Even after more than 100 trips to the icebergs of Ilulissat in western Greenland, tour guide Sigurd Janniche Thomsen still finds each journey special.

“The light changes every time, and so do the icebergs,” he says, as he leads visitors through the Ilulissat Icefjord, a Unesco World Heritage site.

Around his small excursion boat an almost eerie silence prevails, broken only by the distant cracking of ice.

In the freezing minus 27 degrees Celsius (minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit) air, towering icebergs – some reaching 100 metres (330ft) high – drift slowly towards Disko Bay and beyond to the open sea.

“Don’t worry, we’re not about to re-enact Titanic,” Thomsen quips. The infamous iceberg that doomed the legendary passenger liner in 1912 most likely originated from this very fiord.