Two islands few travelers get to experience.

You can easily spend time exploring either or both of these fascinating lands

Greenland

Greenlanders can't imagine a land more beautiful than Greenland. They may be right about that.

While travelling with Greenlanders we discovered that, like ourselves, they often stop to look at the scenery.

Most villages in Greenland have a well-worn path or even sets of steps that lead to a vantage point with the best view.

We are "packaging" some easy ways to get to Greenland. We've often sent travelers as side trips from Iceland and now that we've visited Greenland and talked to guides and outfitters we can explain the choices that our clients will be making in traveling there. (One of us [BV] built, and rebuilt, several Greenlandic kajaks last summer - but that is another story.) Here's photos and words on that story.

East Greenland. It's relatively easy to reach, it offers a glimpse of a culture far removed from the modern "busyness" world and very few people have seen and experienced landscapes like this.

If you have the inclination, and the time, you can also get over to the West Coast and see some traces of the Viking settlements from 1,000 years ago, as well as some very impressive scenery.

Here are outlines of the Iceland/Greenland tours.

Iceland

Iceland's people are shaped by the land, and many are only two or three generations off the farms. There is an underlying sense of continuity born of centuries of self-sufficiency. This is a land, settled in the 800's, where almost everyone, for all time, could read. Their heroes tend not to be politicians, but poets and warriors, often in one and the same person. They don't seem to name anything after politicians.

Iceland is about the size of Ohio. There are less than three hundred thousand Icelanders and they live around the edges of the island. Like the rest of the world more and more are settling in urban areas.

Icelanders have a history over a thousand years on this island in the North Atlantic that's been built in recent, (geologically recent), times by volcanoes. The volcanic ridge that splits Europe from America shows itself dramatically in many places across Iceland. Tradition says that the forests covering much of the land were cut down by the early Viking settlers. Sheep and volcanic fallout have, at least, stilted any forest's returning. With some husbandry and fences there are now a few forested places.