’re on a cruise, you’ll be navigating around chunks of it, which have broken off into the sea – tonnes of ice come out of Scoresby Sund this way. On wilderness expeditions you might see the sheet ahead of you, but most summer hikes will steer clear of actually hiking or camping on ice, when there’s more favourable terrain under the snowmelt.

Community stays

Now that everyone uses motor powered boats, rather than canoes, approximately a third of Greenlanders live in Nuuk, and ‘commute’ out to the wilderness with ease – so the villages outside of the capital are not always highly populated all year round. However, for those who want to get a full Greenlandic experience, there are small settlements on the west coast with tourist lodges, or you could stay on sheep farms further south. Greenlander lamb, fed on herbs, is famous for its taste.