Greenland: Kingdom of Ice
A Zodiac cruises amongst giant icebergs in turquoise colored water, 2019
As a young girl besotted with adventurous tales of distant lands, and the child of a modern-day nomadic family, I flew over Greenland many times on my way back and forth between Europe and the US. Each time that the weather cooperated, I would stare down at the ice sheet, cracked and heaving, punctuated with glinting aqua features, and wonder what it was really like down there. Never did I dream I would one day walk those lands, photograph them, breathe them, hear them. But in 2016, and again in 2019, I did just that.
Located in the North Atlantic Ocean, Greenland is the world’s largest island. This territory of Denmark is more than three times the size of the state of Texas. Its nearest neighbor is Canada’s Ellesmere Island, which is located 16 miles (26 kilometers) to the north of Greenland. Iceland is its nearest European neighbor, and is located about 200 miles (about 321 kilometers) to the southeast.
Two-thirds of Greenland lies above 66 degrees North, the Arctic Circle, creating frigid climate year-round. Greenlanders experience 24 hours of sunlight in the summer, with temperatures only reaching about 40°F, and almost complete darkness in the winter, when temperatures dip as low as minus 30°F.
The Arctic climate sustains the island’s massive ice sheet, or large mass of glacier ice, which covers about 80 percent of the island. The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second largest in the world after the Antarctic Ice Sheet—it stretches over 1,500 miles from north to south and is nearly 5,000 feet thick in many places. That’s almost one mile thick in some spots! This massive sheet of ice sheds icebergs en masse into the waters around this island, and from a personal standpoint, it is these icebergs that typify this land and the experience of shooting there. Most of the images you’ll see in my galleries are of icebergs.
Birds fly over Scoresbysund on the east coast of Greenland, 2019
The unfrozen parts of Greenland are covered by tundra, which is a flat, treeless landscape with whipping winds. But even the tundra has some ice: Permafrost, or frozen soil, sits beneath much of the Greenland’s tundra. The island’s coastline is mostly rocky—and there’s a lot of it. If it stretched out like a string, the coastline would measure 24,430 miles, which is almost long enough to stretch around the Earth at the Equator.
Greenland’s natural environment is shaped by this extreme Arctic climate. Most of the vegetation on the island exists on the tundra, away from the ice sheets. Low-growing plants like mosses and lichens, can be found throughout the tundra. You can see some examples of this type of vegetation here in my galleries.
I have visited this magical place twice - once to Ilulissat on the west coast, and once to the remote eastern fjords of Scoresbysund.
Iceberg silhouettes at sunrise, 2019
Gallery 1 images were taken at the Ilulissat icefjord which is filled with massive icebergs that calve from the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier, one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world. This place is a UNESCO world heritage site and ground zero for much of what we know today about climate change and global warning. For this trip I was land-based, staying in a local hotel and shooting on hiking excursions inside the UNESCO site and also aboard boats out on Disko Bay. Though I loved this adventure, it was ‘pedestrian’ by comparison with the second trip detailed below. There are lots of (basic) amenities in Ilulissat, and local tour companies offer many options for day and multi-day trips up and down the east coast. Other than the sunset cruises on Disko Bay, the only other tour we took was a cruise north to the Camp Eqi, where we stayed at a very special remote camp located at the Eqi glacier terminus. Rooms were freestanding individual huts, with a private window wall overlookingthe glacier. The groaning, calving sounds are truly awesome and can be heard clearly from the camp. Food is served at fixed times of day for the entire camp in a communal dining room, and this is a wonderful way to meet staff from Greenland and Denmark as well as other folks from all over the world. I took a solo hike up the mountain to a small tarn, with dramatic sweeping views down over the glacier. It was an experience I will never forget, and one that is memorialized by one of my Feminine Landscape images (included in Gallery 1).
Gallery 2 is from a shipboard cruise around the remote fjords of Scoresbysund on the east coast of Greenland with Joshua Holko and Daniel Bergmann. This was truly an adventurous trip, filled with exciting, dramatic scenery and camaraderie and fun aboard the ship. However, it was not for the faint of heart - facilities on board were spartan, and conditions unavoidably deteriorated with rough seas at the end of the trip. I’ll spare you the gory details, though. I adore adventure, and accept that oftentimes conditions whilst adventuring will be very different to those I experience in my comfortable and privileged daily life. So these things don’t bother me at all and I consider them part and parcel of trips like this. This was an incredible way to experience remote, wild landscapes - the ship provided the security and comforts of home, and we were able to leave the ship daily by Zodiac to experience the landscapes up close. Having a mobile base was so great for variety, and I was able to shoot many different kinds of landscapes on a single trip. Quarters were close and so this was a great opportunity to meet and get to know other photographers.
I would be very excited about an opportunity to visit Greenland again. Ideally, I’d love to head further inland, to experience more of the ice sheet and the largest mountains. I’m not sure if I will be presented with that opportunity or not, but I would definitely say a third trip there is on my bucket list.
If you’re considering a trip to Greenland and would like more feedback from me, please get in touch! I’d love to answer any questions you might have about my experiences of this location. Just hit the “contact” link above to send me an email :)
If you enjoyed this blog post, sign up for my newsletter to get more great content. I appreciate your support so much!