Inside the Arctic’s loneliest town, where polar bear is on the menu and Man United are on TV

TikTok and Netflix have reached remote Ittoqqortoormiit, though hunting narwhals remains the locals’ favourite pastime

“We have a joke about romanticising indigenous Greenlanders,” says Inuuteq Kriegel in the country’s remotest settlement, Ittoqqortoormiit. “If you want to meet a hunter, you’ll find him in his home watching Netflix. His son will be playing Fortnite.”
I learnt quickly during an eight-day, small-ship voyage to explore Scoresby Sound, the world’s largest fjord system in eastern Greenland, that while far-flung and prone to polar bears moseying through town, modern living had firmly arrived. 
High inside the Arctic, the nearest settlement to Ittoqqortoormiit (pronounced gutturally as “it-ockor-tormit”) is 500 miles south. Sea-ice entombs it for nine months each year. In winter, which the 360 residents prefer because hunting seals is better on ice, they are linked to the outside world only by helicopter. They complain that the £115 one-way fare for a 13-minute flight is way too expensive so they have a community store restocked twice a year by supply vessel. 
To reach Ittoqqortoormiit, at the entranceway to Scoresby Sound, I’d flown to Constable Point (around 90 minutes from Iceland) – where the previous flight had been delayed by a polar bear on the runway. From there I boarded an intimate and comfortable six-cabin ship called Vikingfjord, chartered by micro-expedition specialists Secret Atlas. 
The ship’s cosiness generated a nice camaraderie. I shared it with a Bavarian, Sven, who works for Audi, while Parisian Emelie was a photographer of heavy-metal bands hoping to snap (arguably less wild) polar bears. The ship’s morning smell of freshly baked bread left my stomach rumbling louder than the gunshot echoes of calving glaciers. By the end of evening, the Norwegian cognac had disappeared like an arctic hare in a snowbank.
Vikingfjord is deft enough to tiptoe between the icebergs that create Manhattan-like seascapes. Brilliantly white, glistening like glass, and with cobalt-blue veins, the frozen towers are overwhelmingly impressive.
Almost as eye-catching is Ittoqqortoormiit, with its wooden houses brightly painted in colours of emerald green and blue. I soon learnt just how keen its folk are on hunting when our prearranged guide cancelled our meeting to go chasing narwhals. Polar bear, seal and musk oxen all supplement the local diet – although not hares, according to tourism director Mette Pike Barselajsen, which are kept as pets. I have no idea what they feed them, as a single lettuce (iceberg, naturally) in the community store costs £7.50.
Vikingfjord is one of a record 55 ships planned to visit this summer. Last year, 5,343 passengers reached Ittoqqortoormiit, up 64 per cent on the previous year – this remote Arctic town is getting a little less lonely. Our arrival added 10 passengers to 2024’s total.
“The locals say they prefer the arrival of bigger ships, with up to 500 passengers, because they follow the rules,” says Inuuteq, who is developing small-scale tourism with an NGO called Oxen. “Small yachts are especially unpopular because they come unannounced and buy too much from the store. One sailboat purchased all the available bullets for a particular calibre of rifle.” Firearm owners temporarily ran out of ammunition. The main complaint about cruise vessels is scaring away narwhals, which are prized for maktaaq, a delicacy of skin and blubber.
“We like Chinese guests, they spend lots,” says Mette. What they buy, I’m not certain – though the gift shop possessed sealskin toys and reindeer horn carvings. She invited me to try on a pair of polar-bear-skin trousers, but they seemed rather gauche; I wasn’t sure Emelie would approve. 
I had actually arrived at Mette’s office with some trepidation as a local meat tasting had been arranged. Like the tour, though, it was cancelled; Mette proffered only a single tray of musk oxen cubes on cocktail sticks.
She says Ittoqqortoormiit has an increasing problem of hungry polar bears wandering into town. They are being driven inland as rising summer temperatures mean the sea-ice where they hunt seals is melting away. Two had been shot in town recently and Inuuteq saw one less than 100ft from his house a few nights previously. 
“We don’t shoot more than our quota of 35 bears [per year],” says Mette. They eat all the bear, she insists, which must be cooked for at least one and a half hours to avoid a deadly dose of trichinosis. Around town I saw a few bearskins airing in the wind.
Cuisine excepted, Mette says that their lives are much like ours. “We eat breakfast, work, cook dinner, and go to bed. During winter, when it’s completely dark, there’s a sports hall, and we all have Netflix. The kids make videos for TikTok, and we use eBay and Amazon for shopping,” she says. “My husband supports Manchester United, and my son, Liverpool. They live-stream matches.” Apparently the local schoolteacher recently travelled to Old Trafford to watch a game. 
I meandered around town. Locals buzzed around on quad bikes. Winter’s skidoos rest on pallets. There’s a pretty red Lutheran church, built in 1928, but the museum was shut. By some kennels, an old man fed chained-up and bored-looking huskies. They are used for tourist dog-sledding, although it’s hard to imagine much of a winter influx with just one seven-roomed guesthouse.
Summer felt like a fleeting inconvenience before winter re-energised a community that could take to the ice to hunt.
Beyond Ittoqqortoormiit, we entered the voluminous Scoresby Sound, marvelling at the snow-riven mountainsides and moraine-striped glaciers. Cruise vessels are blocked from visiting certain areas, and there are five-knot speed limits to avoid disturbing the narwhals. 
In Øfjord, under warm sunshine on a crowberry-flowering tundra, we watched musk ox – a 400lb male, shaggy coat like a 1970s perm, eyeballed us suspiciously. On a whim, we donned swimwear and plunged into the freezing water with screams shrill enough to calve a glacier. 
For a while, Hurtigruten’s ship, Maude, trailed us. Onboard was 28-year-old Niels Sanimuinaq-Rasmussen, from Ittoqqortoormiit and working as an Inuit ambassador. 
“In Ittoqqortoormiit there’s a split between those who embrace a more modern lifestyle… and those who continue living the traditional life, hunting for sustenance. However, when we are away from our traditional food for long, we all feel homesickness,” he says. 
Besides the narwhal tusk in the tourist office that Border Force would gleefully confiscate, I wondered what else visitors might take from visiting Ittoqqortoormiit?
“Embrace the silence. It’s not something we should avoid by constantly having background noise, such as music or TV shows,” he says.
I saw no narwhals nor (living) polar bears. The one on the airport runway, I learnt, had been shot. Frontier Greenland, however, lives on. Its undimmed customs are geographically close, if not metaphorically far, from our own doorstep. 
A 10-day East Greenland Explorer Fly & Cruise takes place from September to October 2025. It costs from £8,550 per person and includes eight days cruising onboard the MV Vikingfjord or MV Freya. The price excludes charter flights from Iceland’s Keflavik Airport to Constable Point. See secretatlas.com.