October 16, 2022

Prince Christian Sound in southern Greenland

Southern tip of a northern isle. Prince Christian Sound in southern Greenland

The sheer size of Greenland is hard to put in perspective. The world’s largest island is more than 836,000 square miles – that’s more than three times the size of Texas and more than 170,000 square miles larger than Alaska. It is a land of deep fjords and ice that must have made the Norse explorers who landed there a thousand years ago feel right at home.

Today we find ourselves at the southern tip of Greenland, in Prince Christian Sound, a long, narrow fjord system 60 miles long, at times as narrow as 1,500 feet across. It flows through steep canyons of granite that soar over 1,200 feet above. The placid calm of these waters is frequently disrupted by calving glaciers, breaching whales, and the cruise ships that visit the region. The only human habitation in this frozen landscape is the Inuit village of Aappilattoq, home to about 100 people.