The town of Ilulissat, which means “iceberg”, is located deep in Disko Bay. It’s a busy fishing port, with a population of around 4,700. The seafood company Royal Greenland has a processing plant here, as the nose detects as soon as one enters the busy marina.
We were scheduled to go ashore by tender this afternoon, but weather conditions forced a change to zodiac shuttles.
Ilulissat is the most popular tourist destination in Greenland because of the UNESCO World Heritage listed Ilulissat Icefjord. The icefjord is 40 km (25 miles) long and 5 km (3 miles) wide. It runs from the massive Greenland ice sheet to Disko Bay.
The Greenland ice sheet covers an area three times the size of Texas, or about 80% of the world’s largest island. It’s comprised of 90,000 layers of annual snowfall compressed into 3 km (almost 2 miles) of ice.
The mass is so great that much of its bedrock base is below sea level, having been compressed by the weight. If it totally melted, sea level around the world would rise 7 m (33 ft).
The fast-moving Jakobshavn Glacier from which the icebergs calve is the most productive glacier in the northern hemisphere. It is 700 m (.45 miles) thick and produces huge icebergs that pile up in the icefjord as it gets shallower near the sea.
Months ago, we had booked a small boat tour of the icefjord. But today’s weather was not favorable. Wind was blowing massive icebergs together at the entrance to the fjord; it wasn’t safe to thread boats between them.
There were shuttle buses to take us to the Icefjord center, but we were bundled up and despite a light rain opted to walk the mile on foot.
I’d read that there are more sled dogs than people in Ilulisset. This may be true. We passed several “dog yards”, open spans of tundra where dozens of dogs were chained around small buildings. Each building is the center is one owner’s dogs.
They were mostly very good - if wet - boys.
The Icefjord Center is high above town. A long boardwalk leads across the tundra to the icefjord.
The tundra is beautiful this time of year, with autumn colors in the ground-hugging plants.
The boardwalk ends at a scramble of rock and mud, where the buckling ice spreads to the horizon.
As we walked back towards town, the dogs started howling. Perhaps it was chow time. It sounded like Halloween on steroids.
We stocked up on licorice in town (it’s a Scandinavian thing) and headed back to the ship for a late dinner.
Tundra at the boardwalk’s end.
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