Greenland - Midnight sailing among the icebergs in Ilulissat

19JUL: Flight to Ilulissat

Day 9

We fly from Nuuk to Ilulissat and stay at Hotel Arctic that offers a delightful view of the fjord. In the afternoon we will go on a guided tour where the guide introduces the modern life in contrast to the traditional hunting life that continues to thrive in the town.

Whale watching in the afternoon, booked from the ferry to Nuuk. A pleasant surprise, I woke up and our Guide had found a whale watching tour for me in Ilulissat

Evening/Midnight sailing among the icebergs, extra tour booked from the Thai restaurant in Qaqortoq

The midnight/evening sun gives the icebergs a unique play of colours that people return to experience again and again. Midnight sun in Ilulissat lasts from May 21st to July 24th. Sailing during the night with the sun still shining is a fantastic and unusual experience. Almost every visitor in Ilulissat chooses to try this boat trip among the icebergs at least once. During the year, more than 46 km3 of ice flows into the fiord. The result is gigantic icebergs, which can be more than 100 metres on each side and with a height on more than 100 metres above the water surface. These giants strand at the end of the fiord, and that gives a good opportunity to sail among them.

The icebergs are beautiful every kind of weather; in the sunshine the contrasts are very clear, the blue shades are very beautiful, when it is cloudy and the midnight sun casts a unique glow on the icebergs during the night. The boat trip at bright night is definitely an extraordinary experience.

Remember to bring warm clothes or you can rent suit of sealskin.

Sunday 19^th of July 2015 and today is the day we will have a closer look at the gigantic icebergs coming out from the Ilulissat

Ilulissat Icefjord

Greenlandic: Ilulissat Kangerlua is a fjord in western Greenland. Ilulissat Icefjord was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004.

It runs west 40 km from the Greenland ice sheet to Disko Bay just south of Ilulissat town. At its eastern end is the Jakobshavn Isbræ glacier (Greenlandic: Sermeq Kujalleq), the most productive glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. The glacier flows at a rate of 20–35 m per day, resulting in around 20 billion tonnes of icebergs calved off and passing out of the fjord every year.

Icebergs breaking from the glacier are often so large (up to a kilometre in height) that they are too tall to float down the fjord and lie stuck on the bottom of its shallower areas, sometimes for years, until they are broken up by the force of the glacier and icebergs further up the fjord. On breaking up the icebergs emerge into the open sea and initially travel north with ocean currents before turning south and running into the Atlantic Ocean. Larger icebergs typically do not melt until they reach 40-45 degrees north (further south than the United Kingdom and level with New York City).

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Icefjord. The Ilulissat glacier spitting ourt icebergs to the Ilulissat Icefjord and when they reach the Disko Bay we can sail among the iceberg. And this is what we're going to do today.

We were going in an old Danish fishing boat, pretty much the same as the one we were going with on our first day here on Greenland.

When we went on the whale watching tour we were going North but now we went South and we have the first giant ice bergs just a minute South of Ilulissat. And these icebergs are the real thing, the size of a small country. There are like a threshold at the mouth of the Ilulissat Icefjord so the big icebergs are getting stuck there on their way out in the Atlantic.

Map of Ilulissat Icefjord and surrounding region. Limit of the World Heritage Site is marked with red line

Picture from www.geus.dk

Map showing the retreat of Sermeq Kujalleq from 1850 to 2006

Picture from www.geus.dk

Lengthwise cross section of the Icefjord (Figure: GEUS)

Icebergs from the calving glacier Sermeq Kujalleq drift through the 1000 metres deep icefjord toward the mouth of the fjord. Here the largest icebergs are stranding on the threshold called Isfjeldsbanken, where water depths only are 200-300 metres.

Please visit www.geus.dk for much more information

Anyway, these icebergs was, well, impressive is not enough to describe them. They are giants and the ice at the bottom can be hundred thousand years old or more. They have drilled more than 3km on top of the ice cap and it is still only ice.

Anyway, we were soon on board the old fishing boat and I must say that I like these old wooden boats better than the new plastic boats.

This wooden boat is what will give the right atmosphere out there between the giant icebergs. We, well, we had ice already in the port, but we ran in to the giant icebergs just after a minute or two outside the port. And suddenly, our Australian friend pointed and shouted. And yes, we had company with a Humpback whale, beautiful with the iceberg background. Is it possible for this day to get any better?

Visit World of Greenland's web page for more information

We were back in port around midnight thirty and we had seen a seal and spotted a whale 3 times, or maybe 4 times. I don't know if it was the same whale or if it was different Humpback Whales we saw. Anyway it had been an amazing tour and I'm booked for another “sailing among icebergs” when we return from Eqi on Thursday night.

I have two flights on tomorrow's schedule, I start with the airplane early morning and I will do the helicopter in the afternoon. So I have asked them to wake me up 6 o'clock in the morning, and this is for sure nothing I'm looking forward to.

So if you click HERE you will end up in the middle of a glacier flight extravaganza. And I'm really looking forward to the flying adventure tomorrow.


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OK, it has come to my knowledge that we have senior citizens visiting my web page. How hard can it be? So it's not very easy for them to see the blue coloured links to the next page.

Jiffy (also jiff)

noun [in SING.] informal a moment: we'll be back in a jiffy.

ORIGIN late 18th cent.: of unknown origin.

So as you understand, in a jiff pretty much depends on your internet.

So I put a “Next” button here and I hope that there isn't any problem to understand how to use that one. So just CLICK the “Next” button on your left hand side and you will be on the next page in a jiff!

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