There’s quite a history behind Fjallraven’s Greenland series of jackets, with the original design coming about in the late 1960s. It’s a staple of the collection, and there are quite a few variants, but the standard variants are: Greenland, Greenland Winter, and Greenland Down No. 1. In order listed, those go from not warm, to warmest. Today I want to talk about the Greenland Winter Jacket, which sits right in the middle of the range.
This is the jacket that most people are going to find the most useful day-to-day during the winter months. And, I am surprised by how quickly this became one of my favorites to wear.
Specs & Materials
The Greenland Winter Jacket uses what is the most common variant of Fjallraven’s G-1000: 65% recycled polyester and 35% organic cotton. You can add Greenland Wax to this for extra resistance, but it comes without wax. There are reinforcements on the shoulders and elbows to help with long term longevity of the jacket.
The fill is 115gsm, and there are seven total pockets on the jacket. Fjallraven notes this is produced without PFAS.
This is all pretty par for the course with Fjallraven, with the big notable exception here being the teddy lining (fleece) on the body of the jacket, instead of an insulating layer like Primaloft or Down. This will be a deal breaker for some, but it adds interest to the jacket and works well as an insulating layer.
Wear & Warmth
This is a longer, almost parka length, jacket with a fixed hood. There’s no adjustment to the hood at all. The jacket has the classic Greenland front with four large pockets, and two hand warmer pockets behind the lower pockets. It has a zipped inner breast pocket as well. As with most current Fjallraven clothing, it fits trim in the body, and longer in the arms, which for me is an ideal fit.
The maroon and navy variant I have is not overly loud, but does a nice job of not blending into the sea of black, navy, and gray jackets. Because of how the insulation has been installed in the jacket, it doesn’t wear nearly as bulky as most insulated jackets. Because of this, the Greenland Winter does a great job of being a cold weather, but in-town friendly, jacket.
You don’t look like you are fresh from the mountains, or should be heading to them. At the same time, you don’t look like you are wearing something fancy — it blends very well here in Boulder.
What is going to get a lot of people undecided here is the warmth. This is a tricky jacket to talk about warmth with, so I am going to talk about it first as it comes directly from Fjallraven.
The G-1000 exterior, and the insulation used, are more vintage than they are overly performant. The G-1000 comes un-waxed. It’s a durable and dense material which offers above average wind resistance and light snow/rain resistance as well. The trick with this jacket is that it’s effectively the warmth of a good wind breaker being worn over a heavier fleece jacket.
So on a 18°F night, with snow falling, I wasn’t cold in the jacket, but I also wasn’t overly warm. I was comfortable enough, but I didn’t feel the “I can stay out here forever” sensation you get with a warmer jacket. That said, on mornings where it starts out at 25°F, and warms to 38°F, I found that this one jacket covered the range well.
You can, as you can with most G-1000, wax the jacket. Doing this will not only increase the water resistance of it, but it will also increase the wind resistance to quite a high amount, while decreasing the general breathability of the jacket. That will amount to a much warmer jacket, and it was my plan to do this initially, but I quickly found that I prefer the jacket as is.
The main reason for my preference: it’s much easier to layer under this jacket with a warmer sweater, than it is to find a jacket which balances this temperature range as well as the jacket does unwaxed. Or, to put it more succinctly: for the climate I live in, this is a very ideal weight to own in a jacket. It’s warm, but not hot.
A few quick things I really like about the jacket which might not be immediately obvious:
- Pocket Closing Design: on the two lower flap pockets, the top edge of the pocket extends up into the flap. By design, when you fold the flap closed, the top edge of the pocket itself folds over on itself. While not foolproof, I found this to be a really nice way to keep this style pocket slightly more secure. It also gives you a touch more height to the pocket if you stuff your gloves into the pocket and leave it open.
- The Cuffs on this jacket are cut really nicely. They are shaped well, and sit really well with gloves, or without gloves. That’s not something I find all that common with most jackets, but there’s something about the design here which works great.
- Tall Collar: the collar on this jacket is quite tall, and covers my neck really well when fully zipped up. This is fantastic when it’s cold and windy.
- Inside Lower Pocket: inside the right bottom of the jacket is a simple open top pocket. At first I ignored this, and then it quickly became a great place to stash stuff inside the warmer part of my jacket, without needing to fiddle with zippers.
And a few things to note that will be annoying to some:
- Dust / Marks Grabber: even with this lighter maroon color, this jacket does pick up what I can best describe as “dust marks” pretty easily. The type of mark you would get from carrying some shipping boxes around. That type of dirt finds itself all over this jacket, though so far it’s been easy enough to brush off with my hand. It would drive me nuts if the jacket were a darker color, and it was more noticeable.
- Fixed Hood: this hood will be polarizing. You cannot adjust or cinch it in any way. So if you are facing into the wind, it’s going to blow off your head. I don’t find any issue with this, but I’ll also note that I would love this exact jacket without the hood more than this model with the hood. That’s less about this hood, and more about my general feelings towards hoods.
- Left Side Zipper Pulls: as with most brands from UK/Europe/Nordic Countries, the zipper pulls are on the opposite side of that jacket than most Americans will be used to. I found no issue with this, but I know some people lose their damned minds over this.
One last thing: this jacket is not overly bulky, to wear but packing it would not be easy. It won’t amaze you with how small it gets, but it also can smash a decent amount to not be awful. This isn’t designed to really be used out in the woods (at least as compared to the other jackets from Fjallraven), but it certainly can hold it’s own if you wore it on the odd day hike.
Overall
This is my favorite for when it’s cold, not frigid, and I don’t know what to wear. Sometimes I find myself going in and out a ton, and this is the jacket I’ll tend to keep by the door to grab for those days.
I don’t see a need to wax this for the climate I am in, but if it were colder here more often, then I’d probably wax the jacket. As it is, I really have been blown away by how much I simply enjoy wearing this jacket.