No two snowflakes are alike or follow the same path. They fall one by one and form a seamless blanket of whiteness that covers everything.
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As time passes, the blanket of snow gets thicker. The snow becomes more compact, denser and heavier. The snow crystals become a solid mass of ice, aided by the cycle of frost and thaw. This is how Greenland’s Ice Sheet was formed 2-3 million years ago – and how it continues to grow and recede today. At its highest point, the ice is more than 3 kilometres thick. The oldest ice can be as many as 100,000 years old.
Gravity and pressure from the enormous weight of ice cause the massive glacier to move. The smaller glaciers, like blue-white tongues of ice, slowly gravitate down all slopes. They carry stones with them, crevices and lakes are formed, whilst meltwater moves through, over and under the ice.
The journey ends in the Greenlandic fjords, where the glaciers calve and a new journey then begins. An enormous rumble and a great splash accompany the birth of an iceberg as fragments of ice break off the glacier. Such icebergs can be as high as 15-story buildings – with just 1/9 or so visible above the surface of the water.
Icebergs are a natural phenomenon that can only be experienced in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Travel to the Ice Sheet and the icebergs in Greenland, which are one of the Big Arctic Five experiences. Let yourself be enthralled by the magnificence of the icebergs, the magical interplay of colours and the sculptural shapes. And by their incredible history. Remember: Once they were once just tiny snowflakes.
Need some ideas for how to experience ice in Greenland? Perhaps kayaking around icebergs in South Greenland is something for you, or even ice diving in East Greenland for the very adventurous. Otherwise, the standby of taking a boat tour at the mouth of Ilulissat Icefjord is a timeless favourite.
