Deep in polar bear territory—sail to Greenland's eastern fjords

“We’re deep in polar bear territory now.” The expedition leader’s voice bounces off the icebergs, echoing around the bay before the glacier swallows it whole. Moving clumsily through the water in my kayak, I feel vulnerable, hunted, a paddling nugget in a neon-yellow drysuit that barely 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 perfect stage for a game of cat and mouse.

Clouds hang low and heavy, snagging on basalt peaks black as obsidian and close enough to our kayaks that I can see their scarred flanks, seemingly ravaged by the claws of some colossal beast. A glacier carves through the landscape like a vast frozen road, ending abruptly at the water’s edge in a sheer wall of ice. Even if no bears appear, Scoresby Sund in Greenland’s eastern fjord system has certainly delivered a wild welcome.

Back on board expedition ship SH Vega, I struggle to imagine how people live here, particularly 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 built for the cold.

“We don’t have any cartilage in our noses so it’s impossible for us to get frostbite,” says Johannes Hammond, pressing his own so that it’s flat against 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 got chatting to the 21-year-old in the ship’s observation lounge, all pale wood and low-slung Scandinavian-style sofas. Rain lashes against the floor-to-ceiling windows, tracing threads across the glass as Greenland’s mountains unspool in an endless sweep of serrated peaks. Johannes is on board with his mother, Aleqa Hammond, who was the country’s first female prime minister, though this is a holiday for both of them, he says. SH Vega is heading to an area so remote 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 stick to the south west, stopping in the toy-town capital of Nuuk. Home to 27,000 of Greenland’s 56,000 residents, it’s as metropolitan as the country gets: “We’ve got a cinema and everything — but no traffic lights,” Johannes laughs.

SH Vega, however, offers something different: dextrous, hardy and specially designed to navigate northern waters, it can weave around icebergs the size of small hills and grind through chunks that refuse to get out of the way. “You’re going to feel some shuddering, some shaking,” the captain announces wryly over the Tannoy that afternoon. “Don’t worry, she loves it.”

The ship’s ice-breaking prowess lets it reach some of Greenland’s most remote landscapes — places larger ships simply can’t access. And that’s where we’re headed: threading our way up Greenland’s coastline before reaching the vast, icy expanse of Northeast Greenland National Park, the planet’s largest wilderness.

Life on the edge

By the time we reach Ittoqqortoormiit, the ship’s steady crunching has become a soporific soundtrack, and through lectures from an expedition team whose specialisms range from geology to ornithology, I’ve learnt a little more about this elemental country. I knew Greenland was the world’s largest island, but other superlatives are stark: it has the lowest population density on Earth, glaciers that cover four-fifths of the landmass and summers so brief the ground thaws for just a few weeks. But it’s not until we drop anchor that I come to appreciate the resilience of Greenland’s people.

Our Zodiacs dock to a flurry of activity. Men race around on snowmobiles while others cluster around wooden sledges, tinkering with ropes and bindings. It’s the first day of the hunting season and soon the town will be all but deserted, with groups often gone for several weeks at a time. If they’re lucky they’ll return with seals, whales and perhaps even polar bears. The killing of these creatures is a difficult concept to grapple with, but as Aleqa explains, survival here still depends on the skill of the hunters, and laws have been introduced to protect the bear population. “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 foreign is the notion of growing fruit and vegetables that the vocabulary doesn’t even exist in Greenlandic. Instead, there’s just one word, naasoq, meaning something living that comes from the earth. When Aleqa presents two children with an apple and a pear she’s snaffled from the ship, they clutch the gifts as though Christmas has come early, a raw joy etched onto their faces.

They dash off with the treasure and I leave Aleqa to wander the town solo, hat pulled low, eyes peeled for Johannes. There’s no sign of him, though I do pass a ruby-red church, a solitary supermarket — empty for most of the year when sea ice stops supply ships from approaching the shore — and a litter of puppies whose playful exuberance gives no hint as to the wolf-like sled dogs they’ll soon become.

When an elderly lady trussed up in colourful woollens beckons me into her home for a coffee I gratefully accept. Her grandson hands me a mug before proudly pointing to narwhal tusks, seven feet long, lining the walls, and musk ox skulls keeping silent vigil beside the fireplace.

I leave warmed but a little overwhelmed by life in Ittoqqortoormiit, a true outpost of human tenacity. But as SH Vega pushes north, towards Northeast Greenland National Park, the sun peeks shyly through the clouds and suddenly the country softens, finally offering me a gentler, more forgiving face.

A living landscape

Our hike has taken an interesting turn. We seem to be playing a game of spot the scat, and Anya Astafurova, the ship’s resident biologist, is identifying every 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 gather around the soggy lumps, the others looking around expectantly, half hoping the culprit is still close by. Pea-sized pellets mark the recent passage of reindeer, while Arctic fox poo confirms smaller hunters roam this tundra, too.

We’ve been walking steadily uphill, and the ship’s Zodiacs now lie far below on Bear Island’s rocky beach, diminished to black specks against a landscape no longer painted monochrome. The wind has dropped to a whisper, and beneath our feet, moss carpets the ground, glinting gold and green in the sun.

The walk is magnificent, weaving between boulders deposited from a retreating glacier some 10,000 years ago, each decorated with scarlet splashes of lichen. Reindeer moss trails across the ground in silver tendrils, mixed with purple bellflowers and the downy tufts of cottongrass bobbing in the breeze. Two Arctic hares appear like ghosts amid the granite while musk oxen watch us from a ridge, their hulking forms silhouetted against the sky.

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

I hang back to ask how meeting 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 up to the rest of the group, we find them silenced, transfixed by the panorama unfolding below. Encircled by a necklace of silver mountains, the fjord is deep jade and still as glass. Icebergs drift lazily across its surface, sculpted by time into soft-serve spirals whose cores glow a luminous, unearthly blue.

Under the soft light of a boreal sun, even the mountains seem alive, and the ship’s volcanologist is beside himself with delight. With a career that reads like a geological epic — from fieldwork in Antarctica to discovering gold deposits in South America — Brent Alloway has seen more of the planet than most. But if he’s excited now, it’s nothing on our final stop: 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 — like the pages of a book, each stratum a chapter of Earth’s history long before life appeared. Sediment build-up, tectonic movement and erosive action can account for these formations, but there’s magic here too. It fills Brent up, as if the land were whispering its earliest secrets in his ear.

Back on board SH Vega, I head for the deck, determined to drink in these landscapes before we reach the open ocean. A pod of humpbacks breaches beside the ship and suddenly I’m surrounded by crew and passengers alike, every pair of binoculars trained on the erupting plumes of spray. They come so close 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 final act, a polar bear appears paddling between the bergs. Against the walls of ice, it seems tiny, fragile even, as exposed as I’d felt in my kayak that first morning. Yet with the strength to swim hundreds of miles, this bear is no different to the Greenlanders who carve out a life here. They are part of the same story; proof of the resilience it takes to call this wild country home.