There are probably more glamorous ways to begin a luxurious Nordic adventure than boarding a crammed Ryanair flight at London Stansted, but that is exactly how this one began. My sister Nyeema and I were fairly certain that a few extra seats had been squeezed onto the aircraft since either of us had last flown with the airline, but there we were, two British sisters setting off on a girls-only holiday that would take us through Greenland, Iceland and Norway. It was a journey that moved from the deliberately non-luxurious to the seriously expensive, with an extraordinary amount packed in between. By the end, we decided we could describe each destination in just three words. For Nyeema, Greenland’s capital Nuuk was “remote, dystopian and mesmerising.” Mine were “sci-fi, raw and out-of-this-world.” Reykjavík? She chose “charming, colourful and vibrant.” I went for “fresh-fishy, stunning and commercial.” And Norway? “Picturesque, historic and rainy,” according to my sister. For me, it was “luxurious, fairytale and quality.” Those words turned out to say rather more about our journey than we realised, capturing not just the places themselves but the way we each experienced them, and the strange, wonderful, occasionally uncomfortable layers of tourism, politics and history that shaped the trip.
After a quick stopover in Copenhagen, we headed for Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, arriving to a spectacular bright daytime sky after midnight and a landscape that immediately felt unlike anywhere else on earth. There is undoubtedly something almost otherworldly about Greenland. The scale, the silence, the water and the mountains, punctuated by tiny splashes of colourful buildings, can make you feel as though you have landed on a film set, or perhaps the moon. Filmmakers have already discovered it. The series Borgen: Power & Glory, starring Sidse Babett Knudsen, placed Greenland at the heart of a story about resources, Denmark and competing global interests in the Arctic. Watching the real Greenland, those themes suddenly didn’t seem particularly fictional, because one man seemed to be everywhere we went: Donald Trump. We had travelled to Greenland expecting to talk about landscapes, ice, culture and Arctic tourism. Instead, the US President’s name followed us around Nuuk. Restaurants, shops, museums, conversations with people we met: everybody seemed to have an opinion. Some people we spoke to believed Trump’s repeated interest in taking control of Greenland had inadvertently done the country a favour. Whatever they thought of his politics, they liked the attention he had brought, and some thought it could ultimately benefit tourism. A few were surprisingly relaxed, even telling us they didn’t particularly care if America took over. Most of the people we encountered, however, hated the idea. What fascinated me was that a US president thousands of kilometres away had somehow become part of the everyday experience of travelling through Greenland. We met Alice Burton, a former head of press section at the US Embassy in Vienna, in our shared accommodation, and she would become a partial travel companion. She had been hearing similar things from locals. “Nuuk is the most quiet capital I’ve ever visited,” she told me. There are for sure few cars, little honking, hardly any sirens and remarkably few people on the streets. “A world in itself,” Alice reflected. Yet politically, Greenland now feels anything but isolated. Official tourism research estimated that just over 149,000 international tourists visited Greenland in 2024, with almost two-thirds arriving by cruise ship. Nuuk’s international airport is meanwhile transforming access to the capital. For a destination with a population of fewer than 60,000 people, those numbers really matter. What tourists don’t necessarily see is how strongly I sensed a “them and us” relationship between Greenlanders and the Danes. Along with Donald Trump, the divide surfaced in conversations with people we met unprompted, and in the way some Greenlanders spoke about Denmark, language, history and identity. These individuals are not a measure of wider public opinion, but the sense of separation was striking, especially in the museums we visited. Rather than presenting visitors with a sanitised Arctic idyll, Nuuk’s cultural institutions openly explore Greenland’s complicated relationship with Denmark. Alice, Nyeema and I were all particularly struck by Nuna, an exhibition at Nuuk Art Museum examining land, identity and Greenland’s relationship with outside powers. At its entrance was a message requiring little explanation: “Greenland is not for sale.” Talk to people and another Greenland begins to emerge, a society having its own conversation about identity, autonomy and Denmark while simultaneously confronting extraordinary new interest from the outside world. Climate change, military security, natural resources, Indigenous identity, tourism and the interests of global powers increasingly collide here. And yet everyday life carries on around the geopolitical noise. On the water, however, there are bright blue mini-icebergs, mountains rising directly from the waves, rocks, sky and sea stretching into the distance and an undeniable silence, exactly the Greenland one imagines. Perhaps “out of this world” wasn’t such an exaggeration after all.
