Greenland has always loomed large in the imagination—an oversized white shape has always at the top of the globe, the mythical Thule of ancient legends. But lately, the world has rediscovered just how real—and how vital—this country is. For better or for worse, the island has become a prize in the new Arctic chess match. Coveted by superpowers for its minerals and strategic location, positioned like a keystone between continents, it is also home to 57,000 Greenlanders who are steadily defining their own future. The locals, 90% Inuit whose ancestors have lived there for millennia, maintain a sleek, modern capital, Nuuk, and also hunt and fish using ancient techniques. Fragile, immense, and newly central, Greenland has become the stage where climate change, geopolitics, and human resilience collide.

Ilulissat, home to the UNESCO-listed ice fjord that produces more icebergs than any glacier on Earth outside Antarctica.

Photo by Ívar Eyþórssony / Visit Greenland

Which is why setting foot here feels less like a vacation than an initiation. With HX (formerly Hurtigruten Expeditions), the journey begins in a way that itself reshapes the story: a United Airlines flight, direct from Newark to Nuuk. For two decades, getting to Greenland required detours through Iceland or Denmark. Now, in just four hours, you step from the familiar clutter of a U.S. airport into the crystalline air of the Arctic capital. This new flight isn’t just about convenience; it provides access. Those extra days on Greenlandic soil became the difference between a tour and an immersion.

This was not a cruise, intended to cuddle and comfort. It was an expedition in the modern sense, framed by Greenlandic Voices who lent meaning to every iceberg, every story, every silence.

And then there is the ship itself, the MS Fridtjof Nansen, gliding silently on hybrid-battery power in an example of cutting-edge Scandinavian shipbuilding technology. We could almost imagine explorer Roald Amundsen craning his neck in disbelief at these modern explorers with better boots, seamless Wi-Fi, and an immaculate hull. It is also the only expedition company that uses native Greenlanders to craft the itinerary.

The staff was stocked with experts in every conceivable field: ornithology, anthropology, mountaineering. The locals, both Danish from Nuuk and Inughuit from the Far North, patiently fielded our endless questions. We learned from them every day and had lunch with the person who literally wrote the guidebook on Greenland. Local knowledge extended to the kitchen as well. Greenland’s former Chef of the Year, Laasi Biilmann, continued the story, turning local shellfish, beef, and lamb into meals that felt like discoveries in their own right.

This was not a cruise, intended to cuddle and comfort. It was an expedition in the modern sense, framed by Greenlandic voices who lent meaning to every iceberg, every story, every silence. Our mission: to go as far north as the ship could possibly go.

Ice on the move and a village on a hill

Our first true communion with Greenland’s scale came at Ilulissat, where the UNESCO-listed icefjord produces more icebergs than any glacier on Earth outside of Antarctica. The walk there was deceptively simple: a mile of wooden path rolling over the tundra. At first, only a few scattered bergs teased the horizon. Then, slowly, the scale unfolded—dozens, then hundreds, a frozen armada stretching to infinity. Over a bridge, up a rocky bluff, and suddenly the world fell away into a panorama of white castles drifting toward the sea.

Taking in views of the ice fjord in Ilulissat.

Photo by Alex Savu / Visit Greenland

But the show wasn’t over with that spectacular viewing. We took to the skies in a small plane and watched the icefjord from above, its colossal river of ice feeding blue veins into the ocean. From that height, the secret revealed itself: first one humpback whale, then two, then six: they were circling the bergs, drawn by the plankton blooms released as the ice melts. From above, their entire forms glided beneath the gin-clear water, unmistakable and unhurried, as if the Arctic itself had slowed time for us to notice.

Farther north, Uummannaq greeted us with sunshine and heat that felt almost implausible at that latitude. The colorful houses clung to the base of the heart-shaped mountain that gives the village its name, a place that looks brush-stroked onto the fjord. We climbed a rocky hill outside town, the sea glittering with shards of ice. There, we saw Arctic poppies in magnificent bloom. Little auks (a type of black-and-white seabird) plunged deep beneath the surface to fish, while guillemots (similar to auks) buzzed overhead, and giant muskox roamed the steep hills.

The colorful houses in Aasiaat’s Old Town neighborhood bring cheer against the snow.

Photo by Alex Savu / Visit Greenland

Natalie befriended two young women at a bus stop—one, a chef from Nuuk, who spoke of Greenland’s growing food scene with the pride of someone building a new identity. She told us about Hotel Hans Egede’s famed Greenlandic buffet the way a Seattleite might whisper about a pop-up in San Francisco: very far away, but still worth the trip. She laughed when we asked about winter. That, she said, was the season for visiting neighboring villages by car—on ice thick enough to drive across. Every Greenlander we met spoke of the long winter as the best time of year, when the light comes from the moon, snow, and the aurora borealis.

