Ittoqqortoormiit

Ittoqqortoormiit sits at the mouth of Scoresby Sund on the east coast, around three hundred and fifty people in painted houses on a bare slope, and it is among the most isolated inhabited places in the Arctic: the nearest other Greenlandic town is roughly eight hundred kilometres away, sea ice closes the coast for most of the year, and access is by helicopter from an airstrip served by flights out of Iceland. The community was founded in 1925 by families moved from Tasiilaq.

Background

The settlement, formerly Scoresbysund, belongs to Sermersooq municipality and had 329 residents on 1 January 2026. The old name recalls William Scoresby, an English Arctic explorer and whaler who in 1822 became the first European to chart the area, while Ittoqqortoormiit means big house dwellers in East Greenlandic. Ejnar Mikkelsen founded it in 1925 with some 80 Inuit settlers, 70 of them from Tasiilaq plus four western Greenland families, carried on the ship Gustav Holm. Kulusuk, the nearest other Greenlandic settlement, is 831 kilometres away, and the nearest settlement of any kind is Sandvík on Grímsey in Iceland, 466 kilometres off. The tundra climate gives a yearly mean of -5.0 °C.

Source: Wikipedia, "Ittoqqortoormiit"

Highlights

• The painted houses - the settlement scattered across a bare slope above the water.
• The isolation - the nearest other town roughly eight hundred kilometres away.
• The sea ice - the frozen coast that closes access for most of the year.
• The 1925 founding - the community established by families relocated from Tasiilaq.

When to go

March to May has firm ice, light and dog sledding. July to August has open water and boat access. The rest of the year is effectively closed.

Things to know

Access is expensive and unreliable; being stuck for days by weather is normal. Supplies arrive twice a year and prices reflect it. There is very little in the way of visitor facilities.

Nearby

Scoresby Sund is west, and Northeast Greenland National Park is north.

Key facts