The Most Beautiful Fjords in North America
6 places in 3 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful fjords in North America are Ilulissat Icefjord (Greenland), Western Brook Pond (Canada) and Tracy Arm (United States). The list covers 6 fjords in 3 countries. Canada has the most, with 3. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Fjords form where ice-age glaciers carved deep valleys that the sea later flooded, and the northern coasts of the Americas were under some of the thickest ice of all. From Alaska to Baffin Island and Newfoundland, the result is a coastline cut by steep-walled inlets, some still fed by living glaciers, others left high and dry as the land rose after the ice melted.
Ilulissat Icefjord in Greenland, a UNESCO site, is choked with icebergs from Sermeq Kujalleq, one of the most productive glaciers in the world. In Newfoundland's Gros Morne National Park, Western Brook Pond is a fjord cut off from the sea as the land rebounded, now a freshwater lake between sheer cliffs. Tracy Arm, south of Juneau in Alaska, winds between granite walls to the twin Sawyer Glaciers. On Baffin Island, Kangiqtualuk Uqquqti, known as Sam Ford Fjord, is lined with granite towers that draw big-wall climbers. The Saguenay Fjord in Quebec runs to the St. Lawrence, where beluga whales gather at its mouth.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ilulissat Icefjord | Fjord | Greenland | ✓ |
| 2 | Western Brook Pond | Fjord | Canada | |
| 3 | Tracy Arm | Fjord | United States | |
| 4 | Tasermiut Fjord | Fjord | Greenland | |
| 5 | Kangiqtualuk Uqquqti | Fjord | Canada | |
| 6 | Saguenay Fjord | Fjord | Canada |
01 Ilulissat Icefjord
Greenland69.150° N 49.550° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by SarahNic from Pixabay UNESCO inscribed the fjord in 2004, and the protected area covers more than 400,000 hectares, much of it ice. The Greenlandic name of the fjord is Kangia. For the visitor, the experience is simple and overwhelming: towers of ice several storeys high, sculpted into arches and caves, drifting almost silently past, their colour changing from pure white at noon to gold and pink under the low summer and midnight sun.
Did you know? The ice carried through the fjord can be up to about 250,000 years old, making it a valuable archive of past climate.
02 Western Brook Pond
Canada49.733° N 57.767° W
Mykola Swarnyk · CC BY-SA 4.0 The scale is what stays with people. From the low coastal plain the lake runs straight into the plateau, and as a boat moves up it the walls close in until the upper reach becomes a narrow gorge with bare cliffs on both sides. Waterfalls drop over the rim from the plateau above; the tallest, Pissing Mare Falls, falls about 350 metres and is among the highest in eastern North America. The cliffs are not entirely still: early in the twentieth century a rockfall into the pond set off a wave estimated at 30 metres.
Did you know? Beyond its 165-metre maximum, the lake averages about 72.5 metres deep, covers some 23 square kilometres and has a shoreline of about 42.5 kilometres.
03 Tracy Arm
United States57.911° N 133.402° W
InformationCraftsman · CC BY-SA 4.0 The whole valley is the work of the Sawyer Glacier, which once filled it end to end and has since retreated roughly 48 km to its present position; the glaciers at its head still end in the sea, shedding the ice that drifts down the arm. Tracy Arm lies within the Tracy Arm–Fords Terror Wilderness, designated by Congress in 1980 as part of Tongass National Forest and covering more than 264,000 hectares, about a fifth of it under ice. The neighbouring Endicott Arm and the tidal narrows of Fords Terror, named after a sailor who in 1899 was trapped there for six hours by the rushing tide, belong to the same wilderness. The fjord itself was named after Benjamin F.
Did you know? That wave is the second-highest tsunami run-up in recorded history, surpassed only by the 1958 megatsunami in Alaska's Lituya Bay.
04 Tasermiut Fjord
Greenland60.270° N 44.780° W
amanderson2 · CC BY 2.0 The fjord runs from north-east to south-west and opens into the Labrador Sea of the North Atlantic. It separates two long mountainous peninsulas. On the western side rises Napasorsuaq at 1,590 m; on the eastern side stand Ulamertorsuaq at 1,858 m, Nalumasortoq at 2,045 m and Ketil at 2,010 m, whose sheer faces have made the fjord a famous destination for big-wall climbers and the site of many new routes. The glacier at the head of the fjord has been retreating, a recession that has been well documented in recent decades, as has the glacier in the neighbouring Southern Sermilik Fjord.
Did you know? Medieval Norse sources place an Augustinian monastery on the shores of Ketilsfjord.
05 Kangiqtualuk Uqquqti
Canada70.501° N 71.148° W
Ansgar Walk · CC BY-SA 2.5 The fjord runs roughly north-north-east to south-south-west for about 110 km. Its mouth, between Remote Peninsula and Erik Point, is more than 18 km wide, but the channel tapers to around 3 km wide some 50 km inland. Side valleys and branches lead off its shores, including the tributary fjord Kangiqtualuk Agguqti and the Stewart Valley with the Sail Peaks, while Swiss Bay opens on the eastern side. Around 49 km from the mouth, at a bend in the fjord, a single cliff on the eastern shore drops vertically from 1,368 m straight into the sea. Peaks such as Beluga Mountain, Walrus Head Mountain, Broad Peak and Turnagain Peak give the fjord its skyline.
Did you know? Their route, The Great and Secret Show, graded VII 5.11 A4, was at the time among the hardest big-wall climbs in any mountain setting.
06 Saguenay Fjord
Canada · 36.2 km from Rivière-du-Loup48.132° N 69.727° W
Image by cleprovost from Pixabay Its history is written in the rock. The basement here dates back to the Grenville mountain-building of the Precambrian, and around 200 million years ago a long block of crust sank between two faults to form the Saguenay Graben. During the last glacial period an ice sheet two to three kilometres thick pushed through this weakness and deepened it; when the ice melted about 10,000 years ago, the sea flooded in, and the land has been slowly rising ever since. Today the fjord is layered: fresh water from Lac Saint-Jean flows out on top, while cold salt water from the St. Lawrence, making up about 93 percent of the volume, lies beneath.
Did you know? According to the story behind it, the statue was a vow by salesman Charles-Napoléon Robitaille, who survived falling through the river ice after praying to the Virgin.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful fjords in North America?
- On our list, Ilulissat Icefjord (Greenland) ranks first, followed by Western Brook Pond (Canada) and Tracy Arm (United States).
- Which country has the most fjords in North America?
- In our collection, the most come from Canada (3), Greenland (2) and the United States (1).
- Is Western Brook Pond a fjord or a lake?
- Both. It was carved by glaciers as a fjord, but after the ice melted the land rose and cut it off from the sea, leaving a landlocked freshwater lake.
- Why are there belugas in the Saguenay Fjord?
- Where the Saguenay meets the St. Lawrence, cold, nutrient-rich deep water wells up, drawing a resident population of beluga whales, the southernmost in the world.
- How many fjords are on this list in North America?
- The list covers 6 fjords in 3 countries. Canada has the most, with 3.