- Where
- East coast of Greenland
at the mouth of Kangertittivaq - Coordinates
- 70.4853° N
21.9667° W - Biome
- High Arctic tundra; the largest
ice-free area in Greenland - Population
- About 350, and slowly falling
- Supply
- Two supply ships a year
two international flights a week - Next door
- Northeast Greenland National Park,
the largest national park on Earth - Best visited
- Late July–early October, ice permitting
Sailed for two days inside a single fjord and did not reach the end of it. Icebergs the size of buildings, sitting still because they are aground, so the ship moves past them and they do not move at all and you lose any sense of how big anything is. At the mouth, a town of small brightly painted houses on bare rock, with nothing beyond it in any direction.
The short answer
Scoresby Sund — Kangertittivaq in Greenlandic — is a branching system of fjords on the east coast of Greenland, generally described as the largest in the world; you can sail within it for days. At its mouth stands Ittoqqortoormiit, the only inhabited settlement in the system and one of the most isolated permanently occupied places on Earth, with a population of around 350 that has been slowly declining. It is roughly 800 km from the nearest town. There are no roads to it. Two supply ships a year and two international flight connections a week keep it going, and pack ice closes the fjord mouth for most of the year. It borders the Northeast Greenland National Park, the largest national park in the world.
Why it's worth knowing
The fjord is the spectacle. The town is the story.
People of the Thule culture lived along this coast until around 1800, and then, for reasons that are not fully recorded, they were gone. The region was empty for over a century.
What brought people back was a legal argument. In the early twentieth century Norway maintained that eastern Greenland was terra nullius — nobody’s land — and therefore open to claim. Denmark maintained that Greenland was Danish in its entirety. And the standard test in such disputes is effective occupation: not what you assert, but whether anyone of yours actually lives there.
So in 1925 the Danish explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen led the founding of a settlement here, with somewhere between seventy and eighty-five settlers — mostly Inuit families from Tasiilaq, eight hundred kilometres down the coast, along with a few from west Greenland and Denmark. People were moved most of a thousand kilometres, into some of the harshest inhabited country on the planet, in order to make a sentence in an international court true.
The argument went to the Permanent Court of International Justice and was decided in Denmark’s favour in 1933. Ittoqqortoormiit had done its job.
And then it kept going. The population grew to around five hundred and has since fallen back to roughly 350. Two smaller settlements nearby, Kap Hope and Kap Tobin, where families had lived since the same founding, emptied after 2000. The name means the place with the big houses, and the houses are painted in strong colours — red, blue, yellow, green — against a landscape that offers none.
A century on, a town established as a geopolitical instrument is simply a town, with a school, a shop, a church and a football pitch, at the mouth of the biggest fjord on Earth.
The field notes
The scale of the thing
Scoresby Sund is not a fjord in the ordinary sense of a single inlet. It is a branching system, with arms running hundreds of kilometres inland from the Greenland Sea, and the standard way visitors describe it is that they sailed for several days and never left it.
Its icebergs are the reason expedition ships come. Many are grounded — anchored to the fjord floor and stationary — so the ship moves and they do not, which removes every visual cue for judging size. Passengers routinely describe them as cathedral-scale, and the water inside the fjord is often glassy enough to double them.
Around the fjord is the largest ice-free area in Greenland: tundra valleys, red and ochre sandstone, and mountains that are rock rather than ice. Greenland is about eighty per cent ice sheet, and this is the part that isn’t.
What lives here
Ittoqqortoormiit is described by Greenland’s own tourist board as the place with the highest chance — or risk — of meeting a polar bear. That is not marketing. Bears hunt ringed seals along this coast and come through the settlement, and residents carry rifles outside town as a matter of routine.
Musk oxen graze the tundra in one of the largest populations in Greenland, unbothered and prehistoric-looking. Narwhals move into the fjord in summer to feed on Arctic cod and halibut, the mixing of glacial meltwater and cold saline water making the feeding good. King eiders, ivory gulls and gyrfalcons breed on the cliffs.
The community remains a hunting one. Residents are largely Inuit hunters and fishers, and the seal, narwhal and musk ox harvest is subsistence rather than sport.
Two ships a year
The logistics are the most striking thing about living here, and worth setting out plainly.
Two supply ships a year. Everything that is not flown must arrive on one of them, which means the shop stocks a year’s planning at a time and running out is a real category of event.
Two international flight connections a week, into Nerlerit Inaat — Constable Pynt — the airstrip built in 1985 and the town’s only fixed link. It is not in Ittoqqortoormiit: from the strip you continue by helicopter, boat or snowmobile depending on the season.
Before 1985 it was harder still: ski-plane to Reykjavik, helicopter to Mestersvig, and a ship from Denmark.
No roads, no public transport, no ferry, no boat hire. Movement is by snowmobile and dog sledge in winter and by small boat in the short open season.
The window
Sea ice closes the mouth of Scoresby Sund for most of the year. It clears enough for ships during July, and the accessible season runs from late July to somewhere around early October — and then closes again.
Even inside that window, ice moves. Pack ice and icebergs block passages, and expedition itineraries are written to be changed. Any operator promising a specific landing in Scoresby Sund is promising something they cannot control.
Most visitors arrive on expedition ships, either sailing roughly two days from Iceland across the Denmark Strait or flying in by charter to join a vessel already inside the fjord. Perhaps one to two thousand tourists reach the area in a year.
