Greenland travel guide

Glacier walking is a fun and adventurous way to get up close to what Greenland is so famous for, namely, ice. It requires the use of glacier boots with crampons, harness and ice axes and the technical know-how that goes with it. A skilled guide is necessary unless you are a group of experienced outdoor freaks, knowing how to do all the rescue operations in case someone falls into the many bottomless crevasses.

The Greenlandic Ice Sheet is that big chunk of ice that covers the interior of Greenland. Roughly 80% of Greenland's surface is covered by this one-piece of ice sheet (also called ice cap), making Greenland very white. At its thickest, it is more than 3 km deep and it stretches about 2400 km north to south - sizes that are too hard to comprehend for the human mind. A visit to the edge of the ice sheet will put a bit of perspective to it. You can easily look across some of the glaciers that run off the ice sheet, not knowing whether a finger of ice is 150 m or 150 km wide, since the air is so clean and everything is just rocks and ice with no point of reference.

If you're going to Greenland, you generally always fly to Kangerlussuaq, which airport is the gateway to the rest of the huge country. The city is an old American military base, and that still shows on the old barracks and large craters with waste. Kangerlussuaq is quite depressing to stay in and it has about 500 inhabitants. Besides the international airport, there is a post office, a hotel, a school and one shop called "The shop". However, only 25 kilometers away from the town, you will find the beautiful ice cap and areas with lots of wildlife and a large lake (Lake Ferguson), where you can kayak and sail around.

If you do not have the temper to go trekking in Greenland in the winter, where temperatures can easily reach down to minus 50 degrees Celsius, it is advisable to go in the summer in July-September, when it is around plus 3 to 10 degrees Celsius in daytime and minus 2 to plus 5 degrees Celsius at night. For example, you can fly with a small Twin Otter propeller aircraft for half an hour outside Kangerlussuaq and trek around among hills, rivers, and wild animals. It is also a fantastic and almost meditative experience to stand and fish all alone in an icy river in the sunset, while musk oxen graze on the other riverbank.

If you are looking for a slightly unusual kind of adventure, then musk ox hunting in Greenland may be an idea. The actual hunt obviously requires a hunting license for rifle, but it is also very exciting to be accompanying a hunter and skin the giant animals. You can hunt musk oxen in both summer and winter, and there is also the opportunity to hunt arctic foxes, reindeers and hares. In the 1960s, 27 musk oxen were put out in eastern Greenland, and today the animals have spread to the rest of the country, and the number is up to around 7000 oxen. In September, the musk ox is in rut, which makes them very aggressive. You must therefore always ensure to carry a rifle with you, when walking around, since the animals run extremely fast and can attack in groups. But the taste of a piece of musk ox tenderloin grilled over an open fire under the stars finely outweigh the dangers of an attack.