The Ecology of Greenland's Karupelv Valley

Every year a team from GREA (Groupe de Recherche en Ecologie Arctique) travels to the Karupelv Valley in East Greenland to monitor the area's ecology. This year was their 38th expedition to East Greenland. For several years they have been tracking the lemming population. Some snowy owls were also tagged. Big thank you to Roland Montagne for donating to the group and having me included on their cover mailing list. Covers from GREA always include an information page detailing the activities recent expedition.

This cover was postmarked in Tasiilaq on Greenland's eastern coast, 750km southwest of Karupelv valley. The stamp on the left was issued for the 2026 Boston stamp exhibition and it commemorates Thor Solberg's 1935 flight from the US to Norway via Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland. And the 2026 stamp on the right is one of a pair featuring native plants. The plant illustrated on this stamp is an Arctic Felwort.

Karupeluv Valley Ecological Field Project, Greenland

Sent from the southeastern Greenland town of Tasiilaq by Dr. Benoît Sittler (thanks to Roland Montagne) who was project leader for the GREA (Groupe de Recherche en Ecologie Arctique) Karupelv Expedition of 2025. The expedition takes place every year in the Karupelv valley in East Greenland to study and monitor the ecology of the area.

ESA Space Mission Hugginn

On August 26th 2023, Danish ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen was part of a crew launched from Kennedy Space Center to the ISS. His six month mission, named Huginn after one of Norse god Odin’s ravens, will include a range of scientific experiments involving virtual reality, sleep and climate science.

Now that I look at it, I think August 27th would have been a better date for the postmark as that was the day the crew orbiter docked with the ISS. A second cover with a postmark from the space center would have been nice too. 

The envelope was used by Tusass Greenland for their Hugginn stamp sheet. Posta Faroe Islands put out an identical stamp with an identical FDC envelope except the text at the bottom was in Faroese instead of Greenlandic.

GREA Karupelv Valley Expedition 2022/23

Sent from members of the GREA (Groupe de Recherche en Ecologie Arctique) Karupelv Expedition of 2022. This was their 35th expedition to the Karupelv valley in East Greenland to study and monitor the ecology of the area. 

This was posted from the remote eastern Greenland community of Ittoqqortoormiit. To help fund their missions, GREA produce covers and for a fee will have them sent to you from the expedition. The stamps, clockwise from top left are Europa 2022, a 2020 School Savings stamp, 1978 Centenary of the Scientific Research Commission, and Queen Margrethe II from 1985.

Ilulissat, Greenland

Ilulissat is a town on the west Greenland coast, 250km north of the Arctic Circle. It sits at the mouth of the UNESCO recognized Ilulissat Icefjord where the Ilulissat glacier sheds massive icebergs into Disco Bay. It is the most visited tourist destination in Greenland.

This cover got beaten up a bit along the way. Suffered some water damage somewhere. The two stamps on the right are the third issue (2022) in the Greenlandic Feature Films stamp series. This time the stamps feature the Greenlandic films Nuummioq and Inuk. And on the left is a Queen Margrethe definitive from 2013.

Used stamps from Greenland

It has been a few years since I last purchased stamps from Greenland. They used to come from their philatelic office in Tasiilaq and one of the nice things about that was getting Greenland stamps on the package. Unfortunately their philatelic services are now based in Denmark. So no more Greenland  stamps and postmarks on orders.

My recent order of stamps from Greenland came in a plain cardboard envelope, actually mailed from Germany. No stamps on the cover. But knowing that collectors appreciate getting Greenlandic stamps on their envelopes they included this little packet of used stamps with my order and the card inside explained why they were included. 

It's a nice gesture. But not the same. I would rather have my orders mailed to me from Greenland, even if it takes a little longer. 

Greenland - GREA ECOPOLARIS

ECOPOLARIS is a GREA (Groupe de Recherche en Ecologie Arctique) expedition to study Arctic ecosystems. GREA have been conduction Arctic expeditions since the 1970's. To help fund their missions they produce envelopes like this one and for a fee will have them sent to you from the expedition, decorated with signatures of expedition members.

Greenland, Fish in Nordic Waters FDC

Mackerel and herring stamps from Greenland. Their contribution to the Norden 2018 joint issue.

Twelve Greenland Expeditions book

This was published a few years ago by Greenland's Tele-Post. Hardcover, around 80 pages. It contains each of the twelve "Expeditions" souvenir sheets issued by Greenland Post between 2003 and 2014. Each sheet commemorated a specific Expedition in Greenland between 1818 and 1978 and each of those Expeditions is summarized in the book. At the time it was selling for 299 DKK with shipping ($60 CDN). I thought that was a bit much for me but when I saw it selling for 149 DKK with shipping I ordered a copy.

None of the advertising I read for the book said much about it really so I thought I'd post a couple of images of the book's interior to give a better idea of quality. It is very well produced. Exactly what I expected. It is available in four languages: English, German, Danish and Greenlandic.

Considering the time of year and where it was coming from, shipping was fast. Added bonus is the postage used to send it to me. Nice high value stamps, clean and used.

Tasilaq, Greenland

Post Greenland's head office and philatelic bureau is located in Tasilaq. It is not the capital of Greenland. In fact, it is only the 7th most populated town in Greenland. It sits on the eastern coast of Greenland which is less populated than the west.

This is marked with "Porto kontrolleret" to the right of the Tasilaq postmark: "postage controlled". I believe this means the sender didn't put enough postage on the envelope. Perhaps the nice 2 DKK stamps was added by the post office.

Thanks for the cover Martin.

Eastern Greenland

Last year Greenland Post stopped producing maximum cards. They used to do this for each stamp issue and they also sold the postcards separately. I don't think they were moving enough of them to justify production costs. There were a few postmarks for places in north-east Greenland that I wanted to acquire so I figured maximum cards would be an interesting way to get them. Greenland Post still has lots of postcards available for sale. Of the three stamps I chose, only one was issued after they stopped producing maximum cards. Instead of taking chances on finding postmasters in these remote locations, I had Greenland Post apply the postmarks for me (btw, they charge a handling fee for this). They keep copies of all handstamps used at the post offices in Greenland.

Daneborg station is on the south coast of the Wollaston Foreland peninsula and is home to the SIRIUS patrol: the dog sled patrol operated by the Danish navy. I used a stamp that was issued in 2014 as part of a joint issues with the Ross Dependency. The postcard was used for a previous Greenland SEPAC issue.

About 40 km to the north east of Daneborg is the weather station Danmarkshavn. It is the furthest north non-icebreaker vessels can travel along Greenland's eastern coast. For this card I used the 9 DKK stamp from the Expedition XII stamp issue and the corresponding postcard that was originally used for this stamp's maximum card.



To the south of the Northeast Greenland National Park is Nerlerit Inaat Airport (aka Constable Pynt) which is located about 40km from Ittoqqortoormiit. The airport serves as a transportation hub for expeditions into the park to places like Daneborg station. The postcard I choose was used for the 2014 Aviation III issue showing a Twin Otter but the stamp is from the 2014 Aviation IV issue and features a Dash-8. Not the best postcard for showing off the postmark but I wanted to keep with an aviation theme.

Daneborg, Greenland

Daneborg, on the North-East coast of Greenland in the Northeast Greenland National Park: the largest national park in the world. There is a small research station there and it serves as the headquarters for the parks sled dog patrol : SIRIUS Patrol.

This comes to me from a team with the Belgian Antarctic Research Program studying sea ice in Greenland. I received a cover from the same team last year while they were stationed in the Ross Dependency.

Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland

I sent this stamped postcard to Greenland Post to have it cancelled with the Ittoqqortoormiit postmark. Ittoqqortoormiit is a tiny village on the East coast of Greenland. It's very remote and very difficult to get to.

Greenland Post produces maximum cards for all of their stamp issues and makes the postcards available for purchase also. This postcard was produced for their 2011 communication series of stamps and the stamp I used was one of the 2010 Norden issues.

Greenland - Contemporary Art VI

This is the first time I've seen a souvenir sheet issued in this series, although I don't follow the series that closely. It 's very different from previous contemporary art stamps issued in Greenland. But this isn't just a map. And it isn't a map of Greenland.

This is a map of Denmark, covered in glaciers and given Greenlandic place names. The idea came to the artists after seeing a map of Greenland in an in-flight airline magazine, with all the glaciers given Danish names.

A Little Late for Christmas

Received this cover back from Greenland the other day. The "Santa Claus" cancel was available at the Greenland Post philatelic center during December 2009. I sent this to them sometime around the end of October. The cancel says 31 December 2009 and it arrived in Canada on 4 May 2010. So where did it get held up? I suspect it didn't get cancelled in Greenland on 31 December but instead was either delayed getting there or was misplaced and actually cancelled much later - perhaps even a few weeks ago. Mail between here and the east coast of Greenland can be a little slow in the winter but it's not usually that slow. At least once this year I've purchased stamps from Greenland Post and they arrived within a month of placing the order.

Thule Air Base Cover

The Thule Air Base is the northernmost US Air Force base, located on the North West shore of Greenland, 1118 km north of the arctic circle. The base was built in secrecy during the early 1950’s and still serves as a military base, home to the 821st Air Base Group. Two Inuit villages, Pitfuffik and Dundas, were displaced by the Air Base and relocated to a new village site 130km away.

Covers from Greenland

Received this cover the other day from the Philatelic Center in Tasiilaq, Greenland. It was cancelled at "Frimærkeforum 2009" in Roskilde Denmark, back on 8 Novemebr 2009. Took a surprisingly long time to get back here but was in pretty good shape.



I used a 3.00 DKK stamps from the first "Contemporary Art" series issued in May of 2007. This stamp was designed by Jens Rosing: a renowned and much loved Greenlandic artist who designed more than 130 stamps for Greenland. And this stamp is that largest (in size) ever issued by Greenland. But what is more important about this stamp is that it was the last one Jens did for Greenland before his death in May 2008.



His daughter Ina is also an artist and one of her designs was used in the second Greenland Contemporary Art series. I put these two stamps on another cover that I sent to Upernavik for cancellation. At the time I did not realize who had designed these two stamps but if I had recognized the connection and significance sooner I might have prepared more covers with these beautiful stamps on them.

Europa 2009 - Astronomy

This years EUROPA theme is Astronomy. 2009 has been designated the International Year of Astronomy by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and UNESCO. I guess the idea is to bring awareness to the impact of astronomy and other sciences on all of our lives. The first countries to issue EUROPA stamps in 2009 were Sweden (29 Jan 2009) and Greenland (19 Jan 2009) with Jersey, Liechtenstein and Denmark close behind.

First 2009 Stamp Issues from Greenland

I received the first 2009 issues from Greenland the other day. They were officially released on 19 January 2009. This years Europa theme is Astronomy and the Greenlandic issue consists of a pair of stamps featuring the constellation of Ursa Minor. Next is the second (and final) part of their Fossils in Greenland series. I wish they had continued this series for at least another issue although I'm always put off by the pricing of stamp sets like this from Greenland. In the last series, the stamps were valued at 1.00, 20.50 and 25.00 DKK making it a rather expensive set of stamps. Also in the set is the Global Warming issue. This is a joint issue with something like 40 other counties to bring attention to global warming and it's affects on the polar regions. The issue also marks an end of the recent International Polar Year that started in 2007 and ends March 2009.

IPY: Preserve the Polar Regions and Glaciers