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January 6, 2026 — 5:00am
Some people travel for a holiday. Some want a holiday that gives them new experiences. And some expect travel to be truly transformative.
I rarely put that last expectation on my trips because I know how easily it is to be disappointed when you have high hopes for something.
It’s like happiness. You shouldn’t look for it. It often just happens. And suddenly one day you realise, you’re happy.
Instead, my travels make tiny tweaks to my knowledge and understanding of the world and its people. Perhaps they tweak my personality too; I’ve had to learn to be far more patient, for instance. But I rarely come back changed in any meaningful way.
Until I went to Greenland.
The island is undergoing something of a tourist bonanza. A new airport in the capital, Nuuk, has increased direct international flights and cruise companies have started building Greenland into more itineraries.
Greenland has also been in the news for other reasons. It has a contentious relationship with Denmark, under which it is a self-governing territory.
Geopolitically there are many players, including the US, that wants Greenland for its vital airspace and to access its petroleum and rare minerals, which are being revealed as its ice melts due to global warming.
According to NASA scientists, Greenland’s outlet glaciers are melting six or seven times faster today than they were 25 years ago.
Much of the thrill in a visit to Greenland is viewing the spectacular icebergs that have broken off the glaciers, notably in tourist hot spots like Ilulissat in the south. But for Greenlanders, the lost ice is threatening their very existence.
And that is unspeakably sad. Because the way Greenlanders live is a lesson to all of us.
It was my immense privilege this year to travel to Greenland’s far north with HX Expeditions on their ship Roald Amundsen, travelling as far as Siorapaluk, Greenland’s northernmost inhabited settlement and the world’s most northerly Inuit community, population 34.
Onboard with us were Greenlanders from different settlements, including HX’s cultural ambassador Aleqatsiaq Peary, who is a hunter, and who facilitated our visits to the communities, which included home visits and demonstrations of skinning seals (blubber-tasting optional).
What I discovered was a deeply poetic people who still live the life of their ancestors and choose to do so. That means long winters hunting seal, walrus and polar bear on the ice and using every part of the animal for food, tools and clothing, as Greenland’s harsh environment provides little other sustenance.
While the supermarkets sell sneakers and fleece pants, the hunters prefer to wear polar bear and other skins on the ice, as only these truly protect against the frigid environment. The hunters live for weeks on end in small tents, warmed by their sled dogs.
They have snowmobiles and other modern devices but their hand-hewn weapons, mostly made from the bones of animals they hunt, are the trustiest.
With so few people, communities are close-knit and family is priority. The homes are simple, warm, brightly painted on the outside and cosy inside. Family portraits cover the walls.
It’s easy to romanticise people who live lives that seem much less complicated than our own. Like every society, Greenlanders have social problems, including high rates of depression, ongoing trauma from colonisation and existential anxiety.
A current global fringe political movement towards “abundance” calls for more of everything – housing, energy supply, infrastructure and so on. Counter to this, there’s a movement proposing “sufficiency” – take only what you need.
The Greenlanders offer the best examples of sufficiency.
They’re happy in a world that seems impossibly harsh to someone from the West. They use everything nature makes available and little more.
I don’t think for a moment that I could live a long dark winter their way, though the simplicity seems appealing.
But when I return home, I feel even more strongly that our society puts too much emphasis on acquiring stuff and status. We buy much more than we need, and we don’t appreciate enough the things we do have. Our society isn’t getting happier through material prosperity.
Seeing that sufficiency is possible for human beings was uplifting. I needed to be reminded of that. A lot of the things I was worrying about suddenly seemed trivial in the face of what Greenlanders contentedly endured.
Wishing everyone some similar travel transformations in 2026.
The writer was the guest of HX Expeditions. See www.travelhx.com/en-au/
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