Life in Greenland’s small capital has so far depended on Danish subsidies and fishing. Sustainable tourism is now to become an important mainstay.
Nuuk is shy. The city is hidden under an impenetrable veil: when approaching, the pilot suddenly retracts the wheels and the turboprop plane goes up. “Unfortunately there is too much fog,” he announces over the loudspeaker. “We have to go back to Kangerlussuaq.” So to the Greenland hub, one and a half hours’ flight north, from where Air Greenland’s only Airbus shuttles to Copenhagen.
The small plane to Nuuk is fully manned with three dozen people. At the pilot’s words there is not the slightest grumbling or swearing in the cabin. All around only stoic faces: In Greenland, people are apparently humbled by the size of nature. Wind and weather determine everyday life in the Arctic. Whether you go hunting or not, whether you dare to go fishing on a dinghy or go dog sledding on the sea ice – that is determined by the forces of nature. Accordingly, many locals do not experience a go-around for the first time. The tourists among the passengers take the experience as part of their Greenland adventure. Back in Kangerlussuaq, the travelers eat musk ox burgers in the cafeteria and retreat to their rooms at the airport hotel. Tomorrow is a day too.
In fact, Nuuk is receptive to visitors after this night. Flight and landing are successful. Magnus Biilmann Trolle, 27, is already waiting in his electric car at the small airport. After completing his studies at Copenhagen Business School, he returned to his hometown to write a master’s thesis on sustainable urban development. The city authorities asked him to stay. He now serves in Nuuk as a Sustainability Consultant. He has great things to report: “We are the first sustainable capital in the world!”
The American “Time Magazine” names Nuuk among the “World’s Greatest Places 2021”
Nuuk is the first capital city to be certified by the organization Earth Check as a sustainable travel destination based on criteria from the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) last year. Nuuk met strict environmental standards in key performance areas. The award reinforces Greenland’s ambition to be a leader among the world’s sustainable travel destinations. The American “Time Magazine” also chose the Greenlandic capital as one of the “World’s Greatest Places 2021” in its highly acclaimed list of 100 extraordinary travel destinations.
The catalog of sustainable achievements is long, says Magnus Biilmann Trolle. “The electricity comes entirely from hydropower. Electric cars are heavily tax-advantaged, they are climate-neutral here. 64 percent of the urban area are green areas.” Of course, you shouldn’t imagine parks, but rather patches of grass and herbs between granite and gneiss. Except for a few stunted conifers, which were planted on an experimental basis and for decades grew no taller than Christmas trees for the living room, there is not a single tree in Nuuk’s surroundings. The houses and apartment blocks are built on a peninsula on Palaeozoic rocks.
“We also use very little water and produce little waste,” says Magnus Biilmann Trolle. This is certainly also due to the fact that there is neither agriculture nor industry, apart from the fish factories: around half of the Greenlandic state budget is subsidies from Denmark – the money that Greenland itself earns with exports comes almost exclusively from fishing, especially from shrimp .
“Copenhagen is a role model for us,” says Magnus Biilmann Trolle
“But we didn’t just receive the award for ecological efforts, but also for the social and economic pillars of sustainability,” emphasizes Magnus Biilmann Trolle. “In the city’s planning, the starting point is always sustainability: What is really compatible with nature and society?” This applies above all to the development of environmentally and socially compatible tourism, which Greenland sees as a future second mainstay alongside fishing.
“Copenhagen is a role model for us,” says Magnus Biilmann Trolle. The Danish capital is not a city that wants to sell itself to tourists, but above all wants to create quality of life: “A city for tourists is a city in which the locals first feel comfortable.”
Only around 19,000 people live in Nuuk, but because it is the center of the country, the city offers more than most of its comparable size in Europe. There’s a university, and the Katuaq Culture House, whose wavy facade is inspired by the fluttering Northern Lights, acts as the country’s artistic focal point. It offers exhibitions, theater and concerts, houses the Greenlandic Art School, the City Orchestra and the country’s largest cinema hall. The bookshop in the city center – albeit the only one – is well stocked with specialist literature on Greenland and international bestsellers. During the day the children romp in the Malik swimming pool, in the evening the athletes from the Qajaq Club practice their capsizing rolls in kayaks traditionally covered with seal skin. They like to have a drink afterwards in the Skyline Bar on the top floor of the Hotel Hans Egede. The pianist plays jazz, the bartender serves cocktails and locally brewed beers from the Godthåb Bryghus microbrewery, and visitors feel like they are in a big city.
