Getting There: Currently, the best way to get to Greenland is by plane via the Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI). Air Greenland chose this airport as its hub in the United States so that its service was not “lost” amid hundreds of other airlines, at such busy international airports as John F. Kennedy International Airport. At BWI’s spacious international wing, there are few other airlines. That said, Air Greenland has minimal U.S. service, flying out only on Thursday mornings in late spring and summer, with the return flight on Tuesday afternoons. Air Greenland’s planes are bright red with white dots, but do not expect to see one until you arrive in Greenland itself; for the flight there, Air Greenland employs a Federal Aviation Administration-approved charter line. In 2007 that was ATA Airlines, which uses B757-200 aircraft for its journeys to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, which is on the western side of the country and its closest shore to the United States.

In 2008, its Baltimore-Kangerlussuaq schedule will run between July 3 and August 14. That’s not a huge window, but the airline is likely to add more flights, even before July 3, so keep checking in at www.airgreenland.com (011/299-343434). The flight I took last July took four hours, but depending on wind direction, it can take up to five. Kangerlussuaq (also known as Søndre Strømfjord) is the entry airport. It has the longest runway, having been a U.S. Army base until 1992. The last soldier left in that year, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There are alternative routes to Greenland:

· Other Air Routes: Kulusuk and Nerlerit Inaat (also known as Constable Point), both small communities in Eastern Greenland, are served by Air Iceland from Iceland’s Reykjavik Airport (a city airport, and not to be confused with Iceland’s international airport in Keflavik, 35 miles southeast from Reykjavik). According to the Iceland Air Web site (011/354-570-3030; www.airiceland.is), the company also flies from Reykjavik to Narsarsuaq (Eastern Greenland) and Nuuk (also known as Godthåb, in Western Greenland), as well as from Keflavik to Nuuk, although a detailed search of its timetable as of October 2007 did not come up with specific days and times for any of these routes. Another option is to fly from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Narsarsuaq or Kangerlussuaq. All the above flights obviously require more time in the air and on the ground during flight changes. Also, not all flights are year-round.

· Cruise ships: Some better-known cruise companies also put on repositioning cruises in September that visit Greenland. Princess Cruises’s Crown Princess has an 18-day voyage between Copenhagen and Fort Lauderdale, while Crystal Cruises’s Crystal Symphony has a 14-day trip from London to New York City.

Every fall, a new expedition ship, the MS Fram, will stop off in New York City (in 2007, its debut year, that was on Oct. 13) on a 66-day repositioning cruise en route to its winter home in Antarctica (it returns to Arctic waters via the Africa, Canary Islands and southern Europe). This ship is the latest guise of what is the most famous name of any ship in Norway. (Recently, sipping a coffee at a well-known coffee chain in Mineola, Long Island, I started chatting to a Norwegian professor, who specializes in nuclear reactors and isotopes. I mentioned the MS Fram, and she immediately replied that the original ship was the charge of Fritjof Nansen, who with Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole, and Thor Heyerdahl, who sailed to Easter Island on the Kon Tiki, is Norway’s most-celebrated explorer. Fram means “forward” in Norwegian.) Hurtigruten (www.hurtigruten.us; formerly Norwegian Coastal Voyage) is the MS Fram’s parent company.

In October 2007, Polar Star Expeditions (www.polarstarexpeditions.com) announced its ship, the 45-cabin MV Polar Star would be conducting every September an 18-day cruise that starts in Reykjavik, ends in St. John’s in Newfoundland, Canada, and visits, among other ports in the North Atlantic, the Greenland towns of Nanortalik, Brattahlid, Hvalsey and Qaqortoq.

