From the air, the first sign of Greenland is the appearance of a constellation of white swirls and smudges far below, as open sea gives way to Arctic ice. Inside our 76-seat Icelandair plane, passengers are peering out of the windows. Most are men over 40, many toting backpacks with waist straps and wearing lace-up boots and caps emblazoned with words like “Hunt Club.” There are a lot of American accents.
Next to me sits an affable man from Bonney Lake, Washington, who drinks a can of Monster Energy while explaining that he only stopped snowboarding deep into his 70s. A British man one row up tells me he left Oman two weeks before war spread across the Gulf. He jokes that he wanted to get to Greenland before Donald Trump.