Qaqortukulooq and Kujataa Greenland: Norse and Inuit Farming

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Qaqortukulooq

   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.

   Read the complete Qaqortukulooq write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Qaqortukulooq is where the day begins. Next is Sissarluttoq.

2. 2. Sissarluttoq

   Greenland has no roads between its towns, and in the south, where the green fjords of Kujataa lie, that fact is both a limit and a charm. The Norse came here in the late tenth century, led by Erik the Red, who settled at Brattahlíð, now the farm of Qassiarsuk, and for nearly five hundred years there were farms, churches and a bishop at Garðar, today's Igaliku. The settlers raised cattle, sheep and goats and hunted seals and walrus, and then, around the fifteenth century, they vanished, for reasons still debated, among them climate, trade and conflict. The Inuit farmers and hunters who live there now raise sheep on the same pastures, and UNESCO listed the Kujataa landscape in 2017 as an example of farming at the edge.

   Read the complete Sissarluttoq write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Sissarluttoq comes up about 4 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kujataa Greenland: Norse and Inuit Farming.

3. 3. Kujataa Greenland: Norse and Inuit Farming

   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.

   Read the complete Kujataa Greenland: Norse and Inuit Farming write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 9 km into the recorded legs you reach Kujataa Greenland: Norse and Inuit Farming. Next is back through Sissarluttoq.

4. 4. back through Sissarluttoq

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Sissarluttoq write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Sissarluttoq, late in the day. Next is Qaqortukulooq.

5. 5. Qaqortukulooq

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Qaqortukulooq write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Qaqortukulooq. That is the ride.