We’re cruising the world’s largest fjord on Earth’s largest island.
Greenland is a frozen dagger of a landmass with a jagged coastline carved by glaciers pouring off a massive ice-ages-old glacial plateau. We’ve penetrated the mini-continent’s cold remote eastern flank in Scoresbysund, crunching through floes, some with a unique saturated bluish hue, slaloming past enormous bergs, some significantly taller than our ship.
The views here are atmospheric, alluring and constantly shifting – a dynamic interplay between sea, sky, ice and light. It is a dramatic oceanic icescape, with views close and distant, and bands of fog dissolving in and out, obscuring and brightening vistas. The large Antarctic-worthy icebergs seem to have their own weather systems, with clouds forming and streaming off their tops in the wind. It is entirely ethereal and atmospheric and constantly morphing.
National Geographic Explorer sailed up Hurry Inlet in Scoresbysund this morning to tuck in from a stiff northerly wind. We passed a few native camps and a community by the local airstrip. Muddy sediment plumes mixed into the fjord with jade-colored, glacially-silted water. We spotted a few musk oxen grazing on the greener hillsides. (Yes, there is some green land on Greenland.)
Based on a single account from 1940 in the mariner’s handbook, we found safe anchorage at Kap Hooker back in the main fjord and went ashore. Flat first-year ice floes were beached in the shallows. Groups of king eiders, sanderlings and long-tailed ducks passed. Beachcombers discovered blobs of comb jellies awash on the shore. Those who rambled over the tundra ridges found blooming carpets of Arctic bell heather, mountain aven and other hearty vegetation. A white Arctic hare allowed some hikers a close approach. The big discovery of the day undoubtedly was half a dozen musk oxen carcasses, their characteristically curving horns still on the skulls. The question of the afternoon that lingered was what caused the demise of this group of ice-age relicts.
For the second day in a row now, despite eager preparations by the natural history staff, Evening Recap was cancelled to observe East Greenland polar bears in the pack ice. One beautiful and curious bear floe-hopped and swam nearly up to the ship, before sailing off into the bergfield beyond. A midnight bear under the midnight sun unsuccessfully stalked a seal on a large singular floe before uncovering a snow-cached previous kill and consuming it while fending off scavenging gulls.
The slice of Greenland here in Scoresbysund as we’re experiencing it offers continuous inspirational scenes of ice, water, atmospherics and wildlife.
