Greenland
Kangikitsok is a tiny settlement — or more accurately, a named location — on the coast of southeastern Greenland, one of the least accessible regions of the world's largest island. Southeastern Greenland is a stretch of coast so remote, so ice-bound, and so sparsely inhabited that it remains, in the twenty-first century, one of the last genuinely unexplored coastlines in the Northern Hemisphere. The Greenland Ice Sheet, which covers approximately 80 percent of the island's surface, sends its outlet glaciers directly to the sea along this coast, creating a landscape of ice cliffs, fjords, and drifting icebergs that has changed little since the last Ice Age — except that the glaciers are now retreating at accelerating rates, making this coastline one of the most visible indicators of global climate change.
The landscape at Kangikitsok and along the southeastern coast is defined by the collision of ice and rock. The mountains — ancient Precambrian gneiss, among the oldest rock on Earth — rise steeply from fjords that are often choked with sea ice and icebergs. The glaciers that descend from the interior ice sheet are massive, their ice walls stretching for kilometers across the heads of fjords, their surfaces fractured into crevasses and seracs of deep blue. The calving events — when sections of the glacier face collapse into the fjord — produce icebergs of every size and shape, from house-sized bergy bits to floating islands that can weigh millions of tons. The sound of calving — a deep, reverberating crack followed by a roar like cannon fire — carries for miles across the still, cold water.
Wildlife along this coast is adapted to Arctic extremity. Polar bears roam the sea ice and coastal margins, and sightings from expedition vessels are possible though not guaranteed. Narwhal — the "unicorn of the sea," with their spiral ivory tusks — inhabit the fjords and pack-ice edges, though they are elusive and difficult to observe. Musk oxen, their dense woolly coats proof against the most extreme cold, graze on the sparse tundra vegetation in the ice-free valleys. Seabirds — guillemots, kittiwakes, little auks — nest on the coastal cliffs in dense colonies, their breeding season (June–August) coinciding with the brief Arctic summer when the midnight sun provides continuous daylight.
The human history of southeastern Greenland is primarily Inuit — the Tunumiit people, an East Greenlandic Inuit group, have inhabited this coast for over a thousand years, their survival in this extreme environment depending on the hunting of seal, walrus, and whale. Contact with European civilization came late — the east coast of Greenland was largely unknown to Europeans until the nineteenth century — and the Tunumiit culture retains elements that have been lost in the more accessible west coast settlements. The few settlements along the coast — Tasiilaq (formerly Ammassalik) being the largest, with approximately 2,000 residents — are among the most isolated communities in the world, connected to the outside world by helicopter and supply ship rather than by road.
Kangikitsok is accessible only by expedition cruise ship, typically on itineraries exploring the east coast of Greenland between Iceland and the southern tip of the island. The season is extremely short — July through September — when ice conditions may (but do not guarantee) permit navigation along the coast. Itineraries are inherently flexible, with the ice pilot making real-time decisions about which fjords can be entered and where landings can be attempted. Passengers should be prepared for cold, wet conditions (temperatures of 0–8°C even in summer), the possibility of itinerary changes, and the profound experience of traveling through one of the emptiest, most beautiful landscapes on Earth.