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because the land is so vast and the people are so few and so small compared to it. ‘When you come from Denmark, where a mountain is just a hill, where you can see whatever there is to see by standing on a molehill, and you come to Greenland, where you can see so incredibly far if the weather is clear. And where the mountains are so high. I’ve always loved walking on rocks and have done it a great deal. To see these big, towering landscape formations and the ice at the top and the snow and the ice floes and the icebergs on the water ... In clear weather, the colours are so unbelievably beautiful and the land is so vast that it defies comprehension,’ says the Queen, adding: ‘I have never encountered anything but deep heartfelt warmth whenever I have been to Greenland. It has always made a big impression experiencing the warm reception we are greeted with everywhere. How friendly people are, and so happy to see us.’ A LOVE PASSED ON Her Majesty has passed on her love of Greenland to her son Crown Prince Frederik. In 2000, he took part in the 2,800-kilometre expedition Sirius 2000, a four-month journey by dog sled through North Greenland. The Sirius Dog Sled Patrol is an elite Danish naval unit that conducts long-range reconnaissance patrols and enforces Danish sovereignty in the Arctic wilderness of northern and eastern Greenland. ‘That was tremendously important to him. To me, too, I must say. It gave him a chance to get much closer to
