Kujataa is south Greenland at its gentlest, which is a relative term. The fjords here are deep, the mountains are steep, and the glacier is never far away, but in summer the valleys are green with grass and dotted with sheep. This is where Norse settlers from Iceland arrived in the tenth century, led, according to the sagas, by Erik the Red, and where Inuit hunters and Norse farmers lived within reach of each other for centuries. UNESCO listed the area in 2017 as a cultural landscape of farming at the edge of the habitable world.
There is a reconstructed turf church and a longhouse, and the foundations of the original settlement. Not far away is Igaliku, the old Gardar, once the seat of a Norse bishop, with the remains of a great hall and a cathedral. Hvalsey church, a medieval stone building with gables still standing, is one of the best-preserved Norse ruins in Greenland. The Norse colonies disappeared in the fifteenth century for reasons that are still debated, with climate, trade and conflict all suspected.
Riding is where I have to be straight with you. Greenland has no road network linking its towns. There are short gravel roads and tracks near villages, and from Narsarsuaq you reach Qassiarsuk by boat. A motorbike is not a practical way to explore this area, and the maps are best read as walking and boating routes. Narsaq, about thirty-seven kilometres away across the water, has fuel, a shop and a few places to eat, and Narsarsuaq has a former American airbase with the area's airport.
Summer is short and bright, with long evenings and mosquitoes, and the sheep farms are busy making hay. Icebergs drift in the fjords, and the weather can change in an hour. Take warm layers even in July. Arriving here feels like a very quiet kind of adventure, with turf walls, fjord water and a long view of ice.