Air Greenland flies from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq, located in a world of its own. On the flight, you can enjoy a light meal, a movie, and your first sight of nunataks – mountain peaks jutting up through the ice sheet. From up here, you really get a sense of how big the ice sheet is. It takes almost an hour to fly across the ice!

Welcome and accommodation

Upon arrival, you will be met by one of our local partners who will help you check in to your hotel. You will stay at Hotel Kangerlussuaq, located in the airport complex and just a glance away from the great outdoors. An information meeting will be held where you will learn more about the area and its excursion possibilities.

Kangerlussuaq is located near the ice sheet

Kangerlussuaq is located between beautiful rolling mountains and close to the ice sheet. Here, you can experience and walk on the legendary ice sheet, which covers approximately 80 % of Greenland, so the forces of nature have flexed their muscles.

If you purchased the excursion package, you are ready to embark on your first wonderful excursion.

Excursion to the Ice Sheet, Point 660 (optional)

If you have purchased the excursion package, it is time for an excursion. The ice sheet, which we also call the ice cap, is located about 25 km from the town, and we drive in a 4-wheel drive vehicle through the stunning moraine landscape on a gravel road that takes us all the way to Point 660. Here, we stop and walk up onto the ice sheet itself. The walk onto the ice sheet varies, as the ice is “living” and constantly changing shape. Some years, you can easily walk onto the ice, and other years, it is a bit more challenging – but there is always a local guide with you who knows everything about the area. Along the way, there’s a good chance of seeing reindeer, musk oxen, and the beautiful moraine landscape.

In the evening, you can relax at the hotel or take the bus to Restaurant Roklubben, located at a lovely large lake six kilometers outside Kangerlussuaq.

On day two, your trip continues by plane to Ilulissat and the Icefjord. The Greenlandic name of Ilulissat means ‘icebergs,’ which is, of course, related to the beautiful Icefjord and the large amounts of ice floating around at its own pace at the Icefjord.

Arrival and accommodation

After arriving in Ilulissat, you will be transferred to Hotel Icefiord. This hotel is located close to the waterfront in central Ilulissat and offers a beautiful view of Disko Bay.
A guide from World of Greenland will hold an information meeting at the hotel, where they will tell you a little about the town and the many excursion options. Like Greenland Travel, World of Greenland is part of the Air Greenland Group, so we work closely together. After the meeting, you will be well prepared for a fantastic stay in Ilulissat.

Cultural and historical town walk in Ilulissat

You’ll start your experiences on a cultural and historical town walk, where you’ll gain a deeper understanding of Greenland’s culture and history, adding perspective to all your other experiences in Greenland.

Ilulissat was founded in 1741 and is Greenland’s third-largest town, with over 4,500 inhabitants. The guide will tell you about the town’s history, Greenlandic culture, and modern life 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. Along the way, we visit the fishermen at the harbor and the sellers on the local market. We also pass Knud Rasmussen’s birthplace and the old wooden church, Zion’s Church. It’s a lovely walk, and we’re not done walking for the day!

Hike to the abandoned settlement of Sermermiut by the Icefjord

The beautiful icebergs of the Ilulissat Icefjord form the backdrop for the former settlement of Sermermiut, located one and a half kilometers (1 mile) south of the town. For 4,000 years, various Inuit cultures lived here, and today, you can still see many remains that testify to their presence.

Sermermiut is located in the middle of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, so a footbridge has been built to protect fragile nature, making hiking much easier.
Ruins from when the Inuit lived here can be seen, and if you walk to the end of the walkway, you’ll also come to the Old Women’s Gorge. This place became very famous after the fourth season of the TV series Borgen, much of which was set in Ilulissat.

We have our dinner at Hotel Icefiord, which serves a delicious welcome dinner (drinks not included).

After waking up, you can enjoy your breakfast at Hotel Icefiord. You have the day at your leisure unless you have purchased the excursion package, in which case you will go on a boat trip to the calving glacier Eqi today.

Boat trip to Eqi Glacier (optional)

Head down to the harbor and hop on one of the comfortable boats that cruise around Disko Bay. With the ship’s crew, you will now head north on a boat trip to the calving glacier, Eqi Glacier. The glacier flows into a wide fjord 80 kilometers north of Ilulissat. With the boat, it is possible to get relatively close to the glacier, and, at a safe distance, you can experience the glacier calving large chunks of ice. The ice-safe ship lies approximately two hours in front of the glacier waiting for calving, and here you can also enjoy your lunch.

The trip to and from Eqi Glacier can take two to five hours each way, depending on the type of boat used that day. At approximately 2 p.m., the ship docks at Port Victor, the ‘port’ of Glacier Lodge Eqi, to drop off some passengers and pick up others who have spent the night in the camp. Then, you set the course for Ilulissat again. The boat trip itself is also exciting, with beautiful scenery and ice.

You can dine at the hotel in the evening or try one of the other lovely restaurants in town. Tomorrow, the trip continues north to Uummannaq, but you will spend another night in Ilulissat at the end of the trip.

After a good breakfast at the hotel, we head out to the airport to experience the next part of this tour: the flight to Qaarsut. To be honest, Qaarsut Airport is a strange construction. It’s basically in the middle of nowhere, but it was here that a runway for fixed-wing aircraft could be placed near Uummannaq. You’ll find yourself on the northern side of the Nuussuaq Peninsula and are rewarded with a stunning view of Uummannaq.

From Qaarsut, you sail towards Uummannaq, located on an island 22 kilometers out in the fjord. It’s a beautiful boat trip, crossing the fjord towards the island with the iconic heart-shaped mountain.

Uummannaq

Once you arrive in Uummannaq, you’ll place your luggage in a small, cozy house, where you’ll stay for the next few days. You’ll also find out where to shop, as you’ll be self-catering for the next three days.

