Greenland’s Inuit settlement at Kulusuk

An intrepid traveller's dream location

Posted on February 14, 2015

Greenland should be every intrepid traveller’s dreamland. This rugged island of ice and rocks has almost no boundaries to the true adventurer. Located between the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Greenland was ceded from Norway to Denmark in 1814 and is currently an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark.

While it is the world’s biggest island, over three-quarters of its surface is covered by the only contemporary ice sheet outside of Antarctica. It has a coastline (39,330 km / 24,440 mi) about the same length as the Earth’s circumference at the equator. The highest point is at 3,859 m (12,660 ft) while the majority of the island is under 1,500 m (5,000 ft) elevation. Although much of Greenland is covered by a massive ice sheet, most of the extreme northern part is not covered by any ice as the air is too dry to produce any significant snow falls. Some scientists believe that if Greenland’s ice sheet was to melt away completely, the world’s sea level would rise by more than 7 m (23 ft) and what would remain of Greenland would be just a few thousand islands, and what would remain of some countries and many islands around the world would be, nothing!

With such a vast area and only about 56,400 inhabitants, it is also the world’s least densely populated country. The first inhabitants moved here from Canada about 4,500 years ago and later some Norsemen (Old Norse-speaking tribes) settled in the south during the 10th century while the Inuit peoples arrived in the 13th century. Today the vast majority of Greenland’s inhabitants are Greenlandic Inuit and European mixed, while about 10% are Europeans – mainly Danish.

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Globerovers Magazine July 2014