November 3rd, 2023
The nice thing about this trip was that we could sleep long enough. On our African safaris, we always got up before sunrise at 6:00 a.m. As the sun doesn’t rise here in November until around 9:00am, we had considerably more time. Here is the view from our room window shortly before 9:00am:
After a delicious breakfast at the hotel, we dressed warmly and walked around the hotel to take some pictures of Ilulissat and the passing icebergs.
Hike to Sermermiut
Our guide Simone picked us up from the hotel lobby at 12:00 noon. On the agenda was a hike to the former Inuit settlement of Sermermiut. This is an abandoned settlement located next to the ice fjord south of Ilulissat.
The history of Sermermiut was uncovered through a series of archaeological excavations in the twentieth century. An excavation in 1953 established that Sermermiut was used by the Saqqaq, early Dorset and Thule cultures. A further excavation in 1983 dated the beginning of the early Dorset settlement to around 600-200 BC. Sermermiut was not abandoned until 1850, when the last inhabitant moved to nearby Jakobshavn (‘Ilulissat’ today).
The trip to the old Inuit settlement along a 2 km snow-covered path was windy and cold, but in beautiful sunshine. Our multi-layered Arctic clothing had proved its worth here for the first time, as we had practically put on all the available layers on top of each other 😉. All we could see of the former “huts” were mounds of earth, the entrances were originally below ground level. However, the view of the ice fjord was spectacular.
After a hot tea with a view of the gigantic icebergs, we headed back again. On the way back, we briefly visited the modern Icefjord Centre. It opened in 2021 and has a very modern design. Here you can learn a lot about ice and the history and way of life of the Inuit.
Our guide had already left, so we walked about 25 minutes back to Ilulissat after the visit. We passed the “dog town” on the way. As already mentioned, about 3000 dogs live in Ilulissat.
Our guide Simone had previously explained to us, that all dogs have to live outside the town. Only one type of sled dog is allowed in Ilulissat. She herself also owns 5 dogs. The dog sleds are still an important and frequently used means of transportation today.
The roads in Ilulissat all end right at the edge of town, so there is no further progress by car. There is no road connection between the towns in Greenland. Therefore, apart from snowmobiles, dog sleds are the only means of inland transportation outside the urban area.
The dogs always stay outside, they are tied to chains and have a small hut at best. The collective howling of so many dogs is impressive - when one of them starts, all the others join in. You can hear it from every corner of Ilulissat.
As the dogs also do their droppings on site, the hike past them was also a very special olfactory experience 🤢.
Sunset
Back in Ilulissat, we just managed to catch the last shuttle bus to our hotel. We arrived there just in time for sunset and went straight back out again. Here is a picture of the cold photo session with the “making of”:
And here is a selection of the pictures, the light was magical:
Reindeer and muskox steaks
Completely frozen, we rested a bit in our hotel room and warmed up. We had already reserved our dinner in the hotel restaurant at 6 p.m., as we had already planned to meet our guide Simone again at 8 p.m.
This time we tried reindeer (right) and muskox steaks (below) for dinner, both were very 😋 tasty.
Night excursion
We then drove back out to the icefjord centre with Simone at 8 p.m., as it was quite dark there outside the city. There we prepared our cameras on tripods for the Northern Lights - but unfortunately they didn’t appear 🙁☹️😣😖.
Out of desperation, I at least took a few night shots of Ilulissat, the Icefjord Museum and the ice fjord. They turned out quite nice too:
About 1 1/2 hours later, we abandoned the excursion, frozen and without having achieved much, and drove back to the hotel. We hoped to have a bit more luck in the next two nights that we will still be here (spoiler: we did 😉)