Experience the incredible scenery and unique hunting found only in Greenland

Hunting i Greenland

Greenland is the world’s biggest island, lying where the North Atlantic meets the Arctic Ocean. 85% of Greenland’s landmass is covered by the inland-ice and glaciers which stretches 2,500km from north to south and is around 1,000km wide and up to 3km thick.

Despite the arctic climate the weather at the head of the huge fjords is generally more stable than on the coast. The winter period tends to be dominated by higher pressure systems that give syable, dry weather with blue skies and plenty of sunshine. The temperature  is generally between -20 og -25 °C but you can experience temperatures right down to below  -30°C. occasionally you can experience days wind and snow and even temperatures above zero (føhn), which can remove all the snow in a few hours. You can still travel by dog sledge as long as the ground is frozen and there is ice on the lakes and rivers.

Søndre Strømfjord or as it is called in Greenlandic - Kangerlussuaq - is transected by the Arctic circle, which means in summer it never really gets dark, while in mid-winter there is nearly no light apart  from moonlight and the fantastic northern lights. During March, when the hunt takes place, there is more than 12 hours daylight per day, as the day quickly get longer at these latitudes.

Despite an area of around 2 million km2 only around 56.000 people live in Greenland, most of whom are inuit. Fishing, trapping, and hunting seals, birds, reindeer and musk ox is still the major industry

The musk ox has just been included in the European Grand Slam. The musk ox is a tundra dweller, it is more closely related to the goats and sheep than true cattle, but is its own seperate genus. MThe musk ox is native only to the east coast of Greenland, the fjords, glacier and mountains preventing it from “colonising” all of the huge island. At the start of the sixties 27 musk oxen were released near Kangerlussuaq - on an open hunting district of some 6.600 km2. Over the space of 40 years it has been estimated that the population has grown to number at least 7,000 individuals. The vegetation and hence availability of fodder in this area is so good that here musk ox grow to be 15% larger than elsewhere in Greenland, a fully grown bull can reach a weight of 375kg.