07-11-2026 Cruising Through Prince Christian Sound

Sailing the Wild Coast of Greenland as we leave Nanortalik

There are moments when a landscape is so ancient that it seems to erase the modern world.

As Viking Neptune slipped into Prince Christian Sound, I found myself stepping back into the Pleistocene. Around us rose impossibly immense mountains, every surface polished and rounded by glaciers that had carved their way through this valley for countless millennia. Water was everywhere. Hundreds of waterfalls spilled down dark rock faces, glaciers clung to high cirques, and icebergs drifted silently past the ship.

Icebergs along the coast of Greenland

Yet none of this was expected.

Sitting quietly back at home now at my desk, the house cool and comfortable against Oregon's triple-digit summer heat, I find myself remembering. Outside, the sky is an impossible blue, unmarked by smoke for the moment. It is beautiful... but not quite as beautiful as the astonishing blue that glowed deep within the base of a floating iceberg off the wild coast of Greenland.

One of the greatest gifts of travel is still being surprised.

This was a journey I had researched thoroughly. I had studied maps, traced our route, and read everything I could find about the places we would visit. Yet nowhere…not once…had I come across a place called Prince Christian Sound.

So it was a thrill when I began hearing the words almost whispered around the ship.

"It doesn't happen often..."

"We never know until the last minute..."

"We won't know until we get there..."

See the little birds lined up on the iceberg?  Erin thought they might be kittewakes

As we sailed away from Nanortalik, Mo and I settled into our favorite seats in the Explorer Lounge toward the center of the room with full view of the huge windows. If we were fortunate enough to enter the Sound, this was where we wanted to be.

There was little announcement at first, but it hardly mattered. We were already captivated by the magical shapes of the icebergs drifting beside us. Greenland's rugged southern coastline slipped slowly past while the room itself grew unusually quiet. Conversations softened into whispers, broken only by an occasional gasp as another breathtaking iceberg came into view. I noticed one crowned with a line of tiny black-and-white birds. My photograph proved too grainy to identify them later, but for a moment they seemed like tiny sentinels perched atop floating mountains of ice.

That is th true color of that submerged portion of the iceberg

The icebergs became larger. Bluer. The cliffs rose steeper on either side until they seemed almost close enough to touch as the captain guided the ship through graceful turns that felt almost impossible for a vessel of this size.

Then came the announcement.

We were there.

Close to the entrance of Prince Christian Sound

The captain explained that passage through Prince Christian Sound is never taken for granted. Before entering, permission is granted only after satellite monitoring confirms that drifting icebergs leave a safe route. Even then, specially trained Greenland ice pilots come aboard to guide ships through these narrow waters.

Our captain navigates the narrow turns into the Sound

Yet even those reminders of modern technology quickly faded before the overwhelming age of the landscape.

As we glided silently among the glaciers and icebergs, I felt as though we had slipped backward a hundred thousand years. It was easy to imagine a woolly mammoth appearing on a distant slope or a cave bear emerging from the shadows of the cliffs. The modern world simply disappeared.

For me, the experience carried an even deeper layer of wonder.

During my years as a soil scientist, I spent decades studying landscapes shaped by the great Ice Ages. Across the western United States I had walked through U-shaped valleys, recognized glacial polish on granite, traced moraines, and understood how immense rivers of ice had sculpted mountains long before humans arrived. Those ancient glaciers had vanished thousands of years ago, leaving only their fingerprints behind.

Here, I was seeing the sculptor itself.

Glacial ice surrounded us. Towering valley walls, cirques still holding glaciers, waterfalls plunging from hanging valleys, and blue icebergs freshly released from the ice sheet suddenly transformed everything I had spent a lifetime studying. The landscapes I knew so well at home became vividly alive.

Then, delightfully, civilization intruded.

Somehow, in the middle of this Pleistocene world, tea time arrived with the quiet grace of Viking's remarkable crew. I decided such a moment deserved an espresso martini. Tiny tea sandwiches, delicate pastries, and elegant service against a backdrop of glaciers, waterfalls, thousand-foot cliffs, and floating icebergs felt wonderfully surreal. The contrast made me smile.

I loved every single minute.

I learned to press my camera lens against the window to eliminate the raindrops on the glass. I hurried from one side of the ship to the other just in time to watch a glacier calve into the sea. Everywhere I looked was another scene that hardly seemed real.

Sliding silently through Prince Christian Sound became one of the unforgettable moments of our entire voyage. It was unexpected. Magnificent. Unlike anything I have experienced in Alaska, the Canadian Rockies, or the Sierra Nevada.

Greenland. From the comfort of a ship. In the middle of an Ice Age.

With an espresso martini and tiny tea sandwiches.

Simply breathtaking.