Arriving in Reykjavík after Greenland felt like jumping several stages forward in the evolution of a tourism industry. If Greenland feels like a destination on the cusp of something, Iceland has had years to work out what international visitors want, and it shows. The statistics underline just how important tourism has become. Statistics Iceland recorded an estimated 10.16 million overnight stays in registered accommodation in 2025, up 9.1% in a year. Tourism directly accounted for 8.8% of Iceland’s GDP in 2025, while tourism consumption by domestic and international visitors reached almost ISK 914 billion, which equates to over 6.5 billion euros. Those are substantial numbers for a small island nation, and as a traveller, you can see the sophisticated industry that has grown around them. Reykjavík is charming and colourful but also extremely tourism-savvy. Excursions are offered everywhere, and so are restaurants, shops selling Icelandic designs, outdoor clothing galore, Viking paraphernalia and row upon row of traditional woollen jumpers. The latter look as though they are going to itch, and after my sister and I tried on a very wide variety of designs, we realised that they didn’t. They do, however, shed hair like a loveable dog. And then there was the food. Fish was a highlight: extraordinarily fresh cod, tasting unlike any cod that you will be served in the UK, despite it being renowned for fish and chips. There’s also smoked salmon, shrimp and warming soup served inside a bread bowl. For the more adventurous, menus can venture into horse, whale steak and slithers of smoked puffin. Iceland has become extremely good at turning what makes it distinctive into an experience visitors can easily access, but there is, however, one unavoidable issue: it is very expensive. But again, as in Greenland, there is no ignoring the disappearing glaciers, the pollution of the oceans and land, and the doom of climate change. For a country so dependent on both tourism and fishing, these aspects are difficult to ignore. And perhaps that is the contradiction at the heart of Iceland’s success. It has become supremely good at selling the experience of Iceland. But the thing that everybody has fundamentally travelled there for is something nobody has created: nature. Our own excursion beyond Reykjavík may have had us packed together like sardines, but once the city disappeared behind us it became increasingly difficult for us to complain. Iceland straddles the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. Fissures cut through the landscape, geothermal activity bubbles beneath it, and volcanoes, waterfalls and vast expanses of open land make it feel as though the planet is showing off. Hollywood clearly agrees. Game of Thrones turned Icelandic landscapes into territory north of “the Wall,” while Christopher Nolan transformed parts of the country into another planet for Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway. The Star Wars universe has also found a home within Iceland’s otherworldly scenery.
Bergen greeted us with torrential rain, which cleared the following morning. We wanted to travel from Bergen through Myrdal to Flåm, but there was one problem: the direct trains we wanted were all sold out. Instead, we found an alternative route from Bergen towards Myrdal via Voss, before joining the famous Flåm Railway. Mountains stretched beyond what the eye, or an iPhone camera, could properly absorb. Water cascaded from waterfalls and wild rivers, tiny settlements huddled beneath enormous peaks. The Flåm Railway runs for around 20 kilometres through spectacularly dramatic mountain scenery towards the fjord below and has become one of Norway’s best-known rail experiences. Hollywood has also exploited this country with good reason. Tom Cruise has repeatedly returned with the Mission Impossible franchise. Mission Impossible: Fallout features the spectacular clifftop finale at Preikestolen with Cruise and Henry Cavill, and in Dead Reckoning, Cruise launched a motorcycle from Helsetkopen. Daniel Craig’s final James Bond film, No Time to Die, also used Norwegian locations, as did the hit series Succession, featuring Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong. For Nyeema, Norway was “picturesque, historic and rainy,” and there was certainly plenty of all three. But for me, the luxury and quality were unmistakable. There is a fairytale quality to the landscape, the wooden wharf buildings of Bergen, the deep fjords, the tiny villages clinging to impossible slopes. Even in the rain, it felt beautifully crafted, as if nature and human settlement had somehow agreed to make everything look like a storybook. The rain itself became part of the atmosphere, making the mountains greener, the waterfalls fuller, and the eventual breaks in the clouds all the more dramatic. We were lucky enough to see the fjords in shifting light, and every turn of the train brought another gasp. It was easy to understand why so many filmmakers have chosen this country as a backdrop for epic, larger-than-life stories. It is also easy to see why travellers are willing to pay for it.
