My first sighting of Greenland was from the window of a constitution airplane flying final June from Reykjavik, Iceland, to Kangerlussuaq, 30 miles contained in the Arctic Circle. As we neared Greenland’s jap coast, the navy blue of the North Atlantic gave option to a white-on-blue, ice-strewn chaos. A darkish band of jagged coastal mountains adopted, after which a monolithic whiteness: We had been over the Greenlandic ice sheet, with its huge glaciers, an uninhabitable remnant of Earth’s final ice age 100,000 years in the past. The ice sheet nonetheless accounts for four-fifths of Greenland’s territory; it is as deep as two miles, and it weighs an unfathomable 3 quadrillion tons (which creates an “isostatic despair” in Earth’s crust). The ice sheet and its glaciers are actually famously and alarmingly melting, which is anticipated to ultimately elevate sea ranges worldwide by an unthinkable 24 ft.

I by no means imagined I might be visiting a spot of such unusual magnificence, strangeness, and world consequence. For good cause: Greenland, the world’s largest island, is, in a standard sense, unvisitable. Its one worldwide airport, at Kangerlussuaq, is an airstrip (our arrival is noticed from a rocky ridge by a musk ox and a reindeer). No roads hyperlink its few coastal settlements. Greenlanders (there are 57,000, the bulk descendants of the Inuit who migrated right here 800 years in the past over the ocean ice from Canada) get about by ferries in summer season, propeller planes or canine sleds in winter.

Kayaks are pulled away from the Seabourn mothership in order that the kayaking expertise might be maximally meditative—you on the water, in complete silence.

My fellow soon-to-be cruisers and I, 142 in all, are right here to board the Seabourn Enterprise expedition ship for a two-week journey alongside Greenland’s rugged coasts and into its huge fjords, the place humpback whales roam, individuals nonetheless hunt polar bears and seals for a dwelling, and the ice sheet’s glaciers spew edifice-size icebergs into the ocean. Designed to deal with the intractable setting—ice-strengthened, extremely maneuverable, with a shallow draft—the ship would be the base from which our adventures will proceed: Zodiac touring, kayaking, climbing, submersible diving, and, if the spirit strikes us, polar plunging.

Off-the-grid expeditions and discoveries for paying passengers are, in fact, nothing new. In many years previous, repurposed Russian icebreakers, Baltic automotive ferries, Pacific island cargo boats, and scientific analysis ships did the honors—sturdy vessels that delivered off-board thrills however had been low on onboard frills. However today we’re speaking purpose-built ships designed to ship each—of which the Enterprise and its sister ship, Seabourn Pursuit, launched in August, are among the many latest. We’re in a golden age of expedition cruising, one which satisfies the traditional attract of the unknown and unreachable—that highly effective human need to be awed—whereas providing contemporary insights and luxurious.

The Expedition Lounge aboard the Enterprise. Pre-dinner talks and tour updates are delivered within the adjoining Discovery Heart, cocktails served.

But on my first few nights onboard, I am not precisely getting my magnificence sleep. Not as a result of I selected wrongly from the pillow menu or dallied over too many after-dinner drinks in Deck 9’s Constellation Lounge. The midnight solar is shining, and I can not bear to attract the blackout curtains on the glass door of my Veranda Suite. There’s an excessive amount of, and so gorgeously little, on the market: the stark partitions of the fjords (as Knud Rasmussen, a half-Inuit explorer from the early twentieth century, wrote, “They’re black and towering, and there’s no pity in them”), the large hunks of ice adrift on the frigid water, the utter vacancy. I am taking pictures at 2 a.m., at 4 a.m., barefoot in my pajamas, heedless of the 30° temperature. I am not the one one. Along with non-public verandas, the Enterprise has 30,000 sq. ft of deck area, and I spy small clusters of different wakeful souls, on the bow or astern, taking all of it in.

Many people on the Seabourn Enterprise, useful employees included, are out on the decks in any respect hours. There’s one thing endlessly transfixing about these austere landscapes.

If the Enterprise is our luxurious base camp, its Zodiacs, kayaks, and submersibles (24, eight, and two, respectively) are, within the phrases of a crew member, “the information of the spear.” They’re manned by an expedition staff of 24, together with a geologist, a botanist, two marine ­biologists, an ornithologist, a bear information, two submersible pilots, and three kayaking guides.

One in all Seabourn Enterprise’s knowledgeable and affable Zodiac and kayaking guides.

