A broad slab of glacial ice drifts on the dark water deep in Nuup Kangerlua on an August day, about 25 km up the fjord from Nuuk.

A veiled September morning sun breaks through the clouds over snow-dusted peaks near the entrance to Kobbefjord, known in Greenlandic as Kangerluarsunnguaq, its light scattered across the fjord waters south of Nuuk.

A boat's foaming wake trails across the still, grey waters of Nuup Kangerlua, some 20 km inland from Nuuk, where steep, snow-streaked mountains rise straight from the fjord under a heavy, overcast summer sky.