Steven and I had arrived late the previous afternoon by a small boat in Qaqortoq, in southern Greenland. Meaning white in Kalaallisut, the Greenlandic language, it is a slightly ironic name, as South Greenland is one of the greenest areas of the world’s largest island! The town is situated on the south coast of Greenland, at a lower latitude than Iceland, a fact that certainly surprised us. Its southern location allows for some degree of agriculture to take place, which was one of the reasons the Norse or Vikings chose to settle in the region. The country's 'pineapple belt' is an important and rare opportunity for Greenland to cultivate some of its own produce.
Although Qaqortok is home to 50% of South Greenland's population, the town has only 3,000 residents. Everywhere was walkable, even the heliport!
Just minutes from our fairly swanky hotel, overlooking the dock area, was Qaqortoq's extensive historic district, with many well-preserved buildings still in use. The Qaqortoq Museum was housed in the oldest of them, but it wasn't open yet, so we returned later.
The sculpture of the girl reminded me of the iconic bronze sculpture of The Little Mermaid, also displayed on a rock outside Copenhagen, Denmark.
Qaqortok's History: More than 4,000 years ago, the Saqqaq Inuit first settled in the Qaqortok area, followed by the Dorset Inuit 1,500 years later, and Norse or Viking settlers in the 10th century. The Norse people remained for almost 500 years, coexisting with the Thule Inuit who arrived in the 12th century. When Norwegian Anders Olsen established a trading center for sealskins in 1775, that marked the beginning of present-day Qaqortok. Most of the town's wooden buildings date to the early 20th century, when it had a thriving cod-fishing industry.
Beyond the unadorned exterior was Inuacare, a local company that produced natural skincare products, with all the herbal ingredients handpicked in Greenland.
Greenland's oldest fountain, Mindebrønde, was in the heart of the colonial center.
Qaqortok's fish market was located on the edge of the town square, opposite the fountain and Sissami, a combination café, grocery store, and camping store.
Spotting the men sitting and chatting outside the fish market reminded me of so many similar scenes in small towns in Sicily last year.
When we walked by the market later, I popped in to take these photos. We were fortunate to look at such a wide selection of meat, as it all depended on whether a boat had arrived in the last few hours. Everything was labeled, not only what the fish were, but also when it was caught and by which fisherman or hunter.
Just steps away from Qaqortok's old colonial harbor district was the historic red wooden Annaasisitta Oqaluffia, also known as The Savior's Church. The church building materials were sent from Denmark as an assembly kit in 1828. Due to difficulties during transport, expert assistance was required for its eventual construction in 1832. Annaasisitta Oqaluffia was the primary church for the Qaqortoq congregation until 1973. Unfortunately, it was closed then, and every other time we checked.
Photo of the church interior, also part of the Qaqortok Museum, courtesy of the Qaqortok Museum website:
As in Qassiarsuk the day before, there was also a miniature chapel outside the main church in Qaqortok. I don't know what the purpose of it was, however.
With three full days in Qaqortok, Steven and I were eager to
see as many of the 30 sculptures as possible in the ambitious Stone and
Man Trail, which was scattered throughout the town.
The enterprising exhibition was initiated by Aka Høegh, a Greenlandic artist, in 1993, who invited artists from all Nordic countries to contribute. The result was sculptures hidden around Qaqortoq, many of which are carved directly into rock faces. Though we had a map of the sculptures' approximate locations with partial images, Steven and I spent hours searching for some of them over the course of the next two days! Our first find was Strong Encounter by Greenlander Christian Rosing.
The town museum, a black-tarred colonial administrator's building, was built in either 1797 or 1804, depending on whom you believe, and opened a short time later.
