This is only true of the area around the airport. Even his pictures further into the article show how misleading this description is. I was actually very surprised how little snow/ice there was. Now when I think of Greenland, I think of something similar to [1].
Of course, in the winter, it's a completely different story (I was there in July). But he was there during the warm period as well (as is obvious from his photos).
> The city itself sits in a landscape so dramatically inhospitable it makes the surface of Mars look cozy.
If you look at a map, you will notice that Nuuk is at the same latitude as Reykjavik. There's a common meme about Iceland being green and Greenland being icy, and that's definitely true if you compare inland or northern Greenland with Iceland during summer (during winter, both are icy and dark), but hiking around Nuuk is a very "green" experience. Yes, there's a ton of mosquitoes, but nature itself is very inviting. I did not get any of the "inhospitable" vibes he mentions.
> But again even riding the bus around it is impossible to escape the feeling that this is a fundamentally hostile to human life place. The sun is bright and during the summer its pretty hot, with my skin feeling like it was starting the burn pretty much the second it was exposed to the light. It's hard to even dress for, with layers of sunscreen, bug spray and then something warm on top if you suddenly got cold.
This whole section is just overblown BS.
All in all, I enjoyed it a lot. Compared to Iceland, it's definitely a lot less "user friendly" and you need to prepare better, but I have never been to a place that is less affected by humans, and in our age, that is something worth experiencing.
[1] https://truewindhealingtravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08...
> This is only true of the area around the airport. Even his pictures further into the article show how misleading this description is.
At least as far as trees go, Greenland is reasonably famously lacking in trees (if you are the kind of person who cares about such things). All chopped down by the Vikings and only now are a few sections of forest being regrown. Iceland is basically the same.
A few links:
- https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/country/GRL/. "In 2020, Greenland had 0.00 ha of natural forest"
- https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/14notoe/the_prog...
