Although I did not plan this trip myself, I wanted to write about this cruise to Eastern Greenland I took in August 2019 because it was an incredible experience. I participated in the trip as part of a familiarization group tour. Hurtigruten, the cruise line here, is a vendor I have worked with professionally for several years and this was my first chance to experience one of their ships for myself, the MS Fridtjof Nansen, a new hybrid-powered vessel.
Day 1 – Arriving to the end of the world
This trip started with a flight to Oslo, then a long wait in an airport lounge, and finally a late-night charter flight to Longyearbyen in Svalbard.
We took off from Oslo around 11 p.m. with the sky brightening the further north we flew. Around 3 a.m. local time we landed at the tiny Longyearbyen airport after a scenic descent over mountains, glaciers, and absolutely no sign of humanity until suddenly, a runway.
We all filed out of the plane and down a set of stairs into the terminal where one luggage belt blipped out our belongings.
Outside was golden hour, or rather golden hours and hours and hours. One of those signs with arrows pointing in the direction of distant places looked good in the warm light. A short bus ride took us a kilometer down the road to the port where the sleek but hulking MS Roald Amundsen waited.
Frustratingly, Hurtigruten did not include any time to explore Svalbard before sailing toward Greenland, and this remains the biggest disappointment of the trip. To anyone thinking about booking, plan on arriving in Svalbard a day or two early.
Day 2 – At sea in the high Arctic
You know that feeling you get when you look out of an airplane window and can see the curvature of the Earth? Like you can finally comprehend how vast our planet is? Sailing from Svalbard to Greenland through a milky fog is kind of like that feeling. You stand outside on your balcony and look toward the horizon there’s only a fuzzy purgatory. Occasionally a seabird floats by the window, like a looping screensaver.
The intercom buzzes on and a voice explains that the captain will be retracting the stabilizers due to potential sea ice. I can see nothing through the fog and I expect that’s the problem. Be careful walking and use the hand railings, the voice says. The speech is repeated in German, French and Chinese. Then a mechanical noise, followed by the expected pitching and swaying of the ship.
Somehow two days pass and the light never changes.
Day 3 – Eisbär
At 5 a.m. on the third day I’m awakened by a thud. I sit up, another thud. Finally, something different.
I get up and pull the curtains back and am actually stunned. Endless islands of ice float in the thinning fog, the light still weird and ethereal. The scene is hushed except for the occasional sound of the metal hull bumping into giant chunks of ice.
At breakfast I can feel that the mood on the ship has changed. Everyone is excited for what’s next, whatever that may be.
I sit in a lounge chair on Deck 10, sipping coffee and watching the fog slowly lift until the air is finally crisp and clear. Miles and miles of ice in sharp focus, and then suddenly a voice on the intercom: “Polar Bear, 11 o’clock! Eisbär!”
I hurry down to my cabin to grab my camera. The captain slows the ship and cuts all engine noise. From my balcony I can see the yellow-hued bear on an ice floe up ahead. We’ve got to be 20 miles from land or more, how is he or she all the way out here? The bear is watching us too, and it’s quite fat! Back and forth it walks along the ice until it finally dips into the water and paddles away from us.
I feel so … astonished!To be here in the Arctic, in the far reaches of what most people would consider to be nowhere. A fat polar bear, living its life.
Later I learned that polar bears are classified as marine mammals, like whales or dolphins. Somehow I had always assumed that polar bears roamed the coast, only jumping on to a piece of moving ice if it was close to solid ground.
But that’s not it at all.
Polar bears really live on the ocean, moving from iceberg to iceberg, and have been spotted hundreds of miles from shore.
What’s also astonishing is what people will complain about – later I overheard a woman tell her companion that the bear was “too yellow and dirty”.
In the evening the crew announces that we’re just 10 miles from our first landing site, Myggbukta, or “Mosquito Bay”. We’ll land there tomorrow but for tonight we’ll be circling a group of giant icebergs. I watch the light and shadows change on these mountains of ice until I need to draw the blackout curtains.