You will then go on a town walk of Uummannaq. Both the town and the island are called Uummannaq. Uummannaq is very much a traditional Greenlandic town. The pace of the town, infrastructure, and culture are so different from what you’re used to back home. It’s summer, and the days are very long—in high summer, there is no night because the midnight sun never sets.

Uummannaq is 590 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle and is home to just under 1,300 people. Most people make their living from fishing and hunting. Several settlements are spread out in the area around Uummannaq, including Qaarsut, Saatut, Ikerasak, and Ukkusissat. There is also a desert near Uummannaq, which you rarely see in Greenland.

On the fifth day, you will embark on an 8-hour boat trip in the large fjord system. You will first sail to Qilakitsoq, located on the north side of the Nuussuaq Peninsula. Here, you will have a history lesson. In modern-day Greenland, the name Qilakitsoq has an almost magical ring. This is where the most exceptional archaeological Inuit finds have been made.

In 1972, two brothers, Hans and Jokum Grønvold, were grouse hunting in the area when they came across some stone-covered graves. They looked into the graves and immediately realized they had found something extraordinary. They didn’t tell anyone about their find, except for the National Museum of Denmark (this was before Greenland had its own national museum). It turned out that the graves were 5-600 years old and contained eight very well-preserved, clothed mummies and much extra clothing. For archaeologists, this is by far the most valuable find that can tell us about Inuit culture around the middle of the last millennium. Today, four mummies are displayed at the Greenland National Museum and Archives. There is also a really good exhibition of mummies at the local museum in Uummannaq.

We then sail on to the desert, located on the island of Salliaruseq, also known as The Big Island. On the east coast of this island is a very peculiar desert. This lunar landscape is created by the minerals in the soil, especially sulfur and iron. The sand has reacted with these minerals, so the desert is yellow. In this desert, it is possible to find rare and ancient rocks, such as quartz and garnet stones, and minerals, such as iron ore and mica schist. Some rocks are around 1.5 billion years old. After being in the desert, we sail around the island along the more than 1,000-meter-high vertical mountain on Salliaruseq. Before heading home, we head north and visit the small settlement of Saattut.
We walk to Santa’s hut in the evening at nearby Qasigissat Bay. The hut was built when DR (the Danish equivalent to BBC) filmed a televised Christmas calendar written by a man who had been a teacher in Uummannaq.

Today, you’ll be sailing again, but on a different type of trip, focusing on a bit of hiking. You’ll sail from Uummannaq to Eqaluit (“The Place with Trout”), located southeast on the Nuussuaq Peninsula’s north side.

Along the way, we pass many huge icebergs that have calved off from the Great Glacier at the bottom of the fjord. There’s also a good chance of seeing humpback, fin, minke, and, if we’re lucky, sperm whales.

After about an hour of sailing, we arrive at Eqaluit. It’s a great place to hike, and the boatman brings a fishing rod, as there are trout along the shore and in the lake. From the fjord, we hike up to a beautiful lake – it’s about a 30-minute hike, so it’s manageable. Before returning to the boat, we sit near the lake and drink coffee or tea.
Back in Uummannaq, you can take a walk around town. The town is located in very hilly terrain, so many great vantage points exist. See if you can find time to visit the town’s museum. There are exhibitions about the mummies from Qilakitsoq, and you can also learn more about Alfred Wegener and his world-famous theory.

Alfred Wegener

Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, was part of the Danish expedition to Greenland in the early 1900s. He was responsible for determining and measuring geographical fix points. During his expedition, he was surprised that another German had already made the same measurements but with completely different results. This led Wegener to form a groundbreaking idea: the continents move.

Wegener later led the German Greenland Expedition, also known as the Wegener Expedition, from 1930 to 1931 to study the Greenland ice sheet systematically. Wegener’s contribution to our understanding of continental drift and Greenland’s geology and climate has been crucial. Much of Wegener’s work took place at Uummannaq (and also at Eqi Glacier).

Today, we head back to Ilulissat. When we arrived in Uummannaq, we sailed across the fjord, but today, we’re going to try something different, taking the trip back to Qaarsut by helicopter instead.

In the past, Grønlandsfly (Air Greenland’s original name) had the world’s largest route network of helicopter flights. This was costly and cumbersome, so they built fixed-wing runways in many larger towns along the coast. Because Uummannaq Island is so hilly, the airport couldn’t be built there, so instead, it was built on the mainland at nearby Qaarsut, and you still have to fly the rest of the way to Uummannaq by helicopter.

You’ll fly from the heliport in Uummannaq to Qaarsut, switch to one of Air Greenland’s Dash-8 aircraft, and then fly back to Ilulissat, where you’ll once again stay at Hotel Icefiord.

If you have purchased the excursion package, a boat trip on the Ilulissat Icefjord is on the program in the evening.

Boat trip among icebergs (optional)

The rays of the midnight sun give the icebergs a unique color that people return to Ilulissat to experience again and again. Almost all visitors to Ilulissat choose this boat trip between icebergs: every day, more than 40 million tons of ice flow from the Ilulissat Glacier into the Icefjord.

The result is enormous icebergs that can be hundreds of meters in each direction and extend almost 70 meters above sea level. These giants are stranded at the mouth of the Icefjord, and we have the opportunity to sail among them. Remember to bring warm clothes for the trip because even in summer, it’s cold out here on the water among the icebergs.

With views of the Icefjord and the last sight of icebergs, the journey back home after many eventful and intense days. Air Greenland flies you from Ilulissat via Kangerlussuaq to Copenhagen, where you arrive in the evening.

We guarantee that you will return home with luggage filled with memories that will stay with you longer than other vacation memories—at least, that’s what our travelers tell us.