Gone North

Greenland's time is measured not by clocks but by the gentle rhythm of the tides and the slow pulse of Arctic ice.

- KALPANA SUNDER

The sea lay glassy and still, a silence so deep that it felt almost sacred, until a sudden plume of spray shattered it. A pod of humpback whales rose before us, their dark backs arching gracefully through the water.

We leaned over the railings, mesmerised as their tails lifted high and crashed down with a deafening slap that sent ripples racing across the fjord. Misty spouts of mist, sun glinting on wet flukes, and the echo of deep calls echoing through the Arctic air held us spellbound.

Then shadows glided just beneath the surface before breaking fully into view. Fin whales, the second-largest whales on Earth, moved with quiet majesty, their massive bodies dwarfing humpbacks. Greenland hosts 15 whale species, from minke and humpback to beluga and narwhal.

The calls of fin whales, however, span hundreds of kilometres and they swim with their mouths open to catch and filter prey, our expedition team explained. There was grace in every motion, as if the ocean bowed to their rhythm. Some cameras clicked, but most of us stood in stunned silence, grateful to witness one of the ocean's most humbling spectacles.

I was aboard the expedition ship Ocean Albatros run by Albatros Expeditions (or, since mid-October, Polar Latitudes Expeditions post-merger), sailing along the wild, jagged coast of Greenland, Denmark's autonomous territory and the world's largest island, on an 11-day journey.

We had flown in on a chartered plane from Copenhagen, landing at Kangerlussuaq in West Greenland, a former US air base during World War II. Beyond the airstrip, the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet stretched: vast, white, and seemingly without end.