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Hard to find

It is very hard to find an outdoor map for Greenland that works without an internet connection.

When travelling the great outdoors in Greenland, internet connectivity for mobile phones is practically non-existent.

Many travellers fall back on well established outdoor mapping apps. Whilst these apps support locally stored (meaning: stored on the phone) map data, they suffer from a number of shortcomings.

Quality map data for those apps is hard to find for Greenland and can be expensive. Often those maps lack elevation data and contour lines, essential map information when travelling through a rugged and mountainous landscape. Map detail is often low, and area coverage limited. Map colours and schematics are more oriented towards urban use than outdoor use. Some providers charge significant money for low quality product due to the lack of alternatives.

What is a good digital offline map?

An outdoor app & map should support

1. App support for both iOS and Android smartphones. Support for Windows and macOS is a bonus.
2. Map coverage of the whole of Greenland.
3. Map display geared towards outdoor use.
4. Contour lines, summit elevations and hill shading.
5. Detailed (30 m × 30 m) elevation data.
6. Search capability for places and geographical features.
7. Creating, loading and sharing of tracks (e.g. the Arctic Circle Trail) and points of interest.
8. Track recording.
9. Language support for Kalaallisut, English and Danish.
10. Easy installation.

What we do not care about

1. Urban features such as street names.
2. Route planning.
3. Marine mapping.

What is a good outdoor app?

All the “raw” map data is freely available and, after software development, map processing and lots of AI, we are convinced we have a solution that meets all the criteria. But… what we make available is the map, not the app.

After researching Avenza Maps, Gaia Maps, Orux Maps, Locus Map, Cartograph.eu, AlpineQuest, OfflineMaps, Guru Maps, OSMAnd, MapPlus, NAG MapCache, TacNav-X, GPX Viewer and various other candidates, the conclusion was that the only app that matches the required feature set is Cartograph.eu.

This app comes with the bonus that it also runs on iPads, Mac and Windows, and allows translation of the app into languages that it does not yet support. It is actively maintained and enhanced.

The user interface is quite different from traditional mapping apps such as Google Maps and Apple Maps, which is to be expected as they serve different purposes.

Whilst there is a free version of the app, it does not support third-party maps (our map), elevation data, hill shading, track recording, search or outdoor map rendering. So to use our maps the paid versionm is mandatory.

The full paid “Pro” version is reasonably priced. One month costs only EUR 3 / DKK 23 (great for giving it a try) and a lifetime licence costs only EUR 20 / DKK 150. Prices are subject to change, but are expected to remain in this range.

The map we developed is made available free of charge.

Where does the map data come from?

The “raw” data is all very recent. Denmark’s Agency for Climate Data released the Åbent Land Grønland raw map data in 2022, a new and highly detailed data set, which is made available freely. The data set is delivered in technical formats for processing and use by third parties such as outdoormap.gl.

For our outdoor map we use the Danish data, both the map data and the elevation data. Whilst the elevation data is available at a resolution of up to 2 m × 2 m, this is too detailed to handle efficiently on a smartphone, so it was reduced to 30 m × 30 m.

The Language Secretariat of Greenland, Oqaasileriffik, provided the official list of names for geographical features in the country which we blended into the map.

NunaGis, managed by Asiaq, the Greenland delivered us the latest urban map data.

The result is a set of maps that can be fairly easily installed for use with Cartograph.eu on smartphones and PCs.

The maps are made available “map cuts” of various sizes to accommodate smartphones with different amounts of memory and processing power.

Map sizes vary between 300 MB for smaller maps and 22 GB for the whole of Greenland.