Kayaks, or qajaq in Greenlandic, were perhaps the Inuit's greatest invention and are used all over the Arctic. Each kayak was made for its owner, with stitched sealskin stretched over a wooden and bone frame. A father would make his son's first kayak frame, and his mother would cover it with three or four harp sealskins. The length of the kayak was typically three times the arm span, with the hole in the cockpit just large enough for the hips to fit through. The top of the kayak would be level with one's waist when it was sat in. Many hunters would have two kayaks, a lighter one used for winter, so it could be carried further. Attached to it was an array of hunting equipment, including a harpoon, a detachable white blind to hide the prey from the hunter, a rifle and ammunition in a dry bag, and a towline and float made from inflatable seal bladders to tow the caught seal or walrus home horizontally. The paddle was very narrow, possibly because, like in Iceland, there were few trees, or because narrow paddles worked better in water.
The black-painted kayak with a canvas cover was made by a hunter in Alluitsup Paa, south of Qaqortoq, in the 1950s.
The museum had a superb collection of tupilaks, small statues with carved faces, once believed to protect against enemy attacks, that had been created by Aron Kleist and his daughter Cecilie Kleist. It was only much later that we realized they were the best tupilaks we had seen anywhere in Greenland.
The middle kayak was made by a hunter around 1960. It was given by the village of Qassimiut to the community on the Danish island of Samsø in recognition of their assistance in building a new village hall in Qassimiut. The Samsø municipality gifted it to the Qaqortok Museum in 1999.
Blubber from seals is an essential part of the food traditions in South Greenland and is incorporated into almost all kinds of meals. The blubber was contained in a bag made of the skin of hooded seals. The skin was scraped roughly and sewn together using sinew from seals' throats after it was carefully removed, and plunged into salty water and dried. After the blubberbag was filled with air, like a balloon, and dried in fresh air, it was filled with blubber until it was full. It was placed behind some stones that were built up around it at home to protect it from the damaging sun. After the blubber was fermented and turned into oil, it could be preserved for up to two years.
Among the range of knives developed by the Inuit, the most well-known today is the ulu, also known as the women's knife. The earliest ones were made of stone and bone, but now most are constructed of metal with a wooden handle. Depending on the region of origin, ulu come with a T-shaped or D-shaped handle. They were used for skinning animals, especially polar bears, seals, and reindeer, and then used to clean the skin, making it thin enough to be dried and used as a material. Steven and I saw ulu in gift shops all over Greenland, but I couldn't envision using it to chop herbs at home.
Imagine wearing an anorak like this, made from the gut skin of a bearded seal!
Images from the museum's diorama showing a summer tent:
A winter tent:
The museum had a superb collection of tupilaks, small statues with carved faces, once believed to protect against enemy attacks, that had been created by Aron Kleist and his daughter Cecilie Kleist. It was only much later that we realized they were the best tupilaks we had seen anywhere in Greenland.
The majority of the several hundred sculptures that Aron carved from sperm whale teeth were sold immediately during his approximately 25 years as an artist, with most now found outside Greenland. His art was inspired by Inuit history and Greenlandic folk traditions, myths, and outlook on life. He said that his past life as a sheep farmer, fisherman, and seal hunter had provided a solid foundation for his later career as an artist. Aron, born in 1925, south of Qaqortoq, discovered that using a dentist's drill allowed him to work on the surface of a tooth, giving the figure a more expressive potential.
His daughter, Cecilie, born in 1948, began carving at an early age and quickly developed into a skilled carver. After apprenticing at 19 with a jeweler and goldsmith in Copenhagen, she created small charms featuring Greenlandic motifs, but returned home after a year because she missed the Greenlandic landscapes. Working with her father, they produced numerous works, including approximately 100 carvings a year for five or six years. Unlike her father, Cecilie carved many figures of women in various working and caring situations, such as carrying children or preparing sealskins, for example. Sadly, she died at the age of 39, two years before her father, in 1987, from tuberculosis.
Tupilaks were created initially to exact revenge or perform malevolent deeds, by killing or maiming a victim who had made himself the object of someone's anger, hatred, or jealousy. A person with skills in witchcraft, typically a witch or shaman, would collect various body parts from humans and animals, combining them to create a tupilak. It might consist of an infant's head and a bird's wings and feet. Once assembled, the shaman would sing incantations over the still lifeless tupilak. When it came to life, it made whimpering sounds until its creator had to let it nurse from his or her genitals. Then the tupilak would be led to water, where it began its sinister mission over land, water, and air. Creating tupilaks wasn't without peril, however, as they would return and kill their own creator if they met a stronger magical power possessed by the intended victim!
