Deep in polar bear territory—sail to Greenland’s jap fjords

“We’re deep in polar bear territory now.” The expedition chief’s voice bounces off the icebergs, echoing across the bay earlier than the glacier swallows it entire. Moving clumsily by the water in my kayak, I really feel susceptible, hunted, a paddling nugget in a neon-yellow drysuit that hardly wards off the biting wind and needling rain. “They can swim hundreds of miles without stopping,” Ilene Price continues cheerfully, doing nothing to dispel my nerves. I scan the icebergs, which bloom improbably from the slate-grey water, forming a spectacular sculpture park — the proper stage for a recreation of cat and mouse.

Clouds dangle low and heavy, snagging on basalt peaks black as obsidian and shut sufficient to our kayaks that I can see their scarred flanks, seemingly ravaged by the claws of some colossal beast. A glacier carves by the panorama like an enormous frozen highway, ending abruptly on the water’s edge in a sheer wall of ice. Even if no bears seem, Scoresby Sund in Greenland’s jap fjord system has definitely delivered a wild welcome.

Back on board expedition ship SH Vega, I battle to think about how individuals dwell right here, notably in winter when hurricane-force winds barrel down from the ice sheet, temperatures drop to -45C and darkness veils the land. But, as one passenger explains, Greenlandic Inuit are constructed for the chilly.

“We don’t have any cartilage in our noses so it’s impossible for us to get frostbite,” says Johannes Hammond, urgent his personal in order that it’s flat towards his face. “We’re small to conserve energy, have black hair to absorb the sun’s rays and never go bald to keep in the heat — not trying to make men jealous or anything.”

I’ve acquired chatting to the 21-year-old within the ship’s remark lounge, all pale wooden and low-slung Scandinavian-style sofas. Rain lashes towards the floor-to-ceiling home windows, tracing threads throughout the glass as Greenland’s mountains unspool in an infinite sweep of serrated peaks. Johannes is on board together with his mom, Aleqa Hammond, who was the nation’s first feminine prime minister, although it is a vacation for each of them, he says. SH Vega is heading to an space so distant that neither have ever visited. “Also, my girlfriend’s parents live in Ittoqqortoormiit, where we’ll dock in a couple of days. I’ve never met her dad before, so wish me luck.”

In Greenland, most cruises keep on with the south west, stopping within the toy-town capital of Nuuk. Home to 27,000 of Greenland’s 56,000 residents, it’s as metropolitan because the nation will get: “We’ve got a cinema and everything — but no traffic lights,” Johannes laughs.

SH Vega, nonetheless, affords one thing totally different: dextrous, hardy and specifically designed to navigate northern waters, it might probably weave round icebergs the dimensions of small hills and grind by chunks that refuse to get out of the way in which. “You’re going to feel some shuddering, some shaking,” the captain pronounces wryly over the Tannoy that afternoon. “Don’t worry, she loves it.”

The ship’s ice-breaking prowess lets it attain a few of Greenland’s most distant landscapes — locations bigger ships merely can’t entry. And that’s the place we’re headed: threading our manner up Greenland’s shoreline earlier than reaching the huge, icy expanse of Northeast Greenland National Park, the planet’s largest wilderness.

Life on the sting

By the time we attain Ittoqqortoormiit, the ship’s regular crunching has grow to be a soporific soundtrack, and thru lectures from an expedition group whose specialisms vary from geology to ornithology, I’ve learnt a little bit extra about this elemental nation. I knew Greenland was the world’s largest island, however different superlatives are stark: it has the bottom inhabitants density on Earth, glaciers that cowl four-fifths of the landmass and summers so temporary the bottom thaws for only a few weeks. But it’s not till we drop anchor that I come to understand the resilience of Greenland’s individuals.

Our Zodiacs dock to a flurry of exercise. Men race round on snowmobiles whereas others cluster round picket sledges, tinkering with ropes and bindings. It’s the primary day of the searching season and shortly the city will probably be all however abandoned, with teams typically gone for a number of weeks at a time. If they’re fortunate they’ll return with seals, whales and even perhaps polar bears. The killing of those creatures is a troublesome idea to grapple with, however as Aleqa explains, survival right here nonetheless relies on the talent of the hunters, and legal guidelines have been launched to guard the bear inhabitants. “There are stringent quotas in place,” she tells me. “And remember, most of the time this town is smothered in snow drifts 15 feet high. Meat is the only food source and absolutely nothing goes to waste.”

So overseas is the notion of rising fruit and greens that the vocabulary doesn’t even exist in Greenlandic. Instead, there’s only one phrase, naasoq, that means one thing residing that comes from the earth. When Aleqa presents two youngsters with an apple and a pear she’s snaffled from the ship, they clutch the presents as if Christmas has come early, a uncooked pleasure etched onto their faces.

