Northeast Greenland National Park | Exploring the World's Largest Protected Wilderness

Northeast Greenland National Park is a land of extremes — vast, silent, and overwhelmingly wild. Covering over 972,000 square kilometres, it is the largest national park in the world, a sanctuary of towering fjords, ancient glaciers, and fragile tundra ecosystems. Here, nature unfolds on a scale few places on Earth can match.

Yet despite its enormity, the park’s true power lies in its silence, its fragility, and the lessons it offers about resilience — both of the land and the Indigenous cultures who’ve called it home for millennia.

How big is Northeast Greenland National Park?

How big exactly is 972,000 square kilometres? Big enough to swallow entire countries. The Park is large enough to fit around 100 Yellowstone National Parks and is roughly the size of France and Spain combined. 

Being the northernmost National Park in the world, it covers the entire north-eastern quarter of Greenland. The Greenland Ice Sheet covers around 80% of the Park’s area. Created in 1974 and designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve just three years later, this park isn’t just a sanctuary — it’s a scale of wilderness that’s hard to grasp.

Regions of the park

Northeast Greenland National Park spans the island’s entire northeastern corner, bordered by the Avannaata municipality to the west and Sermersooq to the south. Its coastline is long, jagged, and wild — carved by some of the Arctic’s most spectacular fjord systems.

While much of the park is dominated by ice and high plateaus, several key ice-free regions support unique landscapes and wildlife. These include Peary Land in the far north, Jameson Land in the southeast, and the narrow coastal belt where Arctic tundra meets the sea.

Rugged mountain ranges like the Roosevelt Range, Stauning Alps, and Halle Range rise near the coast, framing deep fjords such as Scoresbysund, Kong Oscar Fjord, and Kejser Franz Joseph Fjord. Glaciers flow from the interior toward the ocean, including the fast-moving Northeast Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS) and frequently calving glaciers like The Gully, Sefstrøm, and Hamberg Glacier.

Scoresbysund: The world’s largest fjord system

Scoresbysund, or Scoresby Sund, forms the southeastern boundary of Northeast Greenland National Park — and stands as one of the most awe-inspiring natural features in the Arctic. Stretching across 38,000 square kilometres, Scoresbysund is the planet’s largest fjord system, with branching waterways that reach deep into Greenland’s mountainous interior. 

Despite its remote location, Scoresbysund is the most accessible part of the park for expedition travellers. The nearby Inuit settlement of Ittoqqortoormiit, perched near the fjord’s mouth, offers the only permanent human presence in the region. Most visitors arrive by ice-strengthened ship during the brief Arctic summer, exploring this landscape of ice and stone under the midnight sun.

Scoresbysund is also a hotspot for Greenland wildlife. Musk oxen graze along the tundra slopes, Arctic foxes dart between rocks, and bird cliffs host nesting kittiwakes, fulmars, and little auks. In the fjord’s deep waters, visitors may glimpse narwhals, belugas, or even the elusive bowhead whale, which relies on the region’s seasonal polynyas for open water access.

Geologically, the fjord system is a showcase of Earth's deep time — with exposed basalt cliffs, ancient gneiss formations, and sedimentary layers that preserve traces of long-extinct ecosystems. For scientists, photographers, and explorers alike, Scoresbysund offers one of the most breathtaking and revealing windows into Greenland’s eastern wilderness.

Scattered across Northeast Greenland National Park are numerous sites of geological, historical, or ecological significance — many of which are accessible only by expedition vessel and visited by a fortunate few. These places offer glimpses into the park’s human history, unique geology, and vibrant yet fragile ecosystems.

Historic Outposts and Cultural Traces

Antarctic Havn

Antarctic Havn is a landing site in a natural harbour that was also a Norwegian hunting station in the 1930s. The remains of the older station are still seen lying around. A memorial to Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad also stands close to the building.

Holm Bugt

Holm Bugt is a picturesque bay with a sandy beach in the Kong Oscar Fjord area. It has an old trapper's cabin and some archaeological remains of Thule culture.

Glacier-Studded Fjords and Peaks

Wildlife of Greenland National Park

Despite its harsh climate and extreme isolation, Northeast Greenland National Park is home to a remarkable diversity of wildlife. These remote ecosystems remain largely undisturbed, providing refuge for iconic Arctic species and a critical stronghold for Greenland’s terrestrial and marine life.

Geology and legacy of the Lauge Koch

Beneath the ice and tundra of Northeast Greenland lies one of the oldest and most revealing geological records on the planet. The park showcases a timeline stretching back nearly 4 billion years, with ancient gneissic rocks exposed in its interior and fjord systems — some of them among the oldest formations ever found on Earth.