Four 500-year-old mummified corpses lie behind glass
At the weekend you can stay until three in the morning and be tempted to skip the visit to the National Museum the following day, even though you learn a lot there. About the colonial history of Greenland, which began in 1721 when the missionary Hans Egede landed near Nuuk and established the 300-year connection between the Danish kingdom and the Inuit.
The greatest treasure of the museum can be found in the furthest and darkest corner. Behind glass lie four mummified corpses, around 500 years old, that two hunters discovered fifty years ago under a ledge in the village of Qilakitsoq. The find, which the discoverers initially thought was a doll, is particularly touching. In fact, it was a six-month-old boy in fur clothing next to his mother. It is possible that the baby was smothered after the mother’s death and placed in the grave to save it from agonizing starvation.
The faces of the female mummies are tattooed. For a long time, tattoos were hardly noticed, but in recent years the young generation has become aware of this tradition. In the streets of Nuuk, women can now be seen with linear tattoos on their chins, expressing their pride and identity as modern-day Greenlandic women.
“But our greatest asset is nature,” says Magnus Biilmann Trolle. On the short winter days, the kids use the local ski lift for free – a good way to get them away from the TV and smartphone. If you prefer cross-country skiing, you can get on the trail in the city area. The city is currently building a new seafront promenade, secured boardwalks that offer spectacular views. There are also resting spots with benches and tables where families picnic and lovers watch the sunset. Almost a kilometer of the coastal jetty is already finished.
During the fjord excursion, the skipper dodges sporadic icebergs
Above all, however, Nuuk offers access to a huge fjord system in the hinterland, around 4000 square kilometers in size. With a boat you can advance 100 kilometers through the flooded former glacial valleys to the edge of the ice cap. The further you drive into the fjords, the more dramatic the landscape. The locals use the fjords for excursions and for undisturbed days in their weekend cabins, which are perched here and there on the cliffs.
Down at the colony harbour, the oldest part of the city, you can book a trip to the fjord restaurant Qooqqut with Nuuk Water Taxi. The skipper avoids sporadic icebergs until he switches off the engine after about 50 kilometers and is already within sight of the restaurant. The excursionists let artificial fish made of iron fly more than a hundred meters into the depths as bait on fishing lines. “I guarantee you a catch!” Says the skipper. In fact, five minutes later, when you reel in the line again, gray and orange bodies are hanging from the hooks: cod and redfish. On land, the fish is immediately filleted and ends up in Thai-Greenlandic fusion cuisine. Jab, the wife of landlord Mads Bek, is from Bangkok.
Guests can stay in the simplest huts, and Bek will lend a gun to the fearful. “Ten years ago, while walking in front of the house, I suddenly saw three black dots a few meters away” – the eyes and the tip of the nose of a polar bear. “I ran into the house in panic, pursued by the bear.” But in Nuuk, still south of the Arctic Circle, polar bears are very rare: “No one has been seen for ten years.”
It is not common to imagine the Garden of Eden in the tundra. But Mads Beck says: “This is our paradise.” If the guests crave trout, he walks a little way up the valley to the creek, which there springs down to the fjord. The host family knows under which stones the fish are hiding. “We just catch them with our hands,” says Beck.
Nuuk seems to succeed in rapid development
Back in Nuuk, not far from the landing stage at the colony harbour, a woman is working in the evening sun. Johanne Tobiassen is sitting in front of the kayak club’s clubhouse, scraping the bacon off a seal’s skin with an ulu, a traditional woman’s knife. Her son shot the animal from a dinghy the day before. Johanne wants to sew a splash guard out of the skin. Her husband Pavia asks to go to the clubhouse. He only speaks Greenlandic, but you can understand one word in his sentences: “anorak”. He presents a sealskin overcoat that he wears at the Greenland Championships, as do the other athletes. The competitors practice in nine disciplines, including kayak sprint, harpoon throwing and capsizing rolls.
“Our sons, 15 and 17 years old, are Greenland champions,” says Johanne Tobiassen with a smile. It seems that Nuuk is developing at a rapid pace – precisely because people are aware of its history. “Our grandparents were catchers, they hunted from a kayak,” says Johanne Tobiassen, who works as chief accountant at the university. “With the club we preserve our culture.”
