To our left is the coastline which the ice has left uncolonised There is

To our left is the coastline, which the ice has left uncolonised There is nowhere that humans could possibly settle. We fly west of the ridge of the ice cap, which stretches out to the horizon to our right The ice has smothered the land, sucked the life out of it It is a mighty sight, and a frightening one. The ice may be beautiful, but it’s terribly difficult to live with.The next day we are flown north in a propeller plane over mountains and frozen lakes which are haughtily unaware of the existence of human beings. Even the hardy Inuit have found it difficult to settle this territory: the island has only been continuously inhabited for the past 1,200 years or so.

Today the population of the whole country, which is as big as Western Europe, is only 55,000. The vast majority of this country is crushed under the weight of the ice cap – a covering of compressed snow up to 3km deep and 100,000 years old. Man has managed to scratch an existence for the past 5,000 years, on and off, on the fringes of the island, the only inhabitable part of a land mass otherwise completely ruled by ice. It’s not just its shimmering, unearthly beauty that gets you. You can sense the immense power of the thousands of kilometres of ice that stretch behind it It’s scarily beautiful.Greenland: what a misnoma.

This is the only sound we can hear, apart from an occasional wraaak from the pair of enormous ravens which fly possessively around the summit We are stunned into silence. Niels, who sees the ice wall several times a week, is gazing at it as intently as I am. I only have one word to say, and it comes out involuntarily.
“Wow!”We park and gaze at the 400m jagged wall of ice rising into the sky The edge of the ice cap It has a bluish tinge Occasionally, it lets out an almighty crack: it is melting. As we judder towards the umpteenth crest, Niels says: “This is about the point where people usually say, ‘wow’.” The sight before me is incredible My mood changes immediately.

I ate this shaggy animal’s powerful-tasting flesh for lunch, however, and it’s churning around my stomach. It’s not even as cold as it’s meant to be, hovering around zero. It’s been a disappointing first morning: the area looks scraggy and untidy, what snow that’s left is muddied by the silt of the glacier floor, and on this morning’s musk-ox safari we haven’t spotted a single musk-ox. We bump and grind through mud and sludge along the ridge of glacial mountains heading east from Kangerlussuaq, Greenland’s international airport Our destination is the edge of the ice cap.