Another fantastic trip to Greenland is a 20-day journey in winter on board the Kapitan Khlebnikov. Yes, it’s cold, but this is the main season in which the Aurora borealis can be seen. The adventure, run by Top of the World Tours (www.topoftheworldtours.com) and starting with a flight from Ottawa, Canada, to Kangerlussuaq, visits the northernmost point of land (as opposed to a point of ice) in the world, Oodaaq Island, which next year will be remapped, following the discovery of several new islands. You might help discover yet more. Cruisers also will visit Prins Christian Sound, Blosseville, Gunnbjörn Fjeld, Ittoqqortoormiit and Daneborg.

Getting Around: Other than mushing across the snow with a team of huskies, or Greenlandic dogs, getting from town to town in Greenland can be done only by air or cruise ship. Greenlanders regard Air Greenland (www.airgreenland.com) with pride. It is not so much an airline as it is a lifeline. Its distinctive red-and-white planes fly in most weather and use Kangerlussuaq as a central hub. Flying from Ilulissat (the country’s third largest town) to Nuuk (its largest, and its capital), for example, requires a stopover in Kangerlussuaq, but the airport is so small, passengers can wait for the next plane while sitting on a hillside. Walk along the only road, away from the airport building, which contains a hotel and conference center, and check out the mural of a Musk ox and an Inuit boy.

Cruising in Greenland is becoming more popular with every year, and several companies offer itineraries along the edges of this icy “continent.” Arctic Umiaq Line (www.aul.gl), which was founded in 1774, runs the 270-berth MS Sarfaq Ittuk. This is not really a cruise ship, but rather a passenger ship that has some cruise elements to it. Its Narsarsuaq to Ilulissat trip takes 72 hours and visits Maniitsoq, Nuuk, Qeqertarsuatsiaat, Paamiut, Arsuk, Narsarsuaq, Narsaq and Qaqortoq. There is time to get off at most ports.

One company putting on adventurous itineraries is Quark Expeditions (www.quarkexpeditions.com), which has a fleet of four ships plying the waters of eastern and western Greenland. Its ships can cater from 100 to 110 passengers.

As of May 2007, the 136-cabin (318 berths) Hurtigruten started nine 8-day trips on its MS Fram, embarking from Kangerlussuaq and stopping off at Ilulissat, Eqip Sermia, Uummannaq, Ukkusissat, Qeqertarsuaq and Sisimut; it also puts on two 15-day trips that in addition visit Upernavik, Qaanaaq (Thule), Sioprapaluk, a spot in the Arctic Ocean at the 80th parallel, Dundas and Kullorsuaq, but not Ukkusissat.

Driving from city to city is just not possible. No two towns (at least ones in which people remain) are connected.

Language: In Nuuk, English is spoken widely, but Danish is the language of business. Residents speak both Danish and Greenlandic, and probably a mix of both. An excellent guide is Maria Panínguak Kjærulff, who also has her art displayed in Nuuk museums (see the section on Nuuk below). She can be contacted via Nuuk Tourism (011/299-322700; www.nuuk-tourism.gl).

Outside of Nuuk and certainly above the Arctic Circle, Greenlandic comes more into its own, with English spoken less. That said, most if not all tourism providers know that their success lies in their ability to speak English.

Travel Documentation: All U.S. travelers need for Greenland is a valid passport.

Towns

Ilulissat: Ilulissat, 130 miles north of the Arctic Circle, is the third-largest settlement in Iceland but its biggest tourist attraction. That’s because here is the mind-blowing Ilulissat Glacier (also called Sermeq Kujalleq), which is approximately 50 miles in length and calves off into Disko Bay approximately 20 billion—yes, billion—tons of ice per year. One statistic told to me was that that amount is more than all the water drunk in New York City in a quarter of a century. Ilulissat means “iceberg” in Greenlandic. The iceberg moves at 75 or so feet a day. On my first morning there, Disko Bay outside of my hotel window had a healthy number of icebergs (seven-eights of it remain underwater) and lumps of compressed snow (most of it floats on the water’s surface); on the next day, all I could see was ice, the glacier having carved spectacularly overnight. Where the icebergs end up depends on the currents, but some have been traced all the way into U.S. waters; others are so large that they even get stuck on the seabed and take decades to be eroded away or destroyed by other icebergs.

