Mountain · Greenland
Gunnbjørn Fjeld
Gunnbjørn Fjeld is the highest mountain in Greenland and in the whole Arctic, a rock peak poking up through the ice like an island. Such a peak is called a nunatak.
Picture credit: Maxim Bouev (CC0) · NASA ICE (CC BY 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Gunnbjørn Fjeld?
Gunnbjørn Fjeld is part of the Watkins Range.
You will find it in: Greenland.
Summit: 68.919° N, 29.898° W
The story behind it
The mountain is named after Gunnbjörn Ulfsson, the Viking said to be the first European ever to catch sight of Greenland. It stands in the Watkins Range in east Greenland, a group of nunataks where several other peaks also pass 3 500 metres. The British explorer Gino Watkins came upon the range in 1930 and simply called it the New Mountains; the range now carries his name. The first people on the summit arrived on 16 August 1935: Augustine Courtauld, Jack Longland, Ebbe Munck and Lawrence Wager. Nobody lives anywhere near, so climbers today usually fly in from Iceland on a small plane fitted with skis. Gunnbjørn Fjeld is also one of the loneliest mountains on Earth, ninth in the world for the distance to any higher ground. On rare days an Arctic mirage can bend the light so that the volcano Snæfellsjökull in Iceland, some 530 kilometres away, becomes visible.
Find it on the globe
Gunnbjørn Fjeld is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How high is Gunnbjørn Fjeld?
It reaches 3 694 m, the highest point in Greenland and the highest peak in the Arctic. Because it rises straight out of the ice sheet, its prominence is the same number as its height.
Where is Gunnbjørn Fjeld?
In east Greenland, in the Watkins Range, about 60 kilometres inland from the Blosseville Coast in the Sermersooq municipality. The area is uninhabited and is normally reached by ski plane or helicopter.
What is a nunatak?
A nunatak is a rocky peak that sticks out through a glacier or an ice sheet, like an island in a white sea. The whole Watkins Range is made of them, which is why Gunnbjørn Fjeld looks as if the ice were carrying it.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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