They offer talks of their areas of experience (within the ship’s Discovery Heart), guard our security within the Arctic waters (we observe entering into and out of every part, utilizing the sailor’s grip, donning the head-to-toe kayaking dry swimsuit), and contextualize what we’re seeing.

Know Your Ice

Greenlandic Ice Sheet The famend melting mom lode, shaped of snow compacted over greater than 100,000 years. (Antarctica’s is greater however melting extra slowly and with much less impact on sea ranges.) An early European explorer referred to as it the “mysterious desert.” Except you are a polar professional or scientist, you’ll not be happening it, however even from the coast you’re feeling it.

Tiny iceberg fragment.

Icebergs Fantastically formed hunks damaged off from glaciers as they slide out from the central ice sheet into the ocean. The older and tougher they’re, the bluer they give the impression of being. Beware: A 5-meter-tall iceberg goes down one other 45 meters under the floor.

Sea ice Frozen seawater, it is softer, flatter, and murkier than icebergs. Its annual melting has no impact on sea ranges.

Bergy Bits Icebergs smaller than a home.

Growlers Icebergs smaller than a automotive.

Brash Ice The smallest iceberg fragments. Their bubbles include historic air. Seize a bit for cocktails with a kick for while you’re again onboard.

“These are 4-billion-year-old rocks,” says geologist Brent Alloway throughout one in every of our Zodiac outings, gesturing towards the not-a-single-blade-of-grass-bare partitions of a fjord. “It is uncommon to see this, however due to the minimal vegetation right here, they’re uncovered.” There are rocks that seem like folded layers of wealthy, multi­coloration fudge. “That is proof of the creation, 335 million years in the past, of the supercontinent of Pangaea by the collision of tectonic plates.” And these ones, with the extensive vertical stripes? “Proof of Pangaea’s breakup, 200 million years in the past, by a tectonic pulling aside, which prompted the thinning of the crust and allowed magma to shoot up from the Earth’s core into ‘host’ rocks, creating this ‘intrusion.’ Stand up shut, put your hand on them,” Alloway urges. “The element of the folding particularly could be very, very stunning. And you’re looking at deep geologic time.”

Many moments on the Seabourn cruise to Greenland, like this Zodiac tour alongside a fjord, really feel like journeys again to when our world started.

The wonder, energy, and ephemerality of icebergs (most soften inside three years of calving) have an irresistible attract. When a procession of them floats by the Enterprise one night throughout dinner, a fellow passenger can not help herself: “They’re so shifting it makes me need to cry.” Captain Alex Golubev and expedition chief Luciano Bernacchi take turns saying on the ship’s intercom the looks of particularly resplendent specimens with the identical pleasure as after they alert us to 2 humpback whales taking part in. The snows that led to the formation of the present Greenlandic ice sheet—and so to the icebergs amongst which we now play—started falling some 100,000 years in the past, when Homo sapiens already walked the earth.

Icebergs however, the climate in June is usually heat sufficient to lounge outdoors on sunny days. The 30,000 sq. ft of deck area guarantee there’s by no means a crowd.

As we kayak we peer into the icebergs’ aquamarine facilities; the bluer the ice, the older and tougher it’s. (Ice absorbs purple and yellow wavelengths because it compacts, whereas blue and inexperienced are mirrored.) We’re drawn nearer generally by a crackling or hissing: historic air, trapped in bubbles within the ice, escaping. However not too shut—90 % of each iceberg lies under the floor, and so they can flip, crack, or explode with out warning. Our guides calculate the security of strategy primarily based on every iceberg’s above-the-water peak.

The sheltered coves of Sisimiut, the most important Arctic metropolis in North America, has been inhabited since 2,500BC by the Inuit and their precursors. Notice the soupçon of vegetation.

Simply as spectacular because the icebergs’ verticality is the minimalist horizontality of Arctic flora. We encounter it on hikes on the tundra and on visits to some settlements (together with Nuuk, the world’s northernmost capital). Most vegetation are dwarf breeds which have tailored in myriad fascinating methods to chilly, wind, and polar darkness, which might final so long as six months. (Photosynthesis? What photosynthesis?) Wolfgang Wenzel, a biologist and lecturer, factors out dwarf willows, dwarf birches, and dwarf trailing azaleas, abloom in June with tiny, incongruously pink flowers (reddish pigmentation helps soak up warmth). The flora right here would not a lot develop as cling to the bottom, husbanding vitality, slowing down life’s processes. “What appears to be like like a bit twig might be 50 years outdated,” Wenzel says. “Life is tough, and every part takes a very long time. Polar bears are nice, however I feel seeing these tiny vegetation attempt to survive is actually one thing.”

