Ilulissat

Ilulissat

Ilulissat is the seat and largest town in the municipality of Avannaata in West Greenland, some 350 km north of the Arctic Circle. The town was founded as a trading post in 1741 by Jacob Severin's company and named in his honor. At the end of the 18th century, the Zion Church was built in the town, which at the time was the largest man-made structure in Greenland. After Nuuk and Sisimiut, it is the third largest town in Greenland. The town has almost as many sled dogs as people. Directly translated, Ilulissat means the Icebergs in Kalaallisut. The neighboring Ilulissat Icefjord is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which has made the town Greenland's number one tourist destination, and nowadays tourism is its main industry. The Ilulissat Icefjord, located 250 km north of the Arctic Circle, runs 40 km west of the Greenland ice sheet into Disko Bay, south of the town of Ilulissat. Because of the importance of the fast-moving Jakobshavn Glacier, the Icefjord has an important role to play in shaping current scientific understanding of anthropogenic climate change. The Jakobshavn Glacier is flowing at a speed of 20-35 meters per day, which results in about 20 billion tons of icebergs falling in and out of the fjord every year. Icebergs that break off the glacier are often so huge, sometimes up to a kilometer high, that they are too big to float down the fjord and remain stuck at the bottom of shallow areas, occasionally for years, until the force of the glacier and icebergs higher up in the fjord break them up.