Any Travels

Greenland is great if you are into dog sleighing or snow scooters. Big parts of this big land are covered with snow all year round, and as a result sport the world's second largest glacial cap (after Antarctica) more than a kilometer thick.

The capital city Nuuk is loacted in the West. It is an ideal starting place for exploring the rest of the country and one of the best places to find transport, accommodation and arrange the details of your trip.

South Greenland will appeal most to visitors seeking excellent outdoor activities from hiking to serious rock climbing. Field ice (floating sheets of ice—not to be confused with icebergs) drift in this area in spring and summer and occasionally impede vessels that carry supplies to the villages.

In the South Igaliku is a tiny village (known in ancient times as Gardar) shielded by the mountains and blessed with good soil in a sheep-raising and vegetable-growing area.

Nanortalik (pop. 1 500) offers well-kept gardens and scenic views of the surrounding granite mountains. Narsaq, set against a mountain backdrop this village (pop. 1 900) offers several attractions including a museum. Narsarsuaq was founded in 1941 as a U.S. air base—U.S. personnel departed shortly after World War II—is the gateway to the beautiful Skov and Eiriks Fjords. Qaqortoq (Julianehab) with its multicolored houses perched on a mountainside overlooking icebergs rates as one of the most beautiful towns on the island (with very friendly people).

The East Coast is mostly inhabited. There are only two major settlements Tasiilaq and Ittoqqortoormiit. The area is very beautiful and boasts the biggest National Park in the world.

In the North Disko bay is a prime destination. It has the best climate in summer - but is of course very cold in winter- and is ideal for outdoor activities especially if you like dog sledges. Further up north, Qaanaaq is the only settlement of some size. It is hard to visit however because of the presence of a US military base. Permits can be hard to get.

Greenland, and especially its northern regions of Ultima Thule, remains a land of fantastical and semi-mythical proportions, with aurora borealis, the vast tundra, glittering columns of ice, monstrous glaciers that calve icebergs into the sea and the proverbially tight-lipped Inuit.

Ever since 15th-century explorers returned from the distant north with wild and woolly tales of a remote region of brutish hairy pygmies, unicorns, mind-bending visions and citadels of ice, Ultima Thule has been the fantasy of all fantasies.

Poets from Virgil and Pytheas to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow have celebrated it in verse; the Weimar Republic used it as a template for one of their mythic Nordic-Germanic societies; and big-haired '70s rock bands, with a penchant for heavy feedback and fuzzy guitar solos, have used it as a clarion call to youthful rebellion.

Traditional Greenlandic food is of the bloody and freshly killed kind: walrus, seal and whale. The tastiest parts of the kill (the eyes, kidney and heart) were traditionally set aside for the head hunter and the other sections distributed according to a very strict hierarchy. Every part of the animal was used. One traditional delicacy described by Jean Malaurie in The Last Kings of Thule combined partridge droppings and seal fat; another consisted of narwhal fat and water, mixed with walrus brain and digested grass from the first stomach of a reindeer. Despite the culinary trend toward mix'n'match global cuisine, you'd have to think twice before trying to rehabilitate traditional Greenland fare. It's difficult to imagine either of these dishes, or any variation of them, ever appearing in Vogue Cuisine. These days supermarket aisles have largely taken over the hunt. Even tropical fruits are put on the shopping list, but prepackaged whale steaks and seal meat are still available in the frozen goods section.