Day 4 – Myggbukta
In the morning we’re anchored about a quarter mile from shore. This is part of Northeast Greenland National Park, the least-visited national park in the world. I can see a long curving beach with hills rising behind it, and at the south end of the bay is a black house with white trim. Only 100 people at a time are permitted to land, so passengers are split into five groups and scheduled for one-hour landings throughout the day.
First, a crew goes ashore with rifles in hand to scout the area to confirm there are no polar bears. There’s a small group of musk oxen at the far north end of the bay, but otherwise the site is safe. The crew posts red flags to define a path leading to the house, and another leading up the hill behind the buildings. When we land, we are required to follow the flags and not stray far.
My landing time is scheduled for 3 p.m. so I spend the morning and afternoon in the lounge watching the RIB boats ferry people back and forth. When my group is called, we all head down to the launch bay in our bright red jackets and rubber boots. One at a time we step on to the RIB boat as we grasp the forearm of a crew member, the “seaman’s grip”.
What looked like a barren expanse of rocky beach and grassy hill from afar is surprisingly full of interesting things to look at. Here in the national park visitors are not permitted to remove anything – every stone, flower, stick and bone is considered a protected cultural artifact. On my walk I see musk oxen skulls, reindeer spines and seal ribs bleached in the sun as pillows of wildflowers envelop them.
Myggbukta was originally established in 1922 and was a whaling, meteorological and radio station. Now property of the national park, the house is still full of old furniture and equipment. A typewriter sits on a desk in one room and ancient canned goods line the shelves in the pantry. Reindeer antlers are hung as decorations on the outside of the house.
I hike up the hill first for views over the bay. An expedition guide at the top lends me their binoculars to spot the musk oxen at the end of the beach. Then I walk back down the hill and toward the house, passing by a group of old cages that were used to house wild foxes. Later I learned they all escaped during a blizzard.
Back on board at the daily briefing we learn that we may not be making a landing tomorrow as planned. The summer of 2019 saw record warmth in the Arctic. As strange as it sounds, more heat means more ice in the water here as ice breaks off of the Greenland ice sheet and fills up the coastal waterways. According to the satellite imagery, the fjord we planned on entering looks too blocked with ice to safely navigate.
Day 5 – Ice cubes again
Sure enough, we can’t make the planned landing today due to ice. Those are the breaks here in Eastern Greenland. There’s a reason my itinerary was a bit vague – local ice conditions determine where and when we can land. “I hope you didn’t think this is a vacation,” a crew member tells us during the evening meeting. “It’s an expedition!”
Later a pod of narwhals is spotted in the distance, their long lance-like teeth jutting out of the water. Occasionally we pass by a lazy seal sunning itself on an iceberg. Seabirds follow us as we slowly push south through the ice. I sit in the lounge next to a woman painting beautiful watercolors as a man snores in a chair behind me.
Day 6 – Ittoqqortoormiit
In the morning we are already anchored at Ittoqqortoormiit, the most remote village in all of Greenland. The town looks like part of a model train set in the morning sunshine – jewel-toned saltbox houses dot the hillside in front of snowy hills. I can see a church’s tall steeple along the bayfront and several wooden staircases lead up the hills between the houses. A small but dense collection of white crosses in the cemetery overlooks the town and the bay.
This is my favorite day of the cruise.
The first thing I see when I disembark from the RIB boat is a man pulling what turns out to be rotting narwhal flesh out of an old chest freezer sitting next to a stream. Along the stream bank are barking dogs pulling at their chains in anticipation of the snack.
The man uses a long knife to hack the meat into chunks until the smell of death overtakes him and he has to turn away to retch. Slowly he’s able to throw a chunk out to each of the ecstatic dogs.
I think that photos are more interesting than anything else I could say about this beautiful town, so here’s a collection of pictures I took during the rest of my day in Ittoqqortoormiit.
Sailing away from the village, we start to see some large icebergs.
And tonight we are treated to a very golden sunset.
