New Airport Makes One Of The World’s Most Incredible Places More Accessible
Credit: Hurtigruten
24 August 2024 by Julietta Jameson, The Sydney Morning Herald - Traveller
The Arctic island of Greenland, with a population of just under 57,000 on a land mass of more than 2 million square kilometres, is keen to attract more tourists.
Yet it is also hoping to avoid the hazards of overtourism, such as its tiny neighbour, Iceland has endured. It wants to achieve a balancing act by skewing its offerings to adventure tourism and putting in place various regulatory measures. And those measures are about to face their biggest test.
An autonomous region of Denmark that sits mostly, and enticingly, in the Arctic Circle Greenland offers dramatic landscapes and prolific wildlife, and will shortly see the opening of a new international airport in the capital, Nuuk.
Set on a peninsula (Nuuk means “point”) on the south-west coast, the new airport will make access more feasible for travellers.
Until now, most international flights to Greenland have landed in Kangerlussuaq, a former US military base with a large runway, and from there visitors boarded a connecting flight to Nuuk.
Cruise passengers have travelled from Reykjavik in Iceland to get to the part of the Arctic Circle in which Greenland sits, with some itineraries also originating in Canada’s Arctic regions. Those longer cruises will still operate, but the launch of Nuuk’s airport on November 28 – the first of three Greenlandic airports set to open between now and 2026 – will make Greenland increasingly accessible.
The new Nuuk Airport has a runway more than double the length of the city’s previous and an attractive and spacious terminal building. Practically, it means the national carrier, Air Greenland can connect to the capital from Copenhagen and Canada, with the possibility of more destinations in the future.
Of course, the primary benefit is to citizens of Greenland, both in terms of travel and the import and export of goods.
The facilities, in a rugged place that has been notoriously short on infrastructure, have alrealdy inspired cruise companies to design new expeditions for exploring it.
Norway-based HX, formerly known as Hurtigruten Expeditions, is among the first to sail from the capital, part of a strategic partnership with Air Greenland. HX says the new airport will eliminate the need for guests to sail from Reykjavik to Greenland, significantly reducing transit time and affording travellers more time to explore the destination.
In 2025 it debuts three itineraries that are round trips from Nuuk and which will spend more time on Greenland’s west coast and explore further north than HX has before.
Each itinerary promises immersion in incredible scenery and arctic wildlife – including walrus, beluga whales, polar bears and narwhal, the tusked whale native to the Arctic – however each is different.
The Grand Greenland: Farthest North to Thule and Kane Basin itinerary departing July 2025 visits the northernmost communities on Earth, as well as sailing “beyond the human habitable world”.
Grand Greenland: The Icy Giants of Disko Bay is a 13-day itinerary with two departures in June 2025 that explore Greenland’s wild western coast. The highlight is Ilulissat Icefjord. The third, Grand Greenland: Mythical Lands of the North, has two departures in July 2025 and explores the High Arctic environment of the Thule region.
All cruises are onboard MS Fridtjof Nansen. Built in 2020, she’s HX’s newest expedition ship that carries a maximum of 530 passengers and features chic Scandi interiors. Other cruise companies that operate in the region include Viking and Silversea.