Starting Date: May 14, 1999
Greenland and Iceland although neighbours are quite different. Greenland is enormous in comparison to Iceland and was a largely unchartered territory when Arctic Trucks was approached by Lasse Rungholm from Denmark to drive across, in memorial of Fridtjof Nansen crossing of Greenland. Backed up by KNI AS Greenland, we began by assembling a team, analyzing the Greenland glacier; the biggest challenge was finding a route onto and off the glacier.
Nothing like this had ever been attempted with cars. We had two vehicles from the Antarctica project and to carry all the equipment and people including a crew from Danish Television, we needed to build a 3rd vehicle for this project.
As expected, the biggest challenge this expedition faced was to find a route from the landing side of Godthabsfjord to the glacier and then finding a route up the “ice wall” that faced them. Once on the glacier the going was good until having to navigate through large crevasse areas as the team navigated off the glacier.
Upon arriving back to Isortoq, planned to be the end point of the expedition, the ship that was supposed to transport the vehicles back to Iceland could not make it into the frozen harbor. The only logical choice was to drive back across the ice cap where the harbors are ice-free all year. The return journey was much faster and easier as the route had been set.
Time: May 14th – 23rd 1999
Route: From Nuuk, off the icecap to Isortoq total 800 km. Combined driving distance 4.400km
Participants: Freyr Jónsson, Arngrímur Hermannsson, Hallgrímur Arngrímsson, Árni Árnason, Valdimar Guðmundsson, Ingimundur Þorsteinsson from Arctic Trucks.
Cars: Land Cruiser 80 AT44
Here you can read an article about the expedition in The Four Wheeler by Michael Rudd.
