“It’s amazing to think,” says Aputsiaq Gabrielsen, our boat driver and guide, “that these icebergs started life thousands of years ago as just a single snowflake.” As he says this, he cuts the boat engine, and we slowly drift to a halt in front of an iceberg larger than a city tower block. “The snowflake became compressed with other snowflakes, and over hundreds of years it turned to ice,” he continues in a voice filled with wonder, even though he’s probably told this story a hundred times or more.
“It then took thousands of years for this ice to reach the lip of the ice sheet, where it broke off and formed these enormous icebergs.” Pausing to let the immensity of its geology sink in, he says: “Some of these icebergs could contain ice that’s been on Earth since before humans existed.”
Local ice floes
Stuart Butler
Greenland, the world’s largest island, boggles the mind. It’s larger than Western Europe but has a population of only 56,000, and there are no roads to connect the handful of scattered towns and villages around its frozen edges. Around 80 per cent of this vast Arctic wilderness sits under an ice sheet that stretches over 1.7 million square kilometres, and, in places, is over three kilometres thick.
For weeks on end, in summer, the sun never drops below the horizon and, conversely, in the heart of winter, when temperatures can fall as low as -60 °C, the only natural light comes from the moon, the stars and the spiralling green patterns of the aurora borealis, which the Inuit believe to be the spirits of the dead. Greenland, put simply, is an elemental place.
Until recently, Greenland has been largely considered the preserve of scientists studying the fast-melting ice and explorers pushing the limits of human endurance. In January 2026, Greenland made headlines when President Donald Trump demanded that the US be allowed to acquire the autonomous Danish dependency for US national security, and frantic negotiations followed. It was a rare moment in the spotlight for Greenland, which isn’t the sort of place that tourists usually venture to, but that’s starting to change.