Colours of Greenland

Perfect reflection Ilulissat Ice Fjord – the colours of most of Greenland

Alex Burridge MD Arctic Travel Centre

It’s strange that a country with the name of Greenland has very little green.  The origins of the name give it away; in 982 Erik the Red wanted to encourage settlers to move from Iceland to Greenland.  Erik was reasonably successful as over the years the community grew to perhaps 3,000 inhabitants.

Today Greenland still has an awful lot a white with the Greenlandic Ice sheet covering about 80% of the island with an average depth of over 1.5kilomtres.  Greenland’s colours come from the flora and fauna, the ancient rocks and the Greenlandic Inuit who are descendants of the Thule people who settled in Greenland from about AD 1200.

Glaciers and moraine flowing from Greenland ice sheet

Black Guillemots                                                                                                                                    Arctic Harebells

Sisimiut harbour Greenland

Red-necked Phalarope Sisimiut Greenland

Reflections Niaqornat Greenland                                                                       Upernavik church

Local boats Ilulissat icefjord Greenland

Red Head Greenland Gneiss                                                                                                                      Elegant sunburst lichen

Upernavik’s colourful houses                                                                       Niaqornat Greenlandic settlement

Greenland is a very colourful destination.  The towns and villages add striking colour – the origins of which enabled visitors to identify where people lived (by the colour of the house, as there were no numbers or street names).  Additionally in the 1700s Greenlanders could get kit house in five colours red, yellow, black, green and blue.

Black = Police station (now Navy Blue)
Hospitals = Yellow
Red = Tradespeople and store owners (the shop and their home)
Blue = Fishing factories

Purple Saxifrage

Many ships offer a range of voyages discovering Greenland colour, its people, and incredible landscapes