Photo courtesy of the Qaqortok Museum website:
Unfortunately, I couldn't take any other decent pictures of Kleists' carvings because of the mirrors behind each carving. However, this is another tupilak from the musuem.
We both chuckled at the cartoon of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, thinking they were the first men to stand on the moon. But it was well known among the Inuit that shamans could undertake spiritual journeys to the moon to speak with the Man of the Moon, who held the key to all fertility! Make sure to click on the cartoon so you can read it better!
Greenlandic-Danish Knud Rasmussen, 1879-1933, a pioneering Arctic explorer, was best known for his numerous polar expeditions, including his crossing of North America from Greenland to the Bering Strait. While in Qaqortok in 1932, Rasmussen stayed in the Red Room upstairs before embarking on one of his expeditions to East Greenland.
Steep enough stairs?!
The Red Room and the adjacent Blue Room were designed and built by a local master carpenter in 1930, making them the town's guest rooms during the 1930s.
The view from the window:
American aviator Charles Lindbergh stayed in the Blue Room during his visit to Qaqortoq in 1933.
While Lindbergh was on a months-long quest in Greenland to survey commercial air routes in 1933, his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wrote in her diary, "The last act in Greenland was to have an Eskimo (now known as Inuit) paint Ting-miss-ar-toq on the plane. He painted it parallel to the water and not to the lines of the plane." Through her diaries and articles, we now know that the origin of the name on the nose of his Lockheed Sirius. The moment the Inuit saw his plane, they shouted out, "Tingmisartoq," meaning one who flies like a bird.
The museum's curator and sole employee kindly closed the museum for a while, so he could escort us to the neighboring Nordbo Museum, which was otherwise closed. It was also part of the town museum.
He pointed out a late 12th-century grave that was excavated in 1932 from the north end of the church at Qassiarsuk, which we had visited the day before. On the grave was a flat stone with letters in runic indicating it had been Ingiborg's Grave. Unfortunately, no information was available regarding Ingiborg.
The museum had a photo of the nearby Hvalsey Church Ruins, the best-preserved building from Greenland's Norse era. As I mentioned in the previous post, I had really wanted to visit the ruins, but no boat was making the trip to the deserted spot during the two days we were in Narsarsauq or our three days in Qaqortok.
I would have loved to have seen the church's still-standing 6-meter-tall walls and its two doorways, one facing south and the other facing west. Likely constructed in the 14th century, the church differed from other church ruins in Greenland because it was built entirely of natural stones with walls fitted with clay. Surrounded by a churchyard and a dike, it likely belonged to the local chieftain, who may not have lived there. The remains of a byre, or cow shed, and a nearby dwelling with several rooms connected by separate passages were also visible.
Why did the Norsemen leave? After a written account of a wedding at the church on September 16th, 1408, there was no further written sign of the Norsemen in Greenland. Though archaeological excavations have confirmed their presence for an additional 50 years following the last written account, there was nothing but silence from then on.
The disappearance of the Norsemen settlements remains a grand mystery in the archaeology of the Norsemen. When Hans Egde arrived in Greenland in 1721, he was unable to locate any descendants of the Norsemen as he had anticipated. Previous theories were that they had been wiped out in a war with the Inuit, had succumbed to an epidemic, or that inbreeding on a large scale had led to their demise.
It is now known that a significant change in the climate occurred around the 12th century, with the weather becoming colder, summers becoming more arid, and wind speeds decreasing. That may have significantly altered the drift ice around Greenland, worsening sailing conditions. The climatic conditions may have also influenced the seals' migration patterns, making it much more challenging to hunt them. The arid summers likely contributed to a shorter growing season. Despite what has been learned so far, scientists will never completely know what happened to the Norsemen's settlements and why they were abandoned in Greenland.
