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Europe's other Northern Island

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The exploits of the Vikings have always made for a colourful story. Perhaps the most well known Viking was Erik the Red, but the land he settled over a thousand years ago may be less familiar. Greenland, the world\'s largest island, was so named by Erik himself, apparently in an attempt to lure other settlers.

He conveniently neglected to mention that the greater part of Greenland\'s landmass is cloaked in a vast, forbidding icecap whose myriad glacial tongues spew out massive icebergs into an already frigid sea.

Yet in all fairness, I think Erik could have called his new home \'Rainbowland\' and not been too harshly judged. Greenland is a riot of colour; Inuit houses are painted bright red, green, yellow, blue and purple, looking for all the world like grown up doll\'s houses. In summer the heaths explode with wildflowers of unlikely shades of violet, yellow and red; in winter the northern lights throw ethereal dancing curtains in the sky, casting ghostly emerald and rose-hued tinges across the snowscape.

Whatever colours Greenland had to offer, the Vikings were not short of boldness, braving the wild North Atlantic and those fearsome icebergs in ships that resembled oversize canoes. Even today one can easily imagine a Norse longboat steadfastly ploughing through the vast haunted emptiness, a frail capsule teeming with ruddy whiskered faces straining for a sign of the new land. Captivated as I was by such brave feats of yore, I had a rather more comfortable journey from Copenhagen to Greenland, courtesy of Greenlandair, the nation\'s flag carrier.

Although getting to Greenland is now easier, the Greenlandic place names are still a bit of a mouthful. My destination was the country\'s southernmost airport at Narsarsuaq. Greenland itself is called Kalaallit Nunaat - (The Land of the People). A remote Inuit settlement on the northeast coast bears the name \'Ittoqqortoormiit\'. Even Greenland\'s language seems to speak in tongues frosted with ice; an ancient, intimate sympathy with crackling glaciers and creaking icebergs.

Many hours after overflying Scotland, I spied my first iceberg lurking in the the ruffled, inky North Atlantic. Even as I tried to imagine how the great north land might look, my first view of Greenland stunned me. Fjords of every imaginable shape hosted monstrous glaciers; vast swathes of ice calving innumerable icebergs into the sea. Crossing the coast, the vast icecap appeared as a ragged white mass, broken by toothy grey peaks and scars; a wilderness in which humans seemed preposterous upstarts, mere nuisances to be scorned and ridiculed.

The descent to Narsarsuaq airport came all too soon but I knew I was transferring straight to a helicopter and flying the 75km or so to the coastal town of Narsaq. Now helicopters in Greenland are real bruisers; my steed was a hulking Sikorsky 25 seater- definitely not your standard tourist haunt chopper. Greenland has some of the world\'s largest passenger helicopters and for good reason; often they are the only way to get around. Greenland has no roads or railways connecting its towns and so transport is achieved by fixed wing planes, ships and choppers. In winter, even ships are prevented from reaching many northern ports by the southward march of pack ice. Many smaller towns have no air strip and can be reached only by helicopter. Choppers are vital for goods transport too; that day there were only 9 passengers but plenty of cargo. Unoccupied seats were folded back and the floor stacked with mail, boxes of fruit, mixed freight and a sporty looking outboard motor. The whole craft shuddered as the rotors gathered momentum.

Take off was effortless; soon lush farming land lay below, studded with absurdly domed mountains and fringed by deep, iceberg- strewn fjords. A shuffling herd of musk oxen crowded together in a valley and welcomed me with disgusted scowls. The Sikorsky crested a ridge and Narsaq appeared, looking like toytown at the foot of an imposing green- clad mountain. The mighty whirlybird set down on a concrete apron but my head was still spinning with possibilities. Feeling excited, I simply deposited my luggage at a nearby youth hostel and galloped up a hill to overlook the township.

The first thing that struck me was the total lack of fences between dwellings and the almost total absence of roads. I could just wander anywhere at a whim. Later I hired a mountainbike and relished the thrill of exploring open country and dodging bike- wrecking boulders. This was the first time I\'d ever really climbed a mountain with a mountain bike- an intoxicating experience. For someone used to the boundaries inherent in modern life, this was akin to Alice\'s wonderland. Coming down the hill was more like a scene from Indiana Jones though- a sort of hazardous, rock- strewn wonderland.

That evening I enjoyed a Greenlandic barbecue with the other guests of my hostel. Some looked uneasy when told that seal meat was one of the menu items, but our host explained that hunting and living off the land has always been a part of human life in Greenland. Even today, a fifth of Greenland\'s mere 55,000 people set out each day to hunt animals such as reindeer, musk ox, seals or whales. Greenpeace and Greenlanders once locked horns over the issues of seal and whale hunting but eventually Greenpeace realised that Greenlanders are a people in touch with nature and their hunting is typically on a subsistence basis. Even in the capital, Nuuk, sealskins can sometimes be seen drying on an apartment balcony.

