The last time anyone wrote about a living person at Hvalsey, they were writing about a wedding. In September 1408, a couple were married in the church there, and that is the final entry in the written record of the Norse settlement in Greenland. What happened afterwards, whether people died out, left or moved on, is still a mystery. The ruin, which the Greenlanders call Qaqortukulooq, is the best-preserved Norse building in the country, a church of grey stone with high gables, built around the year 1300, standing beside a small bay under green hills, with its walls still more than four metres high.
Erik the Red settled this region in about 985, after being outlawed from Iceland, and for about four and a half centuries his descendants farmed sheep and cattle in the sheltered fjords of the south, building churches, a cathedral at Gardar, and large halls. The area is now part of the Kujataa landscape, inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2017, which shows how Norse farmers and the Inuit hunters who followed them each adapted to this fringe of the Arctic. Today sheep farms still dot the land, which makes Kujataa the only place in Greenland with real agriculture. The grass is green in summer, with wild flowers, and icebergs from the ice cap drift down the fjords.
Getting here has nothing in common with riding. Greenland has no road network between its towns, and Qaqortoq, the largest town in the south, with about three thousand people, is thirteen kilometres away by sea. Most visitors take a boat from Qaqortoq or hike a trail from Igaliku, and a few local tracks in and between settlements are the only places where a motorbike would be of any use. Plan for ferries, small boats and long walks. Weather is changeable, with fog, wind and cold rain, and a good waterproof jacket is far more useful than a riding one.
The visiting season is June to September, when the days are long, the mosquitoes are bearable and the boats run. At the ruin, take care not to climb on the walls, and leave nothing behind. Narsaq, a smaller town, has a supermarket and a bakery, and the lamb is excellent.