Ilulissat



Airport

Work is progressing to extend the runway to allow direct intercontinental flights into Ilulissat. How many tourists does the place tolerate? Today only small propeller aircraft operate from the short strip.

Airport


Graveyard

Ilulissat's cemetery is near the airport, which has nothing to do with air safety. For a look you may decide to walk the three kilometers into town after arrival.

Cemetery Cemetery


Ice barrier

Grounded icebergs block the exit of the icefjord. The buildings make a good scale to illustrate the size of the bergs.

Gate

Whalefish bones would be greeting cruise-ship passengers, if only there were any in this pandemic year.
Harbor Whale bones


Supplies

Maneuvering a ship through ice like this must sure be fun.

Ship Ship


Zion's Church

Completed in 1782, it is one of the oldest buildings, although it got relocated a few meters further away from the water in 1929.

Museum

The Art museum resides in a wooden building from 1923.
Church Old house


Knud Rasmussen

The memorial of Knud Rasmussen (1879-1933), who was an Arctic explorer and born in Ilulissat.

Jacob Severin

A Danish merchant (1691-1753). The town's former name was Jacobshavn and named after him.
Monument Jacob Severin


Houses

People often assume that the local indigenous people lived in igloos, but these were only used in winter and while on the move. Normal housing was made from stones and earth. Today it's stone and steel.

Historic house Modern houses


Ilulissat

The skyline seen during our return. A good thousand sledge-dogs are chained to the ground, unemployed in summer and sleeping. When stirred by something, they start howling. All of them. The taking of these pictures was accompanied by the sound of an upcoming air raid.

Ilulissat


Hospital

Ilulissat is a town of almost 5000 people and needs medical care. It's the building complex on the left.

Power Station

Supplying people with energy and warm water is important in the Arctic. The color of the smoke stack fits in nicely.
Hospital Ilulissat


Crack

The final approach after our week-long tour went along the blue trail down this crack-like ravine.

Canon


Tourism

At first I thought the building had caved in, but it is the construction site of a new center of the Nature Park. A wooden path guides tourists over the swampy ground to the icebergs.

Construction site Wooden path


Markers

The touristic trails around Ilulissat are clearly marked and colored, some of them the size of a grave, so nobody gets lost.

Marker Marker


Ice

Just two kilometers away from town, visitors have a nice view of the gigantic icebergs.

Ice Ice


Iceberg

They are huge, and with the bigger part under water they get grounded on the bottom.

Disco bight

Some boats are hardly detectable here and just mentioned for size comparison.
Iceberg Disco bight


Trail view

The panorama of the icefjord as seen from the rocky paths.

Ice


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