Fjords of Greenland, Fires of Iceland

The world's northernmost town with a supermarket, a church and a pub still requires a rifle if you leave the settlement on foot, polar bears roam freely across Svalbard's tundra. Its permafrost is so complete that burial is not permitted, one of the more startling facts you'll pick up at the excellent Svalbard Museum, while the Global Seed Vault sits carved into a mountainside just outside town, a doomsday backup for the world's crops. Former mining infrastructure still threads the hillsides above a settlement now built as much around Arctic research as coal. As far north as ordinary life gets.

Svalbard's southernmost great fjord cuts deep between some of the archipelago's sharpest peaks, jagged summits with names like Hornsundtind rising straight from tidewater glaciers that calve regularly into the sound. A Polish polar research station, staffed year-round, monitors the same glaciers from a small outpost on the shore. Bearded seals haul out on drifting ice, and the fjord's near-total exposure to the open Barents Sea makes a calm transit here a genuine privilege of timing.

One of the most isolated volcanic islands on earth, Jan Mayen is dominated by Beerenberg, the world's northernmost active volcano, its glacier-capped cone rising sheer from the Arctic Ocean. Barely two dozen Norwegian meteorological and military personnel rotate through the island's single station, the only permanent human presence, while its cliffs hold vast colonies of seabirds undisturbed by any real tourism. Landings depend entirely on weather and swell. Few yachts of any size will ever put this island on an itinerary.

The largest fjord system on earth swallows icebergs the size of small buildings, calved from the glaciers that feed it and drifting for weeks through a maze of channels larger than some European countries. East Greenland's dramatic, near-vertical peaks rise directly from water that few ships of any size ever navigate. Polar bears and muskox roam the surrounding tundra, and the sheer scale of the place is almost impossible to process from the deck of anything smaller than a ship, until you are on one.

The largest fjord system on earth swallows icebergs the size of small buildings, calved from the glaciers that feed it and drifting for weeks through a maze of channels larger than some European countries. East Greenland's dramatic, near-vertical peaks rise directly from water that few ships of any size ever navigate. Polar bears and muskox roam the surrounding tundra, and the sheer scale of the place is almost impossible to process from the deck of anything smaller than a ship, until you are on one.

A rainbow-painted street leads from the harbor straight to a sky-blue church in this East Iceland fjord town, its wooden houses shipped over prefabricated from Norway during the herring boom of the early 1900s. Waterfalls thread down the mountainsides that box the fjord in on both sides, and the town's small but fierce arts scene, born of its long isolation each winter, fills old herring warehouses with galleries and studios. One of Iceland's prettiest, and least crowded, ports.

Once the herring capital of the North Atlantic, its harbor thick with boats and its streets running with silver scales during the boom years, Siglufjordur tells that whole story at the Herring Era Museum, one of Iceland's best. The fjord town, boxed in by near-vertical peaks and only linked to the rest of Iceland by tunnel in recent years, has quietly reinvented itself as a ski and hiking base. A slice of Icelandic industrial history in a strikingly beautiful setting.

The unofficial capital of the north sits at the head of Iceland's longest fjord, ringed by mountains that keep it improbably mild for its latitude. The world's northernmost botanical garden flourishes here against all odds, and a round at the Arctic Open golf tournament is played through the small hours under a sun that never sets. Whale-watching boats head out from the harbor into Eyjafjordur's rich feeding grounds, while the town's geothermal pool and easy, walkable streets make for a gentler pace than Reykjavik's. The north's warm welcome, almost literally.

The unofficial capital of the north sits at the head of Iceland's longest fjord, ringed by mountains that keep it improbably mild for its latitude. The world's northernmost botanical garden flourishes here against all odds, and a round at the Arctic Open golf tournament is played through the small hours under a sun that never sets. Whale-watching boats head out from the harbor into Eyjafjordur's rich feeding grounds, while the town's geothermal pool and easy, walkable streets make for a gentler pace than Reykjavik's. The north's warm welcome, almost literally.

The capital of the wild, sparsely populated Westfjords sits beneath table-top mountains so steep that avalanche barriers line the slopes above town. Its cluster of eighteenth-century timber buildings are among the oldest in Iceland, and a plate of fish stew at the harborside Tjoruhusid restaurant is something of a rite of passage. Beyond town, the roadless Hornstrandir Nature Reserve shelters one of the world's few protected populations of Arctic fox. Iceland at its most remote and unfiltered.

The capital of the wild, sparsely populated Westfjords sits beneath table-top mountains so steep that avalanche barriers line the slopes above town. Its cluster of eighteenth-century timber buildings are among the oldest in Iceland, and a plate of fish stew at the harborside Tjoruhusid restaurant is something of a rite of passage. Beyond town, the roadless Hornstrandir Nature Reserve shelters one of the world's few protected populations of Arctic fox. Iceland at its most remote and unfiltered.

The world's northernmost capital pairs Nordic design with a landscape that starts changing the moment you leave town. Climb the tower of Hallgrimskirkja for a view over rooftops the color of a paint chart, browse the harbor's design shops and the Harpa concert hall's glass facade, then head out on the Golden Circle to the rift valley at Thingvellir, the eruptive Geysir and the thundering Gullfoss falls. Back in town, a New Nordic tasting menu of Arctic char and skyr caps a day that can just as easily end in a geothermal soak. Small, cool and endlessly photogenic.