The world's most northerly town — where Inuit hunters still use dog sleds on sea ice
Qaanaaq is one of the northernmost human settlements on Earth, home to about 650 Inuit hunters on the northwestern coast of Greenland. There are no roads — travel between communities is by dogsled in winter, boat in summer, helicopter year-round. The surrounding fjords and sea ice are the setting for one of the last traditional subsistence hunting cultures: narwhal, ringed seal, and walrus are still hunted from kayaks and dogsleds using traditional methods.
The modern town was created in 1953 when the US military, expanding its Thule Air Base, forcibly relocated the Inughuit community without consultation — one of the most controversial relocations in Arctic history. Danish-Greenlandic explorer Robert Peary used the area as a base for his contested 1909 North Pole expedition.