Returning to the Enterprise, I discover that somebody has drawn a sizzling bubble tub for me. “Enjoyable Bathtub,” says the tub pillow, in case I missed it. Profligate, I do know, however I sink in gratefully, visions of minuscule however valiant azaleas dancing in my head.

Adversity, nonetheless, is a part of journey and likewise requires keenness of response. (Do not be mad,” says Bernacchi. “Be versatile.”) Our plans are someday scrambled by the climate. We spend a blissful, blue-sky half-day bobbing in Zodiacs and kayaks in Prince Christian Sound fjord, the place the southernmost tip of the ice sheet enters the water. Hordes of kittiwakes, the Arctic gulls, fly between icebergs, squawking; a whiskered seal observes us skittishly from a slab of sea ice, and, as if on cue, a building-size chunk of ice breaks off the glacier, white shards flying. However then an sudden accumulation of ice creates a bottle­neck within the fjord, and we’ve got to show again and retrace our route. One other day, heavy fog rolls in—a lot for the Zodiac tour. And there is a likelihood of a katabatic wind off the ice sheet—dense air falling from a better elevation, generally at hurricane velocity. I learn that the Inuit phrase for climate, sila, additionally means consciousness.

On a transparent afternoon I undergo a submersible dive within the idyllic bay in Brattahlid. Brattahlid is the place the charismatic Norseman Erik the Purple arrived circa AD 982, through the nice Viking growth (and, within the earliest recognized occasion of vacation spot advertising and marketing, gave Greenland its comically deceptive title). Seb Coulthard, the sub’s pilot, was, in a earlier life, an engineer within the British Royal Navy, and he skilled for Arctic survival with the Royal Marines. The submersible is a six-passenger, Dutch-made, Lloyd’s ­Register–licensed U-Boat-Worx, with a 14-inch plexiglass dome. “Okay, let’s go for a bit discover. Nobody has dived right here earlier than. That is the closest you will get to area journey with out leaving the planet. We’re happening to 300 ft, previous the sting of darkness.’ We see starfish, sponges, sea anemones. “The wonder right here is delicate,” Coulthard needs us to grasp. Not one of the razzmatazz of tropical seas.

I concentrate on plankton, which I’ve by no means seen earlier than: tiny pale strands falling throughout us, in a darkness illuminated for the very first time by the U-Boat’s lights—strand upon strand in all places, like a steady underwater snowfall. “Consider it as mud kicked up by the moon, besides that it’s natural,” Coulthard says. “I can not emphasize sufficient how vital it’s. Plankton locks away extra carbon than timber and produces oxygen. Greater than 30 % of the CO₂ on this planet is locked up within the sea. Few take note of these austere environments, the naked rocks and fjords, however caring for them is as vital as caring for rainforests, if no more.”

We now have exceeded our allotted 45 minutes underwater by 5, “however I needed you to essentially see,” Coulthard says. We rise, rapidly now, 30 meters per minute. “Right here we go, breaking the floor. One, two, three… Welcome residence.”

After two weeks of adventures and après pampering, it’s tough to disembark. Sigh…

A Few Favorites

My Cabin The entry-level however cleverly designed Veranda Suite lacks nothing: outside deck, sitting space, walk-in closet, bathe and tub, two full-length mirrors, heated gear locker, giant flatscreen. An ideal cocoon.

The Swag Complimentary Helly Hansen polar jacket and liner (you possibly can swap sizes onboard if it is advisable).

Day by day Night Recap An effective way to ease into night, prep for tomorrow, and find out about: Arctic geology, natural world; Viking historical past; polar exploration; the function of Greenland throughout WWII; and extra. Drink service supplied.

The fantastic eating restaurant.

Meal Occasions A la carte at each meal (and self-service besides at dinner), plus alternatives to dine with crew and lecturers (who’re additionally out there to reply questions all through the voyage).

“Cleanness” of the ship Ask for a briefing from straight-talking environmental officer Phil Neil. Revelatory.

Polar Plunge 5 minutes of ache, 10 hours of endorphin-induced bliss, ­bragging rights eternally. Do it.

This story seems within the October 2023 subject of City & Nation. Reporting for this text was made doable by Seabourn, although it had no enter editorially. SUBSCRIBE NOW

Government Journey Editor

Klara Glowczewska is the Government Journey Editor of City & Nation, masking subjects associated to journey particularly (locations, itineraries, resorts, tendencies) and broadly (conservation, tradition, journey), and was beforehand the Editor in Chief of Conde Nast Traveler journal.