Greenland's most accessible wonder — the world's most productive glacier calving icebergs the size of buildings into a UNESCO fjord
Ilulissat (population ~5,000) is the third-largest town in Greenland and the most visited, primarily because it sits at the mouth of the Ilulissat Icefjord — a UNESCO World Heritage site where the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier, the most productive glacier in the northern hemisphere outside of Antarctica, calves icebergs at a rate of 20–35 billion tonnes per year. The icebergs that emerge are enormous — some are taller than 10-storey buildings — and they fill the fjord before grounding on a shallow sill and slowly drifting south into the open Atlantic. The hiking trails around the fjord are among th…
The area around Ilulissat has been inhabited by Inuit peoples for at least 4,000 years, with the Saqqaq culture (c. 2500 BCE) succeeded by Dorset and then Thule cultures. European contact came with Danish-Norwegian explorer Hans Egede, who established a mission at a nearby location in 1741; the current town site was settled shortly after. Greenland became a Danish colony and then an integrated part of Denmark in 1953, gaining home rule in 1979 and self-governance in 2009 — though full independence has been repeatedly discussed.