Scan Magazine | Special Theme | A Spotlight on Greenland
A world beyond imagination The town of Ilulissat, numbering 5,000 inhabitants and almost 2,000 sled dogs, is Greenland’s third-largest city and most popular tourist destination. Situated at the entrance to the festively-named Disko Bay in the Ilulissat Fjord on Greenland’s western shore, the town is known for its vivid marine life and spectacular icebergs – ‘Ilulissat’ means iceberg in the Kalaallisut language of West Greenland. The area’s almost otherworldly surroundings have made the town home to crucial climate change research – and to the world’s most northerly high-end hotel and conference centre, Hotel Arctic. By Louise Older Steffensen | Photos: Hotel Arctic
“The view here changes every single day,” says Erik Bjerregaard. “And every day, the surroundings take my breath away.” Bjerregaard moved from Denmark to Greenland more than four decades ago and has been the manager of Hotel Arctic for 27 years. Logistics can be tough 250 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle and yet the hotel has acquired four stars, the conference centre five, and the hotel’s gourmet restaurant has been included in the White Guide, the Nordic 62 | Issue 115 | August 2018
countries’ guide to the best restaurants. Guests have included Ban Ki-moon, Sepp Blatter, Angela Merkel, all Danish Prime Ministers over the past 20 years and the Danish royal family, as well as countless high-ranking government officials from across the globe, who come to see the effects of climate change for themselves.
Nature Ilulissat Icefjord became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004 and is the
site of the 2008 Ilulissat Declaration by the five Arctic Ocean coastal states of Denmark, Norway, Russia, Canada and the US, which pledged to consider the environment and climate change amidst territorial disputes and the planning of new shipping routes. “The first helped to put Ilulissat on the map,” says Bjerregaard, “but it was actually the 2008 Arctic Ocean Conference which really brought awareness of Ilulissat and how special it is up here.” Bjerregaard himself has witnessed the retraction of the ice sheet over the years – although a recent visiting researcher told him that it has grown a little this year. The cracks and groans of the moving ice make it a constant, pervasive presence in the town. Whether you look out to the icy sea or to the jagged mountains left behind by the ice, you are reminded of the awesome power of nature. Despite