This is nature at its fiercest. To see the glacier, go with an experienced boat captain. Do not try and do it on your own, even if you probably would not be able to get access to a boat, and this includes trying to walk along the coast in the glacier’s direction. Every year, reports come in of kayakers getting too close to the dazzlingly beautiful ice (close up, it’s startlingly blue) and getting into trouble as the icebergs break or a wave pushes them up against the glacier’s edge. (A calving glacier injured 17 tourists in Spitsbergen—also known as Svalbard—in northeastern Greenland this August.) Captains and boats can be found in Ilulissat’s tidy harbor. Treats include spotting whales (mainly Humpbacks and Minke whales) and listening to the glacier groaning and calving.

A plane trip from Ilulissat’s airport to a patch of flat grass by the beginning of the Arctic Ice Sheet is a must. Take a small Air Greenland plane, for seven people, 40 miles along the middle of the glacier, where it is possible to see icebergs the size of small towns, floating through and crushing the lower ice around it. On the ground, small, ice-cold ponds can be inspected, and the very occasional flower clings to life. Silence and space, however, are the reasons to come here. To use a two clichés, the silence is deafening, and the space is crushing. It also feels very much like a place humans have no business to be, and therein lies its attraction. The blues and bright whites of the glacier seen from above are amazing.

The town of Ilulissat is mostly attractive and neat. The boyhood home of famed explorer Knud Rasmussen (1879-1933) is now a museum chronicling his life and Arctic exploration in general, while immediately outside is a replica of an old Greenlandic house guarded by two huge whale bones. A Chinese restaurant also is a bit of a tourist attraction, run as it is by a Chinese man who decided to move to one of the least-populated places on earth from the planet’s highest-populated country.

The two-mile walk from the airport to town is a pretty one. Space opens up to both sides, either icy ocean and Disko Island’s distant mountains on one side, or tundra and seasonal streams and lakes on the other. Ravens fly around. The twisting road passes the town’s cemetery (all the wood for the grave markers and, indeed, all houses here is imported, mostly from Denmark and Canada) and reaches the 66-room Hotel Arctic (011/299-944153; www.hotel-arctic.gl), which offers the best accommodations in Ilulissat. It has five or so igloos, which are closer to the ocean than is the hotel, but some guests complain that they are too hot in summer and too cold in winter. The rocks by these igloos are a perfect spot in which to watch the midnight sun and fishing boats leaving port. An additional 33 rooms will be added in June. The road drops down from here to the harbor and the beginning of town.

On a 4 a.m. walk, I shared Ilulissat only with the town’s numerous dogs. These are not pets. Do not try and pet them, ever. These are trained Greenlandic dogs, especially bred as working dogs, to pull sleighs. During the summer, they are kept a little underfed, in order that they do not get fat during the warmer months. They are all chained to wooden poles, so the art is to realize how far the dogs can move in a circle. Do not get closer than the chain’s radius. As I strolled through town, one dog started howling. Soon, it sounded as though every dog—all 8,000 of them, as opposed to 3,800 people—was following suit, and the sound was oddly bewitching, especially against a backdrop of gigantic icebergs and purple hillsides. In winter, they get to work, and I heard many Greenlanders saying that winter is their favorite season, for it is then that they hunt and visit friends and relatives. It is illegal to transport Greenlandic dogs south of the Arctic Circle, and all other dogs, north, in order to keep this breed unique and able.

The two other hotels here are the Hvide Falk ((011/299-943343; www.hotelhvidefalk.dk), which has 46 rooms, and the Hotel Icefiord (011/299-944480; www.hotelicefiord.gl), which has 31. Hvide Falk has a very good restaurant, with a menu leaning toward Thai dishes, but overall, it is not as comfortable as the Arctic Hotel, and a renovation is needed to brighten the place up. Renovated early last year, the Hotel Icefiord is a better bet and closer to the glacier (although, everyone needs to go to the harbor and catch a boat in order to visit the glacier up close). It has a tidy coffee bar and a microbrewery.