From September the nights are dark enough for aurora, and the fjord in autumn colour beneath it is the combination people come back for.
The park next door
North of the settlement begins the Northeast Greenland National Park: over 972,000 square kilometres, larger than most countries, and the largest protected area on the planet.
It has no permanent civilian population. Access requires a permit, and the practical visitors are researchers, a small military dog-sledge patrol, and expedition ships along the coast.
Ittoqqortoormiit is therefore the last town before nothing at all — a settlement of 350 people functioning as the gate to an emptiness the size of a continent’s worth of country.
- Come by ship. It is the only way to see the fjord itself.
- Go ashore at the town and buy something from the shop.
- Do not walk out of town alone. Take somebody who is armed.
- Stay up in September. The sky is worth losing sleep over.
- Look at the houses and work out why they are those colours.
A painted house. Every building in Ittoqqortoormiit is painted in a strong flat colour — red, blue, yellow, green — in a landscape of grey rock, white ice and dark water that supplies none of them. The convention is Greenlandic and practical as well as cheerful: colour is visible against snow, and in a place where the weather can close in within minutes, a red house is a thing you can find.
Tally, in the marginRed, blue, yellow, green, on bare grey rock. Cheerful, certainly. Also findable in a whiteout, which I suspect came first.
Getting there
How to get there. There is no road, and no direct flight from anywhere in Greenland. The route is Iceland — Reykjavik or Akureyri — to Nerlerit Inaat (Constable Pynt), with roughly two international connections a week in season, then a helicopter, boat or snowmobile transfer to Ittoqqortoormiit depending on the time of year.
Most people come by ship. Expedition cruises sail from Iceland — about two days across the Denmark Strait — or from Svalbard, and some operators fly passengers in by charter to board a vessel already inside the fjord, which removes the crossing. This is by a wide margin the commonest way to see Scoresby Sund, because a ship is the only practical means of getting up the fjord at all.
When to go. Late July to early October, and only then. Sea ice closes the fjord mouth for the rest of the year. July and August give mild weather by Arctic standards and long light; September onward brings autumn tundra colour and dark enough nights for aurora, with increasing risk of the season closing early.
Independent travel is possible and demanding. There is no public transport, no ferry and no boat hire in Ittoqqortoormiit. Guided dog-sledding and kayaking are arranged locally in their seasons. Accommodation is limited to a small number of guesthouses and should be arranged well in advance.
Polar bears are a live consideration, not a decoration. Do not walk out of town alone or unarmed; take a local guide, which is the norm and not an upsell. The advice from residents is straightforward and should be followed exactly.
Bring what you need. The shop is stocked by two ships a year. Medication, camera batteries, anything specific — assume it is not available and cannot be ordered.
Mark this place
Common questions
Why was Ittoqqortoormiit founded?
To establish Danish sovereignty over East Greenland. In the early twentieth century Norway argued the territory was unclaimed and therefore open to claim; the legal test in such disputes is effective occupation. In 1925 the Danish explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen led the founding of a settlement with somewhere between seventy and eighty-five settlers, mostly Inuit families moved 800 km up the coast from Tasiilaq. The dispute was decided in Denmark’s favour by the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1933.
Is Scoresby Sund really the world’s largest fjord?
It is consistently described as the largest fjord system in the world, and it is a branching network rather than a single inlet — arms extend hundreds of kilometres inland from the Greenland Sea, and visitors routinely sail within it for days. Published area figures vary and are not asserted here.
How many people live in Ittoqqortoormiit?
Around 350, with a 2021 count of 361, and the number has been slowly declining. The population peaked at roughly 500 during the twentieth century. Two nearby settlements founded at the same time, Kap Hope and Kap Tobin, became defunct after 2000.
How do you get to Ittoqqortoormiit?
There is no road and no direct internal flight from elsewhere in Greenland. Travellers fly from Reykjavik or Akureyri in Iceland to Nerlerit Inaat (Constable Pynt), then transfer by helicopter, boat or snowmobile. Roughly two international flight connections operate per week in season. Most visitors to the fjord itself arrive by expedition ship from Iceland or Svalbard.
When can you visit Scoresby Sund?
Late July to around early October. Sea ice blocks the mouth of the fjord for most of the year and clears enough for ships during July. Even within that window, pack ice and icebergs can close passages, so itineraries must remain flexible — any operator guaranteeing a specific landing is promising what they cannot control.
What wildlife lives in Scoresby Sund?
Polar bears hunting ringed seals along the coast and ice, one of Greenland’s largest musk ox populations on the tundra, and narwhals moving into the fjord in summer to feed on Arctic cod and halibut. King eiders, ivory gulls and gyrfalcons breed on the surrounding cliffs. Greenland’s tourist board describes Ittoqqortoormiit as the place in the country with the highest likelihood of encountering a polar bear.
How does Ittoqqortoormiit get supplies?
By two supply ships a year, plus what arrives on the two weekly international flights into Nerlerit Inaat. The shop is stocked on an annual planning cycle. Visitors are advised to bring anything specific they need — medication, batteries, equipment — on the assumption it cannot be bought or ordered locally.
What is the Northeast Greenland National Park?
The largest national park in the world, covering over 972,000 square kilometres of Arctic terrain immediately north of Ittoqqortoormiit. It has no permanent civilian population, and access requires a permit; in practice it is used by researchers, a small military dog-sledge patrol and expedition vessels along the coast.