West Greenland

By Mark Stratton

MAY 16, 2024

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With timing that made coincidence seem laughable, in front the glistening rounded flank of a giant iceberg dimpled like a golf ball, a humpback whale surfaced, announcing its arrival with a fountaining blow of seawater. I was sailing among an armada of ghostly white icebergs offshore of Ilulissat in the funkily named Disko Bay. The humpback lingered for a while before arching its back and diving vertically, its crescent-shaped tail rose skywards and then slowly slid below into the frigid depths. There were screams of excitement on deck. Wildlife photography had never felt so easy.

Greenland is known by the majority Inuit population as Kalaallit Nunaat, or ‘land of the people’. They administer the world’s largest island autonomously from under Danish rule. There are few roads, and the vast empty interior hosts a permanent ice sheet that is 3 kilometres deep. Thus travel by ship around Greenland’s epic 44,000 kilometres of coastline is the only way to explore rugged fjords, glaciers, islands, and bays. West Greenland currently attracts more cruise options than the eastern coast during a short season in the northern hemisphere summer.

I first fell in love with this coast a decade ago via the most authentic experience imaginable. Not paddling in a native sealskin kayak, but a 659-nautical mile voyage from Ilulissat down to Narsaq in Southern Greenland onboard the Sarfaq Ittuk coastal ferry. It was early May and freezing conditions at sea. I booked a cabin for the five-day journey and joined mostly Inuit passengers travelling between pretty coastal settlements of prefabricated houses painted green, yellow, blue, and red, set on raised coastal plains in the lee of snow-striped mountains. During the voyage we passed former Viking settlements and archaeological sites of the Thule people, who inhabited this coast between the 11th and 15th centuries. Near Maniitsoq I saw a herd of musk ox near the shoreline, and further south a polar bear on an ice-floe. I lost count of the times humpback whales surfaced close to the ferry.

Nowadays, the permutations for West Greenland cruising are myriad both in time and routings. All cruises will visit the most popular town along the coast, Ilulissat, which besides preserving a quaint old historic quarter by the sea, is the stepping off point to explore one of the great natural wonders of the world. The UNESCO-listed Ice-Fjord disgorges millions of tonnes of glacial ice in the form of colossal icebergs into Disko Bay. The source of this inland is the Jakobshavn Glacier, which is draining the ice sheet. It’s the highlight of Western Greenland and is often combined with the heavily glaciated Disko Island, or Qeqertarsuaq, as it’s known in Inuktitut. Some cruises arrive from Arctic Canada and Baffin Island while others sail all the way down to Greenland’s southernly Cape Farewell and then swing back to Iceland. A popular entry point is the deep water and majestic inland Kangerslussuaq fjord, which has a small eponymous airport (built by the US military) with flights back to Toronto and Copenhagen. The musk ox and arctic hares along this fjord are joyful parting gifts as the voyage comes to an end.