Visit Greenland from Canada to spot humpback whales, cross the Arctic Circle and dodge great glaciers

Dec 8 , 2019

There is the occasional sighting of a humpback whale amid the icebergs in the Arctic waters. Photo: Getty Images

Set off from Nunavut, Canada, on One Ocean Expeditions’ flagship, the RCGS Resolute, for an unforgettable cruise across the Davis Strait to the untouched arctic wilderness of Greenland

The dusty streets of Iqaluit on Baffin Island may come as a surprise to those who expect a trip to the Arctic, even one made during the region’s brief summer, to be all about ice.

All-terrain vehicles and 4x4s trundle along unsurfaced roads between the cheerfully painted buildings of Canada’s youngest, smallest and most remote provincial capital. It has the atmosphere of a Wild West frontier town, straggling haphazardly up the hillsides surrounding Frobisher Bay.

The Inuit people’s original interest in the site is given away by its Inuktitut name, meaning “place of many fish”. It was chosen 20 years ago as the capital of the newly minted territory of Nunavut because of its cold war-era US airbase, now converted into a smart little airport.

At Greenland’s Ilulissat Icefjord, a curious young Arctic fox comes close to observe visitors. Photo: Peter Neville-Hadley

But away from the souvenir shops and the most northerly branch of Canadian coffee chain Tim Hortons, bits of blue and white berg bob by the beach. Here, zodiac inflatable boats wait to ferry passengers out to cruise line One Ocean Expeditions’ flagship, the RCGS Resolute, to begin a voyage across the Davis Strait following a trail of these icy breadcrumbs to their source – the great glaciers of Greenland. Only about 3,000 people a year visit Nunavut on Arctic expedition cruises, and they tend to be slightly older but fit North Americans. Arctic costs are perhaps a little high for all but the most well-heeled millennials, and a visit is perhaps still seen as a little too adventurous by many travellers from newer markets, such as China.

But the 160-passenger ice-strengthened Resolute is a little larger and more luxurious than the average polar expeditionary vessel, and once at sea its generous windows offer views of ever-larger slabs of floating whiteness that mirror the snowy table linen in the vessel’s main restaurant.

The Arctic icebergs provide beautiful scenery. Photo: Steve Allen

Table service is impeccable and the food well thought out, but the panoramas of rock and ice seem even more remote when viewed from behind a full plate.

At tiny Pangnirtung, a huddle of simple buildings halfway up a fiord, shops sell Inuit-carved soapstone and bone, and handwoven fabrics. A small museum displays a traditional summer tent of bearded sealskin sewn with caribou sinew, and elaborate sealskin garments to match, alongside the weaponry of whaling and the story of the arrival of white men.