US President Donald Trump is putting the world’s largest but largely unknown island in the spotlight. Switzerland has also left its mark on Greenland. 5 anecdotes about it.
January 26, 2026, 5:58 p.mJanuary 26, 2026, 5:58 p.m
Christoph Bernet / ch media
A mountain range called “Switzerland”
In the east of Greenland lies a mountain range called Schweizerland. At 3,377 meters, the highest peak is Mont Forel, named after the French-speaking Swiss naturalist François-Alphonse Forel (1841-1921). The Jura glacier and the Henri Dunant mountain (founder of the Red Cross) are also reminiscent of Switzerland.
The participants of the second Swiss Greenland expedition in 1912: Alfred de Quervain, Hans Hössli, Roderich Fink and Karl Gaue.ETH library, image archive
This naming goes back to the Swiss geophysicist and Arctic explorer Alfred de Quervain (1879-1927). On his second Greenland expedition in 1912, he discovered Mont Forel from a distance of around 150 kilometers.
On this expedition, de Quervain and three companions crossed Greenland from the west to the east coast in just over four weeks. 24 years earlier, the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen was the first person to achieve this, on a much shorter route than de Quervain.
De Quervain’s expedition created an elevation profile of the ice sheet and was considered a milestone in Arctic research. The budget was around 30,000 francs (today’s value: around one million francs). The NZZ contributed 10,000 francs in return for exclusive photos and reportingwhich corresponded to a tenth of the company’s annual profit at the time.
Swiss companies such as the bouillon producer Maggi and the Hero jam factory also sponsored the venture – like de Quervain’s first Greenland expedition in 1909. The Arctic adventurers praised their sponsors’ products in their travel reports. So wrote the geologist Arnold Heim in 1909 «Swiss illustrated magazine»: “There was only some raw salmon and a can of Lenzburg currant jam, a combination that seemed splendid in this case. »
First ascent with polar bear encounter
After de Quervain’s discovery of Switzerland, several expeditions to make the first ascent of the peaks there failed. In 1938, the Academic Alpine Club of Zurich started a new attempt. On July 22nd, six Swiss people led by the engineer and alpinist André Roch, accompanied by eight Inuit and 55 sled dogs, set off from the Sermilik Fjord, 150 kilometers away.
On the way they overcame numerous obstacles: a sleigh broke, a pass unexpectedly turned out to be impassable, and razor-sharp ice injured the sled dogs’ paws. Nevertheless, the three expedition participants André Roch, Guido Pidermann and Carl Baumann managed to climb Mont Forel for the first time at the beginning of August.
Image: CH Media/let
On the same day, Michel Peréz and his Inuit companion Larasï, who remained at the foot of the mountain, encountered a polar bear. At first they couldn’t find the expedition’s only revolver. Finally the weapon appeared at the bottom of a box. After three hours of hunting, the animal was shot: “The next day the bear was cut up. An additional chop on the menu was a nice stroke of luck for dogs and people,” wrote André Roch in a travel report. On their way back to the fjord, the Swiss adventurers gave another mountain a Helvetic name: Laupersbjoerg, named after Hans Lauper, the first conqueror of the Eiger north face.
Two helicopter pilots, a car mechanic and a happily married carpenter
Greenland’s foreign and security policy falls under the responsibility of Denmark. Official Switzerland has few points of contact with Greenland. An exception was the one-week visit to Greenland by the Swiss ambassador to Copenhagen, Walter Jäggi, in the summer of 1971.
In his report to the foreign department in Bern Jäggi wrote about the psychological and social side effects of Denmark’s modernization efforts. He reported on the economic gap between Greenlanders and Danes that continues to this day: “Even if they are equally or similarly gifted as the children of Danish parents, Greenlandic children have fewer chances of getting ahead.”
Ambassador Jäggi also provides information about the Swiss colony on Greenland: It consists “of two Heliswiss pilots, a car mechanic, a fitter, a foreman in a marble quarry and a carpenter married to a Danish woman”. Jäggi visited him in the capital Nuuk: “He seems to be happy there and earns a lot of money. Above all, he praises the healthy climate.”
The Federal President in the research camp
As acting Federal President, the then Environment Minister Doris Leuthard visited the Swiss Camp meteorological base station in western Greenland on August 9, 2017. Leuthard planned that it was “important for her to recognize and work with the researchers to find out what awaits us.” told the visit. Greenland is where you can see the effects of climate change most quickly.
Federal President Doris Leuthard with the Swiss polar explorer Konrad Steffen on August 8, 2017 at the Swiss Camp, 70 kilometers northeast of Ilulissat.Image: keystone
The situation on site was described to Leuthard by Konrad Steffen, the then director of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL. Polar research pioneer Steffen had studied the disappearance of ice and snow for decades and initiated the Swiss Camp in 1990. The camp represents decades of extensive research activity by Swiss universities in Greenland: They gain important insights into the changes in the Alpine region from developments in the Arctic Circle.
Death in the crevasse
Almost exactly three years to the day after Leuthard’s visit, glaciologist Konrad “Koni” Steffen fell on August 10, 2020 into a crevasse during his annual research stay at the Swiss Camp. His body was never found. In 2022, the responsible Greenlandic committee gave a previously nameless glacier another Swiss name: the “Sermeq Konrad Steffen” is located 1,600 kilometers northwest of the Schweizerland Mountains. (aargauerzeitung.ch)