By Corey Sandler
A couple of observations, sitting at my keyboard in our cabin aboard ship as we sail off of Cape Farewell at the southern tip of Greenland:
Why do we call our planet “Earth” when it is 70 percent Water?
And why do we expect Nature to respect the best-laid plans of cruise lines and travelers?
I am most certainly not complaining. As I have previously opined, “When I am away, I do not want to feel at home.”
There are more and more cruise ships at sea every year: more than 300 ships from major lines right now, with 50 or 60 newbuilds under construction and due to enter service in the next few years.
There are many, many places to visit by sea, but our planet—whatever we call it—is not growing larger. In some places at high season there are more ships than places to dock and more visitors than locals to greet them.
Whenever we can, we prefer to make our own seasons, visiting earlier or later than expected. Sometimes the weather or the seas are less than perfect; it’s a trade we’re willing to make.
At the beginning of May we flew to the wondrous city of Montreal, one of our favorite places, to join Viking Neptune on a series of voyages that would explore the Saint Lawrence River valley, a bit of the Northeast coast of the United States, and then cross over the North Atlantic to the Labrador Sea for a visit to Greenland, then down and around and into the Irminger Sea and the Denmark Strait for a circumnavigation of Iceland.
The high latitudes of the North Atlantic are rarely fully calm, and there are times when they are extremely adventurous.
But so are we.
Arriving in Montreal, one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the world.
About half the population speaks French with an accent, while the remainder are a polyglot that would drive mad a United Nations interpreter.
Quebec City is determinedly French, the political and cultural capital of the province of Quebec, and possessed of some of the oldest and best-preserved remnants of New France. Here they speak one of the various local versions of French (including Quebecois, Magwa, and Joual). I can get along pretty well in Paris, but when I open my mouth in Quebec City they immediately know I am not from around here. Attache ta tuque!
From Quebec City we sailed up the Saguenay Fjord to the small town of Saguenay. It’s a pretty spot, the last significant non-indigenous settlement before the Canadian Arctic. In summer, the national park is a glory, and the locals put on La Fabuleuse Histoire d’un Royaume (The Fabulous History of a Kingdom), an amateur show that involves hundreds of local actors and technicians for an off-off-off-Broadway spectacular.
Alas, in May the national park trails are closed because it is “mud season”, as the winter’s snow and ice slowly gives up its hold. And La Fabuleuse Histoire opens its doors to tourists for July and August. So we had the town to ourselves; c’est tigidou as they say in Quebecois. Just fine by us.
We were next due to sail east and make a call at Gaspé at the tip of the peninsula on the southern coast of the Saint Lawrence. This is the place where Jacques Cartier took possession of New France on July 24, 1534.
He must have had much better weather than we experienced as we headed out of the river. It was much too rough to operate our tenders to shore.
It was a taste of things to come.
Heading down the Canadian Maritimes, we made a visit to Halifax in Nova Scotia, a handsome city with a rich history.
After Halifax we overnighted in Boston and transited the Cape Cod Canal.
The cruise ended in New York City after a triumphant midday procession up the Hudson River.
We left New York the next day and headed back north, making a return visit to Halifax. From there we were scheduled to make a call at the very remote, very obscure dot on the map called L’anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
Outlines of buildings and fragments of metal and pottery lead archeologists to declare the site as a Norse settlement from sometime around the year 1000. It is believed the settlement was intentionally temporary, perhaps as a rest and repair site for further explorations. Not all Norse people were Vikings, and not every last Viking was Norse.
A year ago, in July of 2024, I was on a cruise ship headed east from Europe and we were due to call at L’anse aux Meadows; before our arrival, a big storm came up and washed away the pier we would have used to bring guests ashore by tender.
They repaired the pier, but in May of 2025 it was once again too windy and the seas too rough for us to make a call.
And so Viking Neptune left the Maritimes, headed for Greenland. In Halifax, we had taken onboard two Danish ice pilots, highly specialized in navigation in this part of the world.
Big surprise…our planned calls at the Greenlandic settlements of Nanortalik and Qaqortoq, and our transit of Prins Christian Sound at the southeastern tip of Greenland were choc-a-bloc with icebergs, bergy bits, and growlers.
Captain Erik Saabaye, a very capable mariner, worked with the ice pilots to plot a new course.
In Greenland, there are two significant ocean currents running just offshore.
One heads down from the Arctic and often carries very large icebergs that have broken off glaciers and ice shelves. That stream works its way around the Canadian Maritimes and then continues in a southerly direction past Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Maine, and Massachusetts.
It is widely believed that ocean current conveyed a huge piece of ice into the path of RMS Titanic on the night of April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic between Halifax and Boston.
The other current is a finger of the Gulf Stream that carries warmer water north along the coast of Greenland about midway up the island’s west coast.
The action of those two currents, southbound offshore and northbound closer to the coast, often results in a wedge of relatively ice-free water for a few hundred miles. And so we plotted a new course up the west coast to Nuuk, the capital city and largest settlement of Greenland, home to about 20,000 people—more than a third of the entire population of 57,000 on the world’s largest island.
With icebergs to port and the rugged coast to starboard, we bounced and shimmied our way up the coast, and awoke on the morning of May 24 to a spectacular blue sky sunny day. Cold, yes: 31 degrees Fahrenheit. But we were happy to come ashore—Viking Cruises’ first-ever port call to Nuuk.
As I post this blog, we are back at sea, again threading the needle between icebergs and land. We’re headed for Iceland and on the next cruise we’ll sail way up north within the Arctic Circle to Svalbard, the last significant settlement before the geographic North Pole.
That’s our plan. Watch this space in July.
All text and photos by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. To obtain a copy of a photo please contact me through the form on this blog website.
