Frozen in for nine months every year and located 800km from the next town, Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland, offers a fascinating glimpse at life at the edge of the world. In our ever-connected world, it's rare to experience true remoteness. It's also extraordinary to witness how people live in one of the Earth's most isolated places.
But earlier this year during a once-in-a-lifetime photographic expedition to the most remote inhabited community in the western hemisphere , I was able to do both these things. Ittoqqortoormiit (pronounced: it-ockor-tormit ) is a 370-person village of colourfully painted homes sandwiched between the world's largest national park to the north and the largest fjord system in the world to the south. There are no roads to Ittoqqortoormiit; the only way to get there is by helicopter, boat (in the summer), snowmobile or one of two weekly flights to Nerlerit Inaat airport , roughly 40km away: one from Iceland, and the other from West Greenland.
Located above the Arctic Circle at 70°N and roughly 800km from the nearest town, Ittoqqortoormiit's backyard is a frigid, untamed wilderness home to polar bears, musk oxen and millions of sea birds who nest on icebergs. Sea ice freezes the village in for nine months a year, but offers a lifeline to Ittoqqortoormiit's Inuit inhabitants, who travel it by dog sled to hunt. The village will celebrate its centenary in 2025, but in recent years, its population has been shrinking (35% since 2006, by some estimates ) as you.