Greenland: Qooroq Ice Fjord

The little ship Puttut ship came to the harbour of Qassiarsuk to take us for a trip into Qooroq Ice Fjord.

Puttut is actually a historic ship. She was built in Holbæk, Denmark in 1958, especially for the difficult weather conditions of Greenland

For many years, Puttut transported doctors, officials or artisans between villages and small settlements of Greenland.
Today, charming Puttut has become a tour boat operated by Blue Ice and based in Narsarsuaq.

This was the only organized tour we participated in. It was booked through Blue Ice Travel Agency.
Puttut was chartered for a group of Germans and Swiss travellers, but we could get the ride with them.

The sail started in Eiriksfjord ( now called Tunulliarfik Fjord), where there are a few medium sized icebergs floating.

As we got close to Qooroq, we started to see larger icebergs... Some of them were quite big, up to 5 meters tall, but they couldn't go so far as they were blocked by the moraine.

Those were the largest icebergs we saw on the whole trip to Greenland.
Those icebergs were much smaller than the ones found further north, for example in Ilulissat, but does size really matters?
They were truly impressive and beautiful, especially in this sunny day!

A few days earlier, we saw Qooroq Ice fjord from the distance a couple of times.

We viewed the Icefjord when we were sailing to Itilleq and when we were hiking on the plateau around Igaliku... but there was nothing like navigating on it!

Most of the ice is white, but there is also blue ice...

The ice becomes blue when snow falls on a glacier moving towards the sea. The air bubbles trapped give the ice this clear blue colour.

We stopped 20 kilometres from the Qoroq glacier, the one that produces all the icebergs.

It actually looked much closer, I would have said 6 to 8 kilometres. The air so pure up there in the arctic that it’s possible to see very far... up to 200 kilometres!

The guide explained in German that there was a tradition on this tour: we were offered a drink on the ice.
He opened a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label Whisky, and we drank a glass with some ice directly from the icebergs!
Should we call this a real Whiskey on the rocks?

The ice in the glass made some noise as it was melting on with the whisky... This was the noise of air particles getting free after being trapped inside the ice for millions of years!

This peaceful moment can only be interrupted by the loud sound of a larger iceberg cracking!

After this amazing sailing, the boat Puttut got us to the harbour of Narsarsuaq.

I totally recommend to do this tour if you go the area. Unless you have your own boat, there's no other way to get to this magnificent place.

From the icefjord we saw a glacier in the distance... But we planned to stand on it the next day!

Click here to read about our hike too the Greenland ice sheet near Narsarsuaq.

Greenland Links:

Greenland on Trip Advisor
Greenland Official Tourism board
Lonely Planet Greenland guides
Compare flights to Greenland

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