What an astounding place. Scoresby Sund is a huge fjord system in Eastern Greenland with rugged mountains vaulting up from deep fjords full of mountain-sized icebergs. Its longest fjord extends more than 200 miles inland.
It’s hard to decide what to cover first, but I’ll start with the YouTube video I published recently that features the icebergs. This video includes icebergs seen around Ilulissat in West Greenland too, but the rest of this post is limited to Scoresby Sund iceberg scenes and the many other amazing sights thereabouts. So, here we go:
So first, here is a selection of iceberg still shots. The big ones dwarfed our ship, to say the least:
Dark lines appear in many icebergs. These are places where meltwater has filled in cracks. They are clear ice without air bubbles, and can produce some special effects when the light is right:
Next topic: The rugged mountains that the glaciers have carved. We’ll start with a short video, then some stills.
How about wildlife? Well, other than one polar bear, I got my first sighting of Musk Ox. First we passed a skull, then got a distant view of a couple animals grazing. They’re very alert, and they’re hunted here, so it’s not easy to get close.
Now for some scenery, special emphasis on the flora. This first video features the national flower of Greenland, the dwarf fireweed, in bloom.
Although it was only mid-August, there were the first signs of fall color. Winter comes early here.
Arctic cottongrass was making a show in this moist valley.
Finally on Day 13 we visited the isolated community of Ittoqqotoormiit, population 350. The nearest ‘neighboring’ town is actually on Iceland.
Being a meteorologist, who spent a whole summer sending up weather balloons back in my college days, I made a point to be at the weather station when they sent up their twice-daily balloon.
From Ittoqqortoormiit we set sail for Reykjavik Iceland. Before I got to visit west Greenland, I first spent eight days in Iceland. That will be the subject of the next report.