Norway is also expensive, but tourists don’t appear to be staying away. Norwegian commercial accommodation recorded 40.6 million guest nights in 2025, up 5.2% in a year. International visitors accounted for a record 14.2 million guest nights, an increase of 14%, and around three quarters of foreign guest nights came from European markets. Germany was the largest overseas market, followed by Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK and Denmark. Bergen itself is flourishing, with the wider region recording around three million commercial guest nights in 2024, 13.5% higher than in 2019. Eirik Gjøvåg Berge, Chief Communications Officer at Visit Bergen, told Euronews that it is important to distinguish between Norway’s reputation for high prices and what visitors are actually doing. He pointed out that the evidence does not suggest high costs are driving international travellers away. “In fact, favourable exchange rates for many international visitors, combined with Norway’s strong appeal as a nature and experience destination, have helped drive continued growth,” he said. Does quality justify the price? Hilde Berentsen, General Manager of Home Hotel Havnekontoret, seems to think so. “If you pay for a service then you can have a higher quality,” she told me. “If you always go for the cheapest thing, then you don’t have quality around you.” Berentsen has watched Bergen’s tourism industry develop since the hotel opened in 2006. One of its first celebrity guests was football legend Diego Maradona, who stayed with his team, and the hotel has subsequently attracted considerable publicity for its luxury suite, which became known as Bergen’s most expensive hotel room. More famous guests have since followed suit. “Everything cannot be for everybody,” she said, pointing to camping, caravans and cheaper accommodation as alternative ways of experiencing the country. According to Visit Bergen, tourism supports around 13,000 jobs and generates approximately more than 617 million euros in annual value creation. There is a confidence in Norway’s approach, a sense that they know exactly what they are offering and are not afraid to charge for it. And for all the complaints about prices, the crowds keep coming, drawn by something that no amount of money can really manufacture: raw, spectacular, unspoiled nature.
By the time my sister and I had reached the end of our journey, that decidedly non-luxurious flight out of Stansted seemed a very long way away. We had travelled through three countries united by extraordinary natural beauty but offering remarkably different experiences. There were no Mediterranean beaches, no sun loungers and frankly, not a great deal of sun on this holiday. Instead, there were fjords, mountains, volcanoes, waterfalls, tectonic plates, Viking jumpers, fresh fish, packed trains, unexpected friendships and Donald Trump. Three countries, three very different versions of northern tourism, and yet somehow they all felt connected, not just by geography but by a sense of being on the edge of something. Greenland is raw and politically charged, a place where the world’s attention is suddenly landing with all its weight. Iceland is the polished, commercially successful version, a country that has learned to package its otherworldly landscapes for global consumption while still trying to protect what makes them special. Norway is the confident, luxurious elder, comfortable in its own beauty and willing to charge a premium for it. We began this journey with no expectations, two sisters simply wanting to see something new. We ended it with three words for each location, but probably, they were nearly not enough. The memories that stayed with us were not just the postcard sights, though there were plenty of those. They were the conversations with strangers, the quiet moments on the water, the ridiculous shedding of Icelandic wool, the shared laughter on packed trains, the feeling of standing somewhere so vast and ancient that your own problems shrink to nothing. It was not a luxurious holiday in the traditional sense, at least not at the beginning. But by the end, it felt like the richest kind of adventure, one that reminded us why we travel in the first place: not just to see new places, but to see ourselves and each other differently. And if that means squeezing into a Ryanair seat at Stansted once in a while, so be it.
