We skirt the southern flank of Disko Island in a Targwa 37 motorboat, threading our way between icebergs as big as four-story buildings. They’re dazzling sculptures in white, electric blue, and cyan, sharply defined against the island’s steep volcanic cliffs. But size is relative in this part of the Arctic Circle. Even the most mammoth bergs are dwarfed by Disko, which the local Inuit call Qeqertarsuaq, or “Big Island” (it’s about the size of Cyprus). And Disko is a speck compared to Greenland proper, which at just over two million square kilometers is, by a vast margin, the world’s largest island.
That’s the thing about Greenland: its sheer scale is difficult to grasp, not least the enormity of the ice sheet that covers about 80 percent of its surface area. Only the Antarctic has more ice. Greenland’s population, on the other hand, is tiny: some 56,500 inhabitants who mostly confine themselves to scattered settlements along the west coast. This is a land of extremes, where days and nights can last for months at a time and where temperatures can plummet to as low as -50ºC.
Qeqertarsuaq, situated in Baffin Bay about 20 kilometers off the mainland, offers a gentle introduction to Greenland. Or at least it feels that way during the long summer days of early August, when the sun rises at 3 a.m. and sets at 11
