The entrancing extremes of inhospitable Greenland

“Nature has not been generous to Greenland,” says Simon Calder in The Independent. Nine times the size of Britain, this “wild” yet bewitching country is mostly made up of an ice sheet “almost inconceivable in its scale”, leaving its 56,000-strong population to cling to its “coastal fringes”. Most live on the “corrugated” western side – facing Canada – where the “fjord focus” is even better than Norway’s.

An autonomous territory of Denmark, Greenland voted to go it alone, outside the EU, in 1982. Nevertheless, the Danish krone is still its currency. Most flights land in the small settlement of Kangerlussuaq, a hard-to-pronounce former US airbase – which “put the cold into Cold War” – that is now reliant on tourism. From here, visitors drive out in 4x4s, past the “metallic entrails” of crashed warplanes, to where “ancient rocks, twisted and jagged, tell of the Earth’s restlessness”, and tough grasses are the only visible greenery. It’s empty, extreme and entrancing, but if you want to explore the country’s astonishing landscape more widely, you’ll need a boat or a plane.

The local tourist board describes the capital, Nuuk, as an “Arctic metropolis”. That may be stretching it a bit: the town has an “excellent” national museum, but it’s not exactly bustling, and feels rather bleak. For something a little “closer to the soul of Greenland”, head up the magnificent jagged fjords to colourful fishing villages such as Kangaamiut, with its “primary-painted cottages tumbling down to the water’s edge”. The evidence of the “heroic” levels of endurance required to live here is everywhere – rows of cod drying on hooks; a skinned seal staining the harbour waters a vivid red. But the “heavenly voices of a local choir” drifting from a tiny church shows there’s still “room for the spirits to soar” – even here on the “raw edge of the world”. Flights go via Denmark. Accommodation is often spartan and expensive – for options, see www.independenttraveller.com.