We traded stories and made travel plans until the wee small hours, enjoying the June \'midight sun\'. Time seemed to mean nothing at all as townsfolk wandered by, taking in the eerie glow or heading out on spontaneous fishing trips. I fell in with three Danes who assured me that I had to see the fjords and glaciers with them on a little old 12 passenger wooden boat somewhat unglamorously called "Puttut".

As it turned out, Puttut was a little gem. Jacky, the owner, took us on a meandering voyage through an impossibly massive fjord, casually steering a slalom course between icebergs that dwarfed poor little Puttut. Then Jacky made straight for a moderately sized \'berg\', an unsettling move at best. I needn\'t have worried though; Puttut rafted alongside and her crew dug grappling hooks into the ice as routinely as docking at a wharf. Jacky produced a large ice axe and hacked away at our host iceberg until he had a bucketful of ice, just enough to boil up for our morning tea. He pointed out that this ice might be thousands of years old and bubbles formed in the ice had been compressed over eons. Thus, the melting berg ice snap, crackled and popped in the pan as bubbles released their pressure. Nearby icebergs groaned and creaked as if in sympathy. All I could manage was a mesmerised sigh.

We set off once again past icebergs of all shapes and sizes, some resembling hunting bears and ancient ships. Colours ranged from white to deepest blue. We went ashore at Brattahlid, where Erik the Red and his men landed in 982. Some 500 years later, the area was deserted once more with no hint as to why or where Erik\'s descendents may have gone. Only silent ruins remain, scattered about the picturesque heathland, monuments to a bygone era.

Even though Denmark claimed Greenland as its own in 1605, there was no attempt to re-colonise the island until Danish missionary Hans Egede came along in 1721. Since then Denmark has steadily modernised Greenland, although control of internal affairs was won by the Greenlanders in 1979.

Nanortalik \'the place with bears\' was my next port of call, a small island off the southern tip of Greenland. Here, field ice sweeping around from the east coast sometimes carries the odd polar bear past, hence the settlement\'s name. Sometimes a polar bear will come rummaging through the town, only to be chased back to the ice floes by sled dogs and rifle fire. I survived Nanortalik unscathed, save for a wobbly kayaking experience that saw me clinging to handy \'mini bergs\' and deflecting Inuit children\'s derisive, tinkling giggles. Those youngsters could afford to laugh; their ancestors invented the kayak (qaqaq) and I take my hat off to them. It would be hard to conceive of a more frail craft or more rugged, unforgiving waters in which to paddle. One of Nanortalik\'s many museums proudly displays a traditional Inuit sealskin kayak in which visitors are encouraged to sit. Sit and marvel at how anyone could cope with a craft whose sides are an inch above rippling, freezing arctic waters. Incredulously ponder how hunters could routinely harpoon and secure thrashing seals weighing hundreds of pounds and still stay upright. I nearly fell out of the cursed thing on dry land.

My next voyage was to be a little grander; a cruise up Greenland\'s spectacular west coast on board a ship of the adventurous-sounding Arctic Umiaq line. It seemed like half of Nanortalik\'s people were on board the Sarpik Ittuk that day, and the other half were on the quay waving goodbye- I just had to follow suit. Soon we were ploughing north, the bow crashing through sheets of ice, huge stadium sized icebergs looming either side of us. Seals frolicked alongside, leaping and somersaulting as if taunting any would- be hunters on board. A pod of whales joined in the melee at one stage, earnestly broaching and crashing back down, foaming the icy waters seemingly in slow motion. Seals and whales appeared to compete with each other for the best possible spectacle; the counsel of the whales\' sheer size versus the nimble aerobatics of the seals. Both groups had my vote.

From time to time our captain had to weave his ship\'s course \'Puttut- style\' to avoid a collision with towering icebergs. About 1 a.m., we had to hold station while the wind blew a huddle of threatening bergs away. Passengers merely clinked glasses and gazed out over the massive ice sculptures, glowing pink in the embers of a low sun.

I chatted with locals about their brave island nation and learned that Greenland is a land of extraordinary possibilities; I could go dogsledding on a frozen bay in winter, hike up to the ice cap, fish for huge Greenland Sharks, go arctic skiing, try my hand at ice golf or stay in a traditional igloo.

A word of warning; one trip to Greenland may not be enough. I\'ve already booked my next.