Layered on top of this ancient bedrock are younger sedimentary rocks, many of which date back to the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. These layers preserve a rich fossil record, including marine invertebrates, plant imprints, and even vertebrate remains in areas like Jameson Land. The result is a rare, nearly continuous window into Earth's geologic evolution, from the early formation of the continents to the rise of complex life.

Much of what we know about this landscape comes from the work of Lauge Koch, a Danish geologist and Arctic explorer whose career spanned from the 1920s to the 1950s. Through extensive mapping expeditions — often under brutal conditions — Koch helped chart the topography and rock formations of East Greenland with an unmatched level of detail for the time. His surveys laid the foundation for modern geological understanding of the region and produced some of the first accurate topographic maps of the Arctic.

To this day, geologists continue to build on Koch’s legacy. The park remains a focus for research on everything from plate tectonics and glacial history to the potential for rare earth mineral deposits.

Human history in the park: Inuit presence and cultural legacy

While Northeast Greenland National Park is almost entirely uninhabited today, archaeological discoveries reveal that it has been part of human life and movement for thousands of years. Sites in areas like Peary Land and Deltaterrasserne preserve the remnants of Paleo-Inuit migrations, including ancient hunting tools, tent rings, and boat frames — signs of a culture that adapted ingeniously to the Arctic’s unforgiving extremes.

These early traces connect the park to the broader story of Greenland’s Indigenous peoples. Skills honed over millennia — from hunting and navigation to clothing and shelter — remain essential for survival in the high Arctic and continue to shape life in nearby communities like Ittoqqortoormiit.

The Greenlandic-Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen helped preserve this cultural knowledge. Through his Thule Expeditions in the early 20th century, Rasmussen recorded oral histories, spiritual beliefs, and practical traditions from Inuit communities across the Arctic, many of whom had ancestral links to Northeast Greenland. His work offers a rare window into how people not only survived in the region, but thrived through close relationships with land, sea, and ice.

Greenland’s minerals and the protected status of the National Park

Greenland has attracted increasing global interest in recent years for its strategic mineral resources, including rare earth elements, zinc, copper, and hydrocarbons. As global demand grows for critical minerals used in clean energy, defense, and electronics, Greenland’s largely untapped reserves have drawn attention from major powers — including past proposals from the United States to increase political influence in the region.

While most active exploration occurs in southern and western Greenland, parts of the northeastern region — including Jameson Land and Citronen Fjord in Peary Land — contain known deposits of zinc, lead, and other industrial minerals. The Citronen project, in particular, represents one of the northernmost base metal deposits on Earth.

However, much of this mineral-rich terrain falls within the boundaries of Northeast Greenland National Park — the largest protected area in the world. As a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, the park is governed by strict environmental regulations, and any commercial exploitation is subject to rigorous assessments, if permitted at all.

For now, this region remains a rare example of Arctic territory where scientific research and environmental protection take priority over resource development — offering a case study in how to balance national interests with ecological preservation in a changing geopolitical climate.

Accessing Northeast Greenland National Park

Access to Northeast Greenland National Park is extremely limited due to its size, isolation, and lack of infrastructure. There are no roads, harbours, or settlements within the park’s interior, and the region remains ice-covered or inaccessible for most of the year.

 For scientific expeditions, small aircraft and helicopter support are occasionally used to reach inland research stations during summer, using gravel airstrips such as the one at Constable Point (Nerlerit Inaat) in Jameson Land — the closest public airfield to the park.

For most travellers, the park is accessed via ice-strengthened expedition vessels during the short Arctic summer, when sea ice conditions allow safe navigation. While some ships depart directly from Iceland, Secret Atlas offers a faster route via charter flights to Constable Point (Nerlerit Inaat) in Jameson Land — the closest public airfield to the park. From there, guests board the ship and begin their voyage into the remote fjords of Northeast Greenland.

Visits are strictly regulated. The park is classified as a ‘remote part of Greenland’, and entry requires a permit from the Greenland government. All expeditions must adhere to environmental guidelines and travel with experienced guides familiar with local conditions.

While reaching the park is a challenge, the reward is profound: access to one of the last truly wild regions on Earth, where landscapes remain unmarked by roads, buildings, or modern infrastructure — and the journey is part of the experience.

When to visit

The best time to visit the world’s largest National Park is during the Arctic summer, between the months of late June and early September. The summers are warmer, and the 24-hour daylight makes it the ideal time for exploration. This is also the period when the Arctic wildlife, migratory birds and whales remain the most active. 

By late September, the first signs of sea ice begin to return — transforming the landscape into a shifting mosaic of water, light, and frost. Days grow shorter, sunsets stretch longer, and the Northern Lights may begin to dance across the night sky. While conditions can become more challenging for navigation, this time of year offers a uniquely dramatic and photogenic Arctic experience — quieter, colder, and full of contrast.