Meteorites at the top of the world

In Savissivik, the story tilted toward legend. Ten-thousand years ago, the Cape York meteorite crashed nearby, delivering iron, the raw material for tools that changed the lives of Greenland’s earliest people. We met a man who had survived a polar bear attack with the help of his dogs, using his sled as both a weapon and a shield. His story came without bravado, offered with the matter-of-fact calm of someone who knows that in the Arctic, survival is never guaranteed. The guides reminded us that in the late 19th century, explorer Robert Peary carted off the three largest meteorite fragments to New York, to display at the American Museum of Natural History. Perhaps futilely, but with Arctic optimism, Greenland would like them back.

In Qaanaaq—the northernmost indigenous town in the world—we experienced Greenland’s soul as much as its scale. This was where our cultural guide, storyteller, and musician Aleqatsiaq Peary, grew up. He is a descendant of Robert Peary, the aforementioned explorer who claimed both the North Pole and Greenland’s meteorites for the West. Aleqatsiaq’s perspective was a bridge: between Greenlandic tradition and global curiosity, between the hunter’s life and the modern world.

We visited a family home for a kaffemik, the Greenlandic version of a social tea, where cakes, coffee, and conversation flowed in equal measure. It wasn’t a spectacle, but something better: a glimpse of daily joy at the edge of the inhabitable world. Outside, narwhal-hunting kayaks sat on shore, reminders that here, survival is not a story in a museum but an everyday reality.

A kaffemik is a Greenlandic tradition of hosting guests throughout the day to celebrate milestones or connect with loved ones. Coffee, cakes, dried fish, and buns are often served.

Photo by Magnus B. Trolle / Visit Greenland

Kayaks—so familiar in the Pacific Northwest—were invented here thousands of years ago, so it seemed appropriate to take a spin. Some guests were taught to harpoon by the locals who still do it for subsistence fishing. We were content to slip into our sleek modern vessel, navigating the icebergs at a safe remove, gliding silently along, overcome with wonder.

A walk on the sea ice

Beyond Qaanaaq, we reached as far north as our ship could go. Sea ice ebbs and contorts, like an amoeba viewed in a microscope. Past 78° north, the water hardened into vast sheets of ice, a boundary and an invitation at once. The guides led us carefully onto the frozen ocean. Walking on sea ice is both thrilling and humbling, a reminder that every step is borrowed time.

And then, the moment that would define the expedition: a polar bear, padding across the ice in the distance. We met fellow travelers who had seen dozens of polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba. Ominously, they are becoming rare in Greenland. We watched in reverent silence as the bear crossed the horizon, its body luminous against the white. It stared at us, poised quietly nearby, atop our immense ship, with as much curiosity as we did the bear. Then, with an agile flop into the water, it disappeared into the immensity. To witness it felt like Greenland was letting us in on a secret.

Dubbed an “organic snowmobile,” dog sledding has a long history in Greenland, as seen here in Aasiaat.

Photo by Norris Niman / Visit Greenland

A taste of the future

After the raw power of the north, Disko Island was a different kind of revelation. In the small town of Qeqertarsuaq, we found ourselves at the restaurant of Hotel Disko Island, where the atmosphere felt more white-tablecloth gourmet than Arctic remote. Courses of snow crab, muskox tartare, and foraged greens unfolded like a culinary map of Greenland’s future. Paired with craft beer from QAJAQ Brewery, it was proof that Greenland’s renaissance is not only cultural but also culinary.

The menu at Hotel Disko Island features seasonal dishes made with fresh-caught seafood and locally foraged mushrooms, berries, and herbs.

Photo by Rosing Carsen / Visit Greenland

As we turned south, Sisimiut and Itilleq offered the gentle cadence of a finale—towns where colorful houses stood bright against the tundra, where children played soccer and waved from shore, where the scale shifted from epic to intimate. These were reminders that Greenland is not just an Arctic wilderness but a living country, negotiating its path toward independence and self-definition.

Greenland’s moment

Back on deck, as the ship glided silently between offshore islands, we thought again about that Newark flight. United has confirmed it will return next spring, making Greenland more accessible than ever. For centuries, Greenland was one of the last blank spaces on the map. Now, for the first time, it feels both reachable and essential.

HX’s managing director for the Americas, Steve Smotrys, put it this way: “Seattle has been at the heart of our North American story since 2014. The city embodies the spirit of exploration.” It’s true. Paddling a kayak in the frozen sea, the connection between Greenland and Seattle—between Arctic frontiers and maritime tradition—runs deeper than geography.

Greenland is no longer peripheral. It is the center of climate change, of political intrigue, of human imagination. To travel there now, with Greenlanders as guides and hosts, is to step into the story they are still writing.