At Hotel Icefiord in Ilulissat, Greenland, the staff keep a chalkboard in the restaurant where they mark a line for every whale spotted from the terrace each month. Some months it fills up fast. It's a bit of a running joke among them, but it also sums up the whole point of staying here: the icebergs and the whales aren't something you go looking for, they're just kind of always there, drifting past the windows whether you're eating dinner or still half asleep in bed.
Location
Ilulissat City
Hotel Icefiord sits on the coastline in Ilulissat, Greenland's second-largest town and the unofficial capital of Arctic tourism, thanks to its position at the mouth of the Ilulissat Icefjord. The hotel isn't directly on the fjord itself - Greenland's construction rules, tied to the fjord's UNESCO World Heritage status, keep buildings off that immediate shoreline - but it faces northwest onto Disko Bay, where the icebergs that calve from the fjord drift past on their way out to sea.
On a clear day you can make out Disko Island and the Nuussuaq peninsula, both more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) away. Both the town center and the Sermermiut walking trail into the icefjord area are within easy walking distance.
A Blue Building Shaped Like A V
The building is a pale blue, wood-clad structure standing out mostly in scale rather than style from the houses around it in this residential part of town.
It's a small, boutique-format hotel: the reception area is just inside the front door and opens straight into a cozy lounge, with the restaurant occupying the central point between the two wings of guest rooms.
Sealskin on the reception's wall
The decor throughout the hotel leans into Greenlandic history. Instead of iceberg photography, the hallways carry reproductions of paintings by the Danish artist Aage Gitz-Johannsen, who became well known enough in Greenland to earn the nickname Qalipaarsuaq, "the great painter."
There are also photographs of major figures from Danish-Greenlandic polar exploration, including Knud Rasmussen, the explorer and ethnologist who was born in Ilulissat. A framed sealskin hangs on the wall as well.
Restaurant Icefiord
The hotel's restaurant works almost entirely with Greenlandic ingredients: fish caught locally, reindeer, musk ox, and foraged herbs, prepared with a New Nordic sensibility rather than imported techniques or ingredients. There's a smokehouse on-site where the kitchen cures and smokes its own meat and fish, including bacon and salami made from musk ox.
The tasting menu has featured a cod ceviche with salsify chips, and reindeer filet with pickled beetroot and smoked potatoes. Sea urchin, gathered locally at low tide, shows up too, served with lemon cream.
Musk ox appears in several forms - tartare, pulled, filet - alongside a snow crab bisque with smoked scallops. Dessert includes a tuile with apple compote and angelica oil, a wild herb used fresh, pickled, or dried throughout the menu.
To finish, there's a Greenlandic spin on Irish coffee, flambéed with Grand Marnier, plus a house cocktail called the Kangia Spritz - blackberries standing in for blackcurrant in a Kir Royal. The wine list favors Sancerre and white Burgundy with the seafood, and Ribera del Duero or Rhône reds with the musk ox and reindeer.
The terrace extends the restaurant outdoors, looking straight out over Disko Bay. It's used for lighter food - a musk ox burger, snow crab caught off Disko Island, and traditional Danish smørrebrød built with Greenlandic ingredients - as well as drinks before or after dinner.
In summer, it hosts a weekly barbecue using locally sourced ingredients, and it's where most people end up watching for whales, since the water just off the hotel is known for drawing them close to shore.
Standard Room
Standard Room
The hotel has 36 rooms and apartments in total. The standard rooms all face Disko Bay, giving you a sea view and the shifting iceberg landscape regardless of room type - the idea being that this is a base to return to between excursions rather than a room to spend much time in.
Deluxe Explorer Room
Deluxe Explorer Room
Nineteen of the 36 units are Deluxe Explorer Rooms, located on the second floor with private balconies overlooking the bay and its icebergs.
The standout feature is a skylight positioned directly above the bed, which lets you watch the northern lights from under the covers in the darker months - or, in summer, look up at the midnight sun, with an electric blackout curtain to block it out if you'd rather sleep.
The rooms follow a fairly restrained Scandinavian look, with gray and black tones, black metal lamp shades, and wood furniture that keeps things from feeling cold. Tea service is loose-leaf Rooibos with an infuser rather than bagged tea.
Apartment
Apartment
Three hotel apartments sit about 50 meters (164 feet) from the main building, each with its own bedroom, living room, and kitchen - the largest accommodation type at the property and geared toward families or groups who want to cook some of their own meals, with breakfast still included as part of the stay.
Things To Do Around Ilulissat
The hotel arranges or books most of the activities in the area, working with local tour operators. On land, there's a guided walk to Sermermiut, the site of an Inuit settlement dating back roughly 4,400 years, sitting within the protected UNESCO zone at the edge of the icefjord - a fairly easy two-hour route that ends at a viewpoint over the fjord's 70-kilometer (43-mile) stretch inland, with coffee, tea, and a snack served at the top.
There's also the Yellow Trail hike, a roughly three-hour walk with iceberg views where the guide bakes waffles along the way, topped with whatever's in season - crowberries, arctic blueberries, or arctic harebell.
In winter, from mid-January through April, there's dogsledding with Greenlandic sled dogs, which are still used commercially for fishing and hunting around Ilulissat rather than being kept purely for tourism, and snowmobile tours through the backcountry.
By boat, options include a full-day trip to the Eqi glacier (Eqip Sermia), one of the most frequently calving glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere, and a shorter Icefiord cruise that gets close to the icebergs at the mouth of the fjord, with meals served on board for the longer trip.
For an aerial view, helicopter or small propeller planes fly over Sermeq Kujalleq, the glacier that produces most of the icebergs seen from town and one of the most active glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere, sometimes combined with a wider flightseeing route over meltwater lakes on the ice cap and the smaller settlement of Ilimanaq.
Whale Watching
From around mid-June to mid-September, the hotel can book you onto a dedicated whale safari by boat, on ice-safe vessels that cut their engines once whales are nearby, letting the animals approach closer than they would with the engine running. Humpback whales are the main sighting, and their tail markings work like a fingerprint - each one is distinct enough to identify individual whales.
You don't necessarily need to leave the hotel to see them, though. The stretch of water just outside the Ilulissat Icefjord draws whales in close to shore during summer, and sightings from the terrace and even from guest rooms aren't unusual - hence that chalkboard tally in the restaurant.
It's not a guarantee, since Greenland's weather and wildlife both follow their own schedule, but the hotel's whole layout - the terrace, the panoramic restaurant windows, the balconies - is oriented around giving you the best possible chance of catching one.
J. Sverdrupip Aqq. 10, Ilulissat 3952, Greenland
