#42
A quieter way to travel: the case for an Expedition Micro Cruise in East Greenland

A number of our guests have written to us this year asking a version of the same question: is this the right year to be planning an Arctic trip, and if so, why East Greenland?

This is our answer. Five structural facts about what an East Greenland micro expedition actually is, why we think it sits apart from most international travel right now, and how we'd think about it if a friend asked. Randy Hanna and Dean Tatooles, the Secret Atlas photographers leading and contributing to our 2026 East Greenland season, have helped us shape it.

Before we begin, this is what an East Greenland Expedition Micro Cruise feels like.

Filmed in 2025 over multiple voyages through the fjords of East Greenland, the settlement of Ittoqqortoormiit, and the quiet hours on deck under the aurora, this film follows what a twelve-guest expedition makes possible in one of the most remote corners of the Arctic.

The film is the place itself. The five sections that follow are the case.

1. The group is 12 guests. That changes everything.

A Secret Atlas Expedition Micro Cruise in East Greenland carries 12 guests, two polar guides, and a crew of eight.

That number isn't a marketing figure. It's the size at which your time is spent creating moments — not loading, sequencing, briefing, recalling, or waiting for the next group. It's the size at which the ship can hold position in a fjord without coordinating with anyone else. It's the size at which a visit to Ittoqqortoormiit, the only town in the northeast of Greenland, doesn't overwhelm the community receiving it.

Randy Hanna, who has led photography expeditions in the polar regions for more than thirty years, put it this way when he joined the Secret Atlas team:

The same structural facts that make a Expedition Micro Cruise responsible in a sustainability sense make it safer in a personal sense. Smaller groups have smaller exposure to almost everything.

The handover matters because of what sits behind it. Secret Atlas is a small company, and our guest services team is reachable from the moment you start preparing for the trip. Questions about kit. A change in flight times. A passport you misplaced the week before departure. There is a real person at the other end of the phone or the chat — usually the same person each time — and they are accompanying you from home, through Reykjavík, and onto the ice.

That's the entire transit. No connections through major hubs. No transit through cities where you might not want to linger. The complexity is logistical, not geopolitical — and the logistics are ours, not yours.

3. Ittoqqortoormiit is one of the most isolated inhabited places in the Arctic — and the community welcomes visitors travelling at the right scale.

The town of Ittoqqortoormiit, located at the entrance to iceberg-strewn Scoresbysund, is the only permanent settlement on the entire east coast of Greenland. Population around 345. Supplies such as basic food and goods arrive twice a year by ship. It is geographically one of the most isolated permanently inhabited places in the Arctic.

The community hunts, fishes, and selectively receives visitors. The scale of tourism here is measured in dozens per season, not thousands. A micro expedition with 12 guests doesn't overwhelm Ittoqqortoormiit; it’s a visit at a scale the community can absorb and engage with.

This is the difference between a destination receiving you and a destination tolerating you. East Greenland's isolation is what makes a genuine cultural exchange possible.

The logistics make any other kind impossible.

4. The east coast is structurally separate from the west coast — and the west coast is where the tourism volume is.

This is the fact most travellers don't know, and it changes the calculation.

Greenland's tourism is concentrated almost entirely on the west coast: Nuuk, Ilulissat, the cruise ports facing Canada. The east coast — facing Iceland and the open North Atlantic — sees a small fraction of those numbers. Between the two coasts sits the Greenland ice sheet, roughly the size of Mexico and impassable. There is no road. There is no domestic flight connecting east to west. They are functionally separate destinations.

What this means in 2026: when you travel to East Greenland, you are travelling to a coast that has been structurally insulated from mass tourism — not by policy, but by geography. The pressures that have shaped the visitor experience on the west coast simply haven't reached the east. The fjords are quieter. The communities are smaller. The relationship with visitors is different.

Dean Tatooles, a working polar photographer who has photographed both poles across two decades, sees a similarity between Antarctic magnificence and that of Greenland: 

Randy's note from his own profile sits alongside Dean's. Asked about his most transformative travel experience, Randy's answer is this:

What we'd say if a friend asked

If a friend asked us whether East Greenland made sense for 2026 — the question we've been getting all year — this is what we'd say:

The group is 12. The route is calm. The community welcomes this scale. The coast is geographically separate from the rest of the country's tourism. The landscape is extraordinary. Each fact stands on its own. Together, they make a case that doesn't depend on what anyone else in the world is doing this year.

The 2026 East Greenland season runs from late July to mid-September.

The following Secret Atlas voyages cover the window: