Hekla Havn

Day 8 17.09.2015

First order of the day was a new landing. Today we visited Hekla Havn, which served several purposes. It is a sheltered bay on the south side of Denmark Ø and was named by Carl Ryder’s 1891 – 92 expedition for the expedition ship Hekla. The expedition wintered at this place.

We could also find remains of several Inuit camps and a company called Nordisk Mineselskab build a spacious house in 1967 that still is in good use.

During the landing we also made use of the expedition technology onboard and used our small rescue craft to collect sounding data around the landing site to get more accurate seacharts. This area is so far off, that there is no such reliable maps yet.

In the evening we were passing the little settlement Ittoqqortoormiit again and even had a pit stop there to give away some Diesel we got too much in Iceland and picked up some Gasoline for our tender boats.

We would at this point use the chance and send a big “Thank You” to Ittoqqortoormiit!

See the tent ring from early greenlandic cultures.

Erik could give us a little introduction into the history of the place.

Eva is watching out.

The world's largest fjord...

Day 7 16.09.2015

This Wednesday was a day in the name of exploration. We headed into the magnificent Scoresby Sund fjord system, the biggest of the world. MV Fram has never been in here before, so every landing and all the cruising is new, not only for the guests.

Our first landing took place at Sydkapp, or Suuninnguaa in Greenlandic. It was fairly steep terrain, but climbing it was worth the effort for seeing the very last and hardest of the flowering plants. Again, the weather was beautiful. The light setting in the morning hours was stunning and later during the landing the sun made us feel comfortably warm.

The rest of the day we spent cruising in the largest fjord system on earth, even under full engines it will take us a while to reach the end of it.

In the night we still had no wind, 4°C, clear skies and you guess it: Northern lights to watch.

Adventurer Erik Jørgensen is watching out for our guests

The town with the difficult name

Day 6 15.09.2015

We started the day early in the small town Ittoqqortoormiit that has only 450 inhabitants. Ittoqqortoormiit is situated on the eastcoast of Greenland at the longest fjord system of the world. The closest neighbouring town in Greenland is Tasiilaq, about 800 km to the south-west. Iceland is the closest neighbouring country, about 500 km south-east. A truly isolated community.

We were walking freely around in town, visited the church, the museum and outdoor museum and a lady named Maalia posed with her own eastern greenlandic national costume. For those that like dogs, musher Sven Arqe was showing his selddogteam including eight puppies. At exactly 11:00 the weather station released their weather balloon. The meteorological data from the balloons here is very important for weather forecasts in Europe.

For lunch we were back on board to continue our voyage north. The weather was still in our favor and lucky were those, who were going to sleep on deck. The arctic sky showed us another incredible show of northern lights…

The new sea ice is forming...

A drying polar bear skin 

Some of Svens dogs

Dog musher Sven Arqe

The weatherballoon on its mission

Our cook has fun delivering some fresh fruit and vegetables to the settlement

Our expedition team on this trip