Frozen Island

More than half a million square miles of ice might not sound welcoming, but Greenland’s landscape, along with the Inuit culture and food, make for an incredible adventure.

by Tim Johnson

Rising vertically out of the fjord, with big chopper blades thumping hard above me, everything below is indigo and emerald, gray and white. The cold, clear water contrasts with bright, verdant shores and snow-capped peaks. It’s an arctic land in bloom, so rich in color, you’d be tempted to believe that old scoundrel Erik the Red was actually telling the truth.

But soon, the pilot swings the big Bell helicopter around a corner and it’s all white and sky blue as far as the eye can see. “Here we go,” he says nonchalantly as we descend into a vast, unimaginable frozen world.

In so many ways, Greenland is the ultimate land of ice. The birthplace of the most northern hemisphere icebergs, it’s also home to more glaciers than you can count, not to mention the largest polar ice sheet north of the equator, covering a mind-bending 660,000 million square miles.

I spent an entire week sailing around southern Greenland last summer. Now more accessible than it’s ever been, this Danish protectorate of 57,000 people is welcoming more expedition ships than ever before, too. And the notably non-icy name? That was essentially a canny marketing ploy.

Catch incredible views from Regent’s Sevens Seas Voyager, an all-suite, all-balcony luxury ship

Banished from his Icelandic home in the year 982, the infamous Viking Erik the Red tried to make this place sound as desirable as possible, in order to attract more recruits to his settlements in this windswept and woebegone place. (It didn’t work.)

But even today, very little is green—the ice sheet alone covers 80 percent of the surface of this island, the world’s largest. Glaciers often run right down from the edge, frozen fingers reaching into every corner of this wild place. My ship was outfitted with two choppers, which dropped us onto hilltops for heli-hikes through territory probably untrodden by any other human. We approached these mighty rivers of ice on an almost daily basis. “Oh, that one?” a guide asks when we inquire about the name of one particularly spectacular glacier, just at our feet. “I don’t think it has a name. Most of them here don’t.”

I also cruise long, narrow inlets while sitting on the inflatable pontoon of a Zodiac, the calm waters full of icebergs—big ones, with a hole in the middle, or wrapped around a whole aquamarine lagoon.

And I’m treated to a rare sight—a glassy, translucent jewel of a blue iceberg, one that had just recently flipped (icebergs do that sometimes). A guide explains that most bergs are ancient (say, 3,000 years old) and very dense, the air having been squeezed out over the generations. And that whole “tip of the iceberg” thing is true—you can typically see only about 10 percent of their mass.

The people who have lived here for thousands of years have learned how to harvest the bounty of this hardy land and put it onto their dinner plates. About 90 percent of the population here is Greenlandic Inuit. On a visit to Aappilattoq (population 80), I chat with a traditional hunter.

Visit the village of Aappilattoq to learn about Inuit culture

He tells me that the prices of processed food imported from the mainland are sky-high, something I see myself later when I browse the village’s little supermarket.

But that’s not really a problem—the locals find plenty of food around them. Fish and seafood have long been the primary staples here, so abundant that there is enough shrimp, halibut and prawns to sell to the Danes (seal and whale are just consumed locally). And the local diet extends to land-based delicacies, as well: reindeer, lamb and even the elusive and prehistoriclooking musk ox.

Try a taste of raw whale skin and blubber, called muktuk.

Back on board, we try just a small sampling of these provisions. In addition to our steaks and crab cakes, enjoyed at tables facing floor-to-ceiling windows revealing a soaring panorama outside, we also down something called muktuk. It’s raw whale skin and blubber, very chewy and fresh.

It fortifies me for the grand finale, on the final day of the voyage: landing on the ice sheet. Stepping off the copter, I first climb a bouldery hill to get a better perspective of it all. Then, a walk down on the sheet itself, skirting crevasses and stepping across blue streams of meltwater.

I’m the last guest to get back on board. The crew cleans up the operation, picking up little flags that marked our paths and highfives each other for a day well run. Rising again in the chopper, I take one last look at all that ice—ancient, lovely, and utterly enchanting.