Greenland in July: midnight sun over the Icefjord, and the new flights that changed everything

At midnight in Ilulissat, the sun sits just above the horizon and refuses to go any lower. Icebergs the size of apartment blocks drift past the harbour, glowing amber, and the town’s sled dogs — there are nearly as many dogs as people — start their evening howl in broad daylight. This is Greenland north of the Arctic Circle in July, and for the first time in its history, getting there no longer requires the patience of a polar explorer.

The summer the island opened up

Greenland spent decades filed under “someday”. The main gateway was an old American airbase in Kangerlussuaq, hours from anywhere you actually wanted to be, and every trip involved at least one small plane and a shrug about the weather. That era is ending fast. Nuuk’s new international airport opened in late 2024, and United’s nonstop from Newark to Nuuk is back for summer 2026 — twice weekly on a 737 MAX 8 through late September, putting the Arctic four and a half hours from New York.

The bigger news for this article’s purposes: Ilulissat gets its own international airport in October 2026, with direct Copenhagen flights to follow. Which makes this July the last midnight-sun season before Greenland’s most famous town is a single hop from Europe — and the travel industry has noticed. Expedition operators are reporting North American bookings up 129% year on year, and Greenland has already passed its first Tourism Act to keep the growth in hand. The window where you can have this place mostly to yourself is real, and it is measurable.

Ilulissat: walking beside a glacier’s exhaust

Ilulissat means “icebergs”, which is either charmingly literal or the greatest understatement in place-naming. The town sits beside the Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004, where Sermeq Kujalleq — one of the fastest-moving glaciers on Earth — pushes a continuous procession of ice out into Disko Bay. The official Ilulissat guide covers the essentials, but the short version is that everything worth doing radiates out from the ice.

Start at the Icefjord Centre, the Dorte Mandrup-designed building that curves over the rock like an owl’s wing in flight. Its “Story of the Ice” exhibition earns an hour before you walk out the back door and onto the trails. There are three, and this trail-by-trail guide covers them properly: the boardwalk to Sermermiut, an easy 40-minute round trip across a valley where Saqqaq, Dorset and Thule peoples have lived on and off for 4,000 years; the yellow trail, 3.5 km of granite and iceberg views; and the blue trail, a 7 km loop through the Qoororsuaq gorge for those who want the fjord to themselves. A one-off fee of about €10 covers the trail system for your whole stay — the first small sign of that new Tourism Act at work.

Then get on the water. A three-hour whale safari out of Ilulissat runs among the icebergs from June to September, when humpback, minke and fin whales feed in Disko Bay — July sightings are about as close to guaranteed as wildlife ever gets. For a longer trip, this Ilulissat and Disko Island itinerary shows how to pair the Icefjord with the basalt coast and whale-rich waters across the bay.

No roads, two boats and a very good excuse for a ferry

Here is the thing that reorganises every Greenland plan: there are no roads between towns. None. Every journey is a flight, a helicopter or a boat, and the boat is the option with the stories. The Sarfaq Ittuk, a 228-passenger working ferry, runs up the west coast in summer and takes just under two days from Nuuk to Ilulissat — this first-hand account of the coastal ferry captures its odd, wonderful rhythm of village stops and iceberg watches. If you want the full route logic, this guide to combining Nuuk, Ilulissat and the ferry between them maps the exact trip this collection is built around.

Across the fjord from Ilulissat, the 50-person settlement of Ilimanaq is home to Ilimanaq Lodge, a cluster of glass-fronted eco-cabins beside restored colonial buildings — famous as the summer home of the two-Michelin-star pop-up KOKS until 2024, and still the most beautiful place in the country to wake up.

Nuuk, suddenly a capital in motion

Nuuk gets skipped by people rushing north, which is a mistake this year of all years. A third of Greenland lives here — about 20,000 people — and the capital’s official guide makes a good case for two or three days: the National Museum (home of the Qilakitsoq mummies), the Katuaq Cultural Centre, and the Colonial Harbour where the country’s oldest buildings face the fjord. Boat trips into the Nuuk Fjord system — one of the largest in the world — call at the abandoned settlement of Kangeq and the fishing village of Kapisillit, with humpbacks a regular sight along the way.

The post-airport energy is easiest to taste. National Geographic’s round-up of the best places to eat in Greenland runs from SØMA in Nuuk to Restaurant H8 in Oqaatsut, a fishing settlement reached by boat from Ilulissat. In the capital itself, book Sarfalik on the fifth floor of Hotel Hans Egede for snow crab and musk ox with the whole fjord out the window.

A room with icebergs in it

In Ilulissat the choice is between two waterfronts. Hotel Arctic is the world’s northernmost four-star hotel, with aluminium igloo cabins on the shore of the Icefjord itself; Hotel Icefiord is the smaller, warmer rival, 36 rooms where you can watch icebergs drift past from bed. In Nuuk, the family-run Hotel Aurora in the old quarter is part of the capital’s new boutique wave — book whichever you choose well ahead, because July rooms in Greenland now sell out the way Icelandic ones did a decade ago.

The ice, on screen

Ten minutes of footage explains Ilulissat better than a thousand words of prose:

10:31

37:48

Getting there and back

From Europe, Air Greenland flies Copenhagen–Nuuk direct in about four and a half hours, with Icelandair and Air Greenland connecting through Reykjavik — until the new runway opens in October, Ilulissat is a domestic hop from Nuuk. Currency is the Danish krone, and nothing here is cheap: budget roughly DKK 1,400 for that whale safari and DKK 600 for a serious dinner. The compensation is that Nuuk and Ilulissat are both walkable, the midnight sun means the day never runs out, and there is no such thing as arriving too early for anything.

The true midnight sun above Ilulissat lasts only until late July — and this is the last summer before the new airport makes it everyone’s long weekend. The whale safaris, the Icefjord trails, the coastal ferry, the iceberg-view hotels and Nuuk’s new Arctic kitchens are all gathered in our Greenland collection. Save it, book the boat, and stand on a boardwalk at midnight watching a glacier breathe.

This guide was curated using Epic Itineraries — save links from anywhere on the web, organise them into collections, and turn research into itineraries.