I don't know why I was so surprised to see so many wildflowers blooming in southern Greenland, but I was. Delighted, too, of course!
In a large open space between the church and the Pisiffik grocery store, Icelander Paul Gudmunson had sculpted Priest and 13 Spirits.
The choice of fresh fruit and vegetables was again something that surprised me for such a small town as Qaqortoq. I didn't find the prices as staggering as the accommodation, but that was because the grocery stores were heavily subsidized by the government.
There was a very decent bakery selection, enough to satisfy anyone with a sweet tooth, too!
Once fortified, we wandered back through the open space, determined to find The Serpent, created by Iceland's Guttormur Jónsson. Some of the sculptures were *** hard to find or discern amid the many rocks that looked, well, like rocks!
Another view of the colonial church - to give you a frame of reference, the open space was on its far side, and the grocery store was the blue building on the right across the creek.
Trying to give Jónsson the benefit of the doubt, we looked at his work from across the creek, but it didn't look any better, in our minds.
If we saw one pram in Greenland, we must have seen a hundred! We've traveled the world together over the last 13 years, but, before our three weeks in Greenland, I don't think I've noticed more than a few perambulators as opposed to strollers anywhere else.
Beside the grocery store was Qaqortup Katersertarfia, also known as Qaqortoq Village Hall, which was built in 1937.
Imagine being a resident in little Qaqortoq in the summer of 1993 when the Stone and Man project began! The locals could follow the artists in their open workshops as they converted their imagination and dreams into granite. The artists were given free rein to choose the place and theme of their sculptures on the town's rock faces or in blocks of stone. There was certainly no shortage of rock 'canvases'! The project continued on a smaller scale until 2000, when Qaqortoq celebrated its 225th anniversary.
Thank goodness, Steven and I were full of energy that day, as we walked all over hell's half acre, backtracking several times on the hunt for more of the Stone and Man sculptures! Sweden's Lone Larsen sculpted The Gate in 1994.
At the foot of these stairs was Fell Fairy by Pall Gudmundsson, another Icelandic artist. As Qaqortoq was built on hilly terrain, stairs like these were common.
Lake Tasersuaq:
Just inches from the shore was Birdie by Greenland's own Peter Kristiansen in 2000.
Denmark's Sys Svinding sculpted Man's Guide in 1994.
We were fortunate to stay at the Hotel Qaqortoq with its glorious views over the fjord. There were a few more of the sculptures on a path below the hotel. Luckily, these were far easier to find in our scavenger hunt!
I was delighted to see a piece by Stone and Man's founder, Aka Høegh. She aptly named it The Stone Animal in 2000.
Another that left me feeling flat was Between by Peder Istad from Norway in 2000.
Love Is Not God was another work of art that 'did nothing' for either of us.
By contrast, I was excited, gazing at Aka Høegh's Vision, which she sculpted along a massive swath of granite in 1993. It was by far the most involved piece yet, with about 30 distinct images carved into the rock.
I was in awe of the artist's creativity, as she had sculpted different expressions on each face.
Exploring the town while also hunting out sculptures in some very hard-to-find spots had been a delightful way to get some exercise!
We had to walk back to the harbor to find another of Gudmundsson's works. He called this one Erik the Red. It was the only piece carved in red rock, so it certainly lived up to its moniker.
The large, colorful Inuit boot sculpture represented Qaqortok's local history and traditional hand-stitched culture of the area. It was located just outside our hotel, so it was a fun thing to see at the beginning and end of each day.
Who wouldn't love Lover's Seat by Marit Benthe Norheim from Norway? Certainly not us!
Unlike the very ho-hum meals we'd eaten in Iceland, we were off to an excellent start in the dining department in Greenland.
Sitting in the sealskin chairs in the lobby gave us stellar views of the other side of the harbor, including a Canadian sailboat that had just arrived.
Next post: Touring the red building above, Great Greenland, the country's only sealskin processing facility, and continuing our scavenger hunt!
Posted on September 27th, 2025, from home in Denver, on a glorious fall day. Make sure to take care of yourself and your loved ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment