Sailing Expedition in scoresby sound, eastern greenland
- Matt McGee
- 15 hours ago
- 5 min read
I had been thinking about this trip for years.
Ever since I saw a photograph of a wooden schooner sailing in the fjords of Scoresby Sound, I knew I had to go. Ever since I saw a photograph of a wooden schooner sailing in the fjords of Scoresby Sound, I knew I had to go. At the time I didn’t even know it was Scoresby Sound — I had to search to find the location — but it felt like the next step. Not another Iceland trip. Scoresby Sound. Eastern Greenland. This was different.
So when the application to go on this expedition went out, I applied immediately. The expedition leaders Joe and Alex thought I looked good on paper so they invited me for a Zoom interview. Out of hundreds of people who applied, I was offered a spot on this expedition, which I happily accepted. Then the planning began.
Whenever I go to a new location, I try to find out as much about it as I can. I like to feel like I've already had a brief encounter with a place so that when I'm actually there I can make the most of it. What a place looks like, what would be cool to photograph, what is the weather like etc. The problem is, there wasn't a lot of information about Scoresby Sound to be found. Sure there's historical information about the early explorers like Robert Peary, but my usual go to sources like You Tube and social media were lacking. I was going to go into this essentially blind.
Fast forward seven months and I was sitting in the back of a taxi in Reykjavik after packing and re-packing in my hotel room, headed to the domestic airport to catch a flight to a remote airstrip in Greenland and meet the 38 strangers that would be my ship mates and fellow expeditioners. None of us had met, and that was by design.
Three hours later we’d be landing on a dirt strip called Constable Point — one of the most remote airports in the world — and boarding wooden schooners bound for Scoresby Sound.
But first, the plane.
There were no assigned seats. We just got on and sat wherever next to "what was your name again, or "hi I'm___." Three hours to figure out who we’d be living with in tight quarters for the next week.
The plane descended out of the sky and when the wheels hit the dirt, a round of applause erupted in the cabin. There was really no ceremony as far as customs and immigration was concerned, just collect your bags and toss them onto the trailer. We walked a mile down a dirt road toward the water with the schooners awaiting us in the distance.
When we got to the shoreline, zodiacs were there ready to take us to our respective vessels. When the names were called out for Hildur, I was on the list, and that would be my home for the next week.
They ferried us out to the schooners waiting in the bay — Hildur, Opal, and Byjur — wooden boats that looked like they belonged in another century, perhaps even in a pirate movie.
Joe and Alex, delivered a welcome speech that would set the tone for the week, one of reverence for the land we were about to experience, but also "let's get a little crazy and have fun." Next Alex produced a sabre used for opening champagne bottles. I'd never heard of this, but Alex wasted no time sliding the blade up the side of the bottle, the cork and the top of the bottle popped off and were sent flying in the air. Then another. And another.
People cheered. Glasses were passed around. A few glasses of champagne later and we were no longer strangers, we were fellow adventure seekers about to journey into the largest fjord system in the world. We hadn’t even left the bay yet.
The sails were raised, and we were set in motion just like sailors hundreds of years ago. The wooden ships creaked and groaned against the waves and I felt a true sense of adventure with the wind whipping the salt air around me and the boat gently rocking back and forth.
Now, I was told our first destination was a place called the Sun Glacier. Joe spoke of it as if surely I knew of the place - doesn't everyone... I'd never heard of it. Didn't know what it looked like. Nothing.
I'd seen glaciers before, but all my previous experiences did not prepare me for what our ship was approaching. This was a mountain, an enormous wall of ice and granite staring us in the face. As we got closer I could truly appreciate the magnitude of this glacier. The ships with their 60 foot masts were dwarfed by the towering massif of ice. It didn’t just feel dramatic. It felt ancient. Immovable. Monumental. Totally indifferent to us.
That was the moment it shifted for me.
This wasn’t just a photography trip.
This was something else.
A glacier like this seems alive. You can hear cracks that sound like lightning as the thousands-of-years-old-ice makes its way over the cliff at a pace that is, well, glacial. You feel the cold of no-telling-how-many tons of ice as it gives off a bitter blast of air. As I looked closer I could see multiple waterfalls of what I assumed were ice pellets raining down from above. It was indeed a spectacle. You could almost sense it breathing.
But standing there on the deck, watching the ice make its way slowly down to the water, I knew one thing.
I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Time to get to work.
The boat felt small in front of it, but not fragile. Just appropriately sized.
We drifted closer under sail.
As the glacier came into full view, something strange happened.
Photography disappeared.
For a few seconds at least.
It was overwhelming in a way that short-circuited thought. The scale. The color. The sound of ice shifting somewhere deep inside it.
And then something else kicked in.
Instinct.
Years of shooting in uncomfortable places — sharks underwater, wind tearing across Icelandic cliffs, hanging out of small planes over braided rivers — all of it had built something I didn’t fully understand until that moment. I had been building muscle memory and hard wiring neurons to see something as grand as this and capture the feeling in that moment. No debating which f stop, ISO, or aperture, just action. Skill like this builds slowly, and then all at once in the presence of one of nature's masterpieces like this glacier before me.
I didn’t think about composition.
I didn’t tell myself, “Put the bow in the frame so the viewer knows you’re on the ship.”
I just did it. It just poured out of me.
It was like being blindfolded for years, preparing for something you couldn’t see — and then the blindfold comes off and the Sun Glacier is right there in front of you.
Do your thing.
So I did.
And it was still the first day.
Comments