Day 7 – Skyscrapers
This morning we’re anchored just outside what looks like the Manhattan of ice. We’ve seen gargantuan icebergs before, but not clustered together like this. Some are nine stories tall and over a kilometer wide. Bahama blue behemoths with rolling hills and valleys and waterfalls dropping into the saltwater below.
Our excursion today is a RIB boat exploration through this iceberg city. I’m with a Brazilian family. I don’t understand much of what they’re saying but I know the ponds of glowing turquoise water in one of the icebergs is why they’re shouting “jacuzzi!”
Later the ship maneuvers into one of the fjord arms of Scoresbysund, a long and narrow finger of water flanked by jagged granite peaks. They’re as shapely and beautiful as the famous peaks of Patagonia. We pass by glaciers curving their way down to the water and then turn around after an hour to head back out to the coast.
Day 8 – Hecla Havn
We’re making our final landing in Greenland today, an island called Hecla Havn. There’s a small hunting cabin here that is shared by the residents of Ittoqqortoormiit, which is now about 50 miles to the north. When our ship approaches in the morning there’s a tiny boat floating near the shore. It’s the beginning of musk ox hunting season and a group of surprised hunters is standing there watching our ship of 500 passengers approach.
A few members of the expedition crew set out to chat with these surprised hunters, one of whom is taking a bath in the stream in front of the cabin. The crew confirms that it’s OK for us to come ashore and then begins setting up the red flags for us to follow.
There are two paths open to us on Hecla Havn today, the first of which follows a glacial valley behind the cabin. It continues for about a half mile to an overlook point where we can see the water, icebergs and the ship, as well as the surrounding mountains and the cabin. The second path leads over rocky terrain to short cliffs overlooking a pebble beach. The beach is littered with marine detritus like old rusting barrels and fishing nets. I watch a group of kayakers from our ship paddle their way around a small cove below before returning to the RIB boat that will take me back to the ship.
Day 10 – Bridge Visit
Sometime during the night, the ship crosses into Icelandic waters, although we won’t reach Iceland until early tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I’m invited to take a tour of the bridge with some of my travel industry colleagues.
Captain Benny welcomes us warmly. He’s Norwegian, mid-forties and enthusiastic about all the bells and whistles on this new hybrid ship. I’m out of my element here – it’s like being on the U.S.S. Enterprise – but I’m captivated. There are five crewmembers in the bridge –Captain Benny, a navigator, a pilot, and two crew members manning some futuristic workstations. Captain Benny shows us the sonar and GPS, and a map on what looks like a giant iPad. He points out the blips on the screen that indicate other ships in the area.
Windshield wipers about five feet wide occasionally swish back and forth on the panoramic windows. We notice the joysticks at the pilot’s station and Benny explains they’re used to help steer. He started playing video games in the early 80’s on the Commodore 64 computer and credits at least half of his piloting skills to being an avid gamer. “I’ve never told anyone that before,” he says.
The MS Roald Amundsen is one of the world’s first hybrid expedition ships. It can run almost silently and emits significantly lower emissions than non-hybrid ships of the same size.
Days 11-12 – Iceland
Arriving in Stykkisholmur, Iceland is kind of like waking up in Kansas after a visit to Oz. There are cars zipping around the streets. There are weekdays again. It’s a Tuesday! And cell phone service. Restaurants. Coffee shops!
I spend the first half of the day on a hiking tour of the Berserker Lava Fields, or Berserkjahraun in Icelandic. This ancient lava flow is now covered in moss, lichens and wildflowers and is a joyful place for a walk. Its name comes from a story in one of the Icelandic sagas about a pair of Berserkers working for a farmer in the area.
In the afternoon I walked up to the Lutheran church which reminded me of those Cold War-era monuments in the Balkans. Back on the ship I watched the sun actually dip below the horizon for the first time in over a week.
In the morning we docked in Reykjavik where many people stayed on to explore Iceland.
If you ever find yourself in Iceland for a couple of days, I highly recommend renting a car to explore the southern coastal area.
I will leave you with a view of the pool deck as the ship left Ittoqqortoormiit. Thanks for reading. Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions.