They sprint off with the treasure and I depart Aleqa to wander the city solo, hat pulled low, eyes peeled for Johannes. There’s no signal of him, although I do cross a ruby-red church, a solitary grocery store — empty for a lot of the 12 months when sea ice stops provide ships from approaching the shore — and a litter of puppies whose playful exuberance offers no trace as to the wolf-like sled canines they’ll quickly grow to be.

When an aged girl trussed up in vibrant woollens beckons me into her dwelling for a espresso I gratefully settle for. Her grandson palms me a mug earlier than proudly pointing to narwhal tusks, seven ft lengthy, lining the partitions, and musk ox skulls conserving silent vigil beside the fireside.

I depart warmed however a little bit overwhelmed by life in Ittoqqortoormiit, a real outpost of human tenacity. But as SH Vega pushes north, in the direction of Northeast Greenland National Park, the solar peeks shyly by the clouds and immediately the nation softens, lastly providing me a gentler, extra forgiving face.

A residing panorama

Our hike has taken an fascinating flip. We appear to be enjoying a recreation of spot the scat, and Anya Astafurova, the ship’s resident biologist, is figuring out each pile of poo with uncanny precision: “Polar bear, a day or two old. Looks like he’s eaten a lot of seal lately.”

“She really knows her shit,” one member of the group quips as we collect across the soggy lumps, the others wanting round expectantly, half hoping the perpetrator continues to be shut by. Pea-sized pellets mark the current passage of reindeer, whereas Arctic fox poo confirms smaller hunters roam this tundra, too.

We’ve been strolling steadily uphill, and the ship’s Zodiacs now lie far under on Bear Island’s rocky seashore, diminished to black specks towards a panorama now not painted monochrome. The wind has dropped to a whisper, and beneath our ft, moss carpets the bottom, glinting gold and inexperienced within the solar.

The stroll is magnificent, weaving between boulders deposited from a retreating glacier some 10,000 years in the past, every adorned with scarlet splashes of lichen. Reindeer moss trails throughout the bottom in silver tendrils, blended with purple bellflowers and the downy tufts of cottongrass bobbing within the breeze. Two Arctic hares seem like ghosts amid the granite whereas musk oxen watch us from a ridge, their hulking kinds silhouetted towards the sky.

“We don’t have any poisonous plants or animals here, we’re a non-toxic country,” Johannes chimes in from the again of the occasion. “Those hares remind me of my first hunting trip, they’re what all kids start on.”

I dangle again to ask how assembly his potential father-in-law went. He grins. “Good! I’m cute and charming — how could it not have.” As we crest the hill and catch as much as the remainder of the group, we discover them silenced, transfixed by the panorama unfolding under. Encircled by a necklace of silver mountains, the fjord is deep jade and nonetheless as glass. Icebergs drift lazily throughout its floor, sculpted by time into soft-serve spirals whose cores glow a luminous, unearthly blue.

Under the gentle mild of a boreal solar, even the mountains appear alive, and the ship’s volcanologist is beside himself with delight. With a profession that reads like a geological epic — from fieldwork in Antarctica to discovering gold deposits in South America — Brent Alloway has seen extra of the planet than most. But if he’s excited now, it’s nothing on our last cease: Kong Oscar Fjord, in Northeast Greenland National Park. “I’ve wanted to come here since I was young,” he says reverently. “We’re looking at metamorphosed rocks over a billion years old, just imagine! The entire composition of the planet was different back then.”

The rocks are a rainbow. Layer upon layer, they rise from the fjord in waves — reds melting into yellows, fading into whites — just like the pages of a ebook, every stratum a chapter of Earth’s historical past lengthy earlier than life appeared. Sediment build-up, tectonic motion and erosive motion can account for these formations, however there’s magic right here too. It fills Brent up, as if the land have been whispering its earliest secrets and techniques in his ear.

Back on board SH Vega, I head for the deck, decided to drink in these landscapes earlier than we attain the open ocean. A pod of humpbacks breaches beside the ship and immediately I’m surrounded by crew and passengers alike, each pair of binoculars educated on the erupting plumes of spray. They come so shut I can see their white underbellies, the scars etched on their fins, their barnacled tails lifting in salute.

And then, as if summoned for a last act, a polar bear seems paddling between the bergs. Against the partitions of ice, it appears tiny, fragile even, as uncovered as I’d felt in my kayak that first morning. Yet with the power to swim tons of of miles, this bear isn’t any totally different to the Greenlanders who carve out a life right here. They are a part of the identical story; proof of the resilience it takes to name this wild nation dwelling.