Greenland from the Air

Click on any image for a clearer view

 

Usually the trip home is ... well, not worth writing home about. Two things made this one special.
First, we were able to upgrade to First Class using Frequent Flyer miles. We were wined and dined across the Atlantic -  we even had made-to-order ice cream sundaes for dessert.

Also, early into the flight the captain announced that we would be routed north so our flight would take us just south of Greenland. Regina has flown across the Atlantic many times without having seen Greenland while Ron, having flown in the North Atlantic a good deal while in the Navy assured her that at this time of year all we would see would be cloud cover. Wrong!

In fact there was only a wisp of haze that day. We were treated to an extended view of Greenland as we flew just south of landfall. From our 30,000 foot perspective the view was spectacular. Fortunately, we had film left in one of our cameras.

As we drew closer we realized that we were looking at Point Farewell, the very tip of Greenland, where the glacier meets the North Sea. The Greenland glacier is the second-largest in the world, second only to Antarctica. Massive hardly describes it. Far to the north, at it's thickest. the glacier rises up almost 10,000 feet above sea level. If the entire glacier were to melt, worldwide sea level would rise 20 feet.

 

Closer still, we see one arm of the glacier flowing past the mountains into the sea. The white specks at lower left are icebergs that it has just calved -- the largest being about the size of a modern cruise ship.

Despite the appearances here , Greenland is inhabited and has been for centuries. A branch of the Gulf Stream warms the water of the Labrador Sea somewhat along its west coast. Current population is about 65,000, mostly native Inuit fishermen and, more recently, gold mine workers. Of the four major towns, only Nuuk, the capital, lies below the Arctic Circle, and that by only a hundred miles or so. (Check their site for more information.)

Early Norse settlements (out of which the first European settlements in America came) became extinct during the "Little Ice Age" of the late 1400s, but Danes returned in the 1700s and are a minority there today. (Though entirely self-governing, the island remains a Danish protectorate by choice.)

As we flew on to the Southwest, a more general view of the mountainous terrain and the newborn icebergs came into view. We decided that this is probably not our next travel destination, but it was nice to have had a look at it.

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