Greenland’s first international airport opens in Nuuk, making travel to the arctic easier
A new airport and new international flights from Copenhagen and New York mean getting to this part of the world will be much easier. Here is how.
Gate B10 at Copenhagen airport early on November 28 is not like the other gates. Through an archway of red balloons are bustling television crews, celebrity YouTubers, chief executives and journalists. In the speaker line-up is not one, but two, ex-prime ministers: Lars Lokke Rasmussen (now Denmark’s Foreign Affairs Minister) and Kim Kielsen (now Greenland’s Fishing and Hunting Minister).
All have a boarding pass for Air Greenland’s first five-hour flight from Copenhagen to the capital of Nuuk. Rumours that members of the Danish royal family will be on board don’t transpire but people are too excited to care. Changes are coming to the world’s biggest island and home of the Greenlandic Inuit people – and they’re coming today.
Departures are scheduled from Copenhagen five times a week to the new Nuuk airport. That’s just the start. By June next year, United Airlines will be flying twice-weekly from New York, and discussions about routes between non-Nordic European cities, like France or Germany, are ongoing.
“There’s giant interest in Greenland as a destination,” says Mikkel Bjarno Lund, communications chief at Greenland Airports. “The tourism trend is going away from the south and the sun, to cooler and more untouched areas. Greenland fits perfectly into that picture of special nature that you don’t get to see everyday.”
Before today, Nuuk, located 240km south of the Arctic circle, could service only the domestic flights that remain a crucial mode of transport for Greenland’s 57,000 people. Boats, helicopters, snowmobiles and, further north, sled dogs complete the transportation network in a country where roads are limited to the tiny towns on the fjord-creased coastal fringes. Roads are a no-go when 80 per cent of the land mass is occupied by a vast ice sheet.
New international flights to Greenland
Previously, international flights were serviced from an ex-American air base built during World War II in remote Kangerlussuaq. For tourists, that town’s abundant musk ox and side trips to Reindeer Glacier made it a fruitful, if inconvenient, detour. For Greenlanders, nearly 20,000 of whom live in Nuuk, going via Kangerlussuaq was an extra expense that could add up to five hours to a trip.
The need for a new airport was clear. Yet it was only in 2018, when China expressed interest in developing shipping lanes, which are opening up due to the shrinking sea ice of the Arctic’s fast-warming waters, which the Danish government stepped in to finance what was a $US300m ($470m) investment.
But climate is not the change people are talking about today. Indeed, it’s not mentioned in any official speeches that focus on the positives of this game-changer for trade and tourism.
Boarding, I meet Aalborg University student, Niviaq Kleeman. Like many young Greenlanders, she’s on a tertiary scholarship from the government of Denmark, of which Greenland is an autonomous territory. She’s thrilled about being able to return more easily to her homeland and is flying home for support during her exams, and to eat her mother’s food.
“I want reindeer, I want whale, I want seal,” she says, referring to meats that are sustainably caught – whales to strict quotas – to fill bellies in a country hostile to agriculture.
On board the Air Greenland flight
As we settle into our seats, there’s no doubt we’re part of a momentous occasion. Greenland flags dangle from seat pockets and even the captain gets emotional as he addresses passengers during the flight. “It has taken blood, sweat and tears to get here, but today is time to enjoy the fruits of that effort,” he says.
I have an aisle seat on the Airbus A330neo but Air Greenland’s HR manager, who won a staff competition to fly as a passenger today, shows me how to work the camera view. The snow has come thick and early this winter and the scene as we descend into Nuuk is so bright and white and beautiful that I mistake it for documentary footage. “Is this real?” I say. “It’s real,” he says.
Up to 4000 locals have come to watch and wave. They’re rewarded when the pilot approaches from the north to land, pulls up, circles, then comes in from the south – is this the only time a cabin has erupted in cheers at an aborted landing? Here to perform the traditional “water salute”, Nuuk fire brigade ultimately decides it’s too cold (the plane would need de-icing), so they wave instead. The tarmac is slick with ice but the tikittarfik (arrivals) hall in the small, modern airport is only a short walk. Inside, Cafe Sumut makes great coffee and a shop sells seal-skin slippers and mittens. Designed with a chalet-style sloped glass roof, the airport has what has been touted as a state-of-the-art landing system, which allows planes to land in the challenging weather – mainly wind and fog – that’s common in Nuuk.
Easier to travel to the Arctic Circle
After the flight I spend six days in Greenland, and find locals overwhelmingly positive about the new airport and the opportunities it represents. Thorlak Skifte Nielsen, who co-founded hunting, heli-skiing and hiking operator Two Ravens six years ago, says the company has “struggled” to find tourists, until now. “We were almost panicking but now we’re seeing interest well into 2025,” he says. “It’s not safe in Greenland for people to go alone into the wilderness as we have no marked tracks.”
Greenland’s high expense and low room capacity avoids the risk of rampant over-tourism, but, to be sure, the country passed a law requiring companies to be two-thirds Greenlandic-owned. A tax of 30 Danish krone ($6.60) a night and an environmental impact system of red, orange and green zones were also introduced.
Casper Frank Moller of new company Raw Arctic takes us on a night cruise in Nuuk fjord. The business was established to merge wildlife-watching and the individual passions of its eight employees. Their network in Greenland, says Moller, means they can accommodate virtually any request.
“We won’t hire international guides,” says Moller. “We’re about local employment, cultural embeddedness and telling the story of who we are as proud Greenlanders. We were at the airport yesterday with all the people. Many feel it may be a step closer to independence from Denmark and they’re celebrating that hope.”
Over a charcuterie plate of musk ox, halibut and other local meats at Restaurant Sarfalik, I ask Oscar Scott Carl of Visit Nuuk if he genuinely believes Greenland is ready for the tourists. “Are they ready for Greenland?” he says.
Kate Hennessy was a guest of Visit Greenland.
If you love to travel, sign up to our free weekly Travel + Luxury newsletter here.