Nuuk: This southwestern town is Greenland’s capital and home to roughly 16,000 people, or a quarter of this huge island’s entire population. The airport sits above the town, a 10-minute journey from the center. On the way there, the road passes the municipal swimming pool, the Malik Svømmehal (www.malik-nuuk.gl; Danish only). This attractive building will be made complete when its outside landscaping is finished. It opens at 6 a.m., which is a perfect time to enjoy this wonderful space on your own, with its large plate-glass windows looking out on hillsides and the sea. I saw a whale as I swam, and how often can that be said?

The peninsula on which Nuuk sits is relatively flat, but majestic, snow-capped mountains can be seen across its principal bay, which leads to the Labrador Sea. Whale-watching trips are conducted here, too. A Humpback whale was followed at a respectful distance, although wonderfully, it did surface once very close to the boat. Bring a sweater, as, even in the summer, if the clouds cover the sky, it can get chilly. Boats leave the Nuuk Atlantic Harbor, just behind the main part of town.

The most attractive part of the town (and it should be stated that there are also some particularly ugly (but safe) sections, mostly around streets of impersonal housing) is where the town was founded, in 1721 by the Danish pioneer Hans Egede, at which time it went by the name of Godthåb. (Nuuk means “peninsula” in Greenlandic, while Godthåb means “good hope” in Danish.) This area is referred to as Colonial Harbor (Nulutoqq Kolonihaven on maps). Here is a statue of Hans Egede on a hill, attractive wooden homes displaying netting, buoys and cod hanging out to dry. The less squeamish might want to inspect the fish market. There are limits imposed on seal and whale hunting (and only certain species at that), but when I was there, and I will not say more, a seal was being “prepared.” The skill of the fishermen is obvious, and for them and the town, this is a matter of eating, not morals, in a land that can support few vegetables. While I was there, a report was prominent in the local newspaper that for the first time, broccoli was now being grown on Greenland, which might be cause for celebration if it were not for concerns over global warming.

Letters can be mailed to Santa Claus in a gigantic red mailbox outside of the National Museum & Archives of Greenland (Grønlands Nationalmuseum og Arkiv; 011/299-322611; www.natmus.gl/en) on Hans Egedevej street, which is worth a visit. A better museum in my estimation is the Nuuk Art Museum (Nuuk Kunstmuseum; 011/299-327733; www.kunstmuseum.gl). The museum received its original collection from a bequest from a collector and features folk art, glass, sculpture and paintings, including the work of Nuuk guide, Maria Panínguak Kjærulff (www.mariagreenland.com). When I was there, Panínguak Kjærulff was preparing a solo show at the Nuuk Imeq factory, the town’s water- and beer-bottling plant, which regularly puts on cultural exhibitions, as do many industrial concerns throughout Greenland and Denmark.

The town’s star, though, is its cultural center, known as Katuaq (011/299-323300; www.katuaq.gl). Its impressive modern design, blond woods, airy spaces and trendy atmosphere might not come as a surprise to those who know Scandinavian style, but even so, here in Nuuk, it appears refreshing. The main concert hall has 508 seats. On the agenda here is theater, films, book readings and conventions, and the café, Cafétuaq, seats 450.

The only viable hotel in town is the 115-room Hotel Hans Egede (011/299-324222; www.hhe.gl/hhe/index.html). This hotel is not as attractive as the Hotel Arctic in Ilulissat, but it is more than able. Its Gertrud Rask Spisehus is excellent, and its bar, Sky Line, tries it hardest to be trendy, although this is not so easy when a beer costs $19, albeit the bar’s premium brew pulled into its largest glass. The singer and pianist in attendance are not nearly as entertaining as watching tourists’ eyes widen when charged $23 for the bar’s equivalent of an Irish coffee.