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For three months out of the year along the fjords of southern Greenland, the frozen landscape thaws, the sea ice retreats and you can see why Erik the Red got away with calling the country at the top of the world “Greenland” – instead of Narnia.
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I visited in June, traveling up the Tunulliarfik Fjord with Vintage Air Rally
during an arctic expedition, and found fields of wild flowers three
feet high covering the hills and idyllic farms in the lowlands growing
tomatoes, carrots, lettuces and root vegetables. The whole scene looked
to be ripped from an Andrew Wyeth playbook and is almost identical to
the Western Fjord region in Iceland, with the exception of the rolling
and calving icebergs that are deposited daily into the by the nearby
Qooroq Glacier.
But unlike Iceland,
there are no tour busses or hordes of visitors, and the hardy few who
take the extra flight from Nuuk, Reykjavik, or Copenhagen to experience
this lonely part of the world are rewarded with stunning views of
brutally beautiful mountains; the idyllic villages of Qassiarsuk,
Narsaq, and Nassarsuaq dotting the coastline; and an important slice of
history.
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While it seems the world is just waking up to Greenland, it has been
part of important trade routes since 982, when Erik the Red first
settled here. Not that Erik really wanted to come at first.
“Erik was banished from Iceland for three years,” Ole Guldager,
the manager of the Narsarsuaq Museum explained. “He had a very fierce
temper and killed a couple of slaves. Even though Vikings were very
fierce, this was not acceptable behavior so he was asked to leave for
three years. If he had stayed everybody had the right to kill him, so he
left for his own health.”
Erik sailed West and found the Tunulliarfik Fjord, which he was so taken with he decided to move there permanently.
“After
the three years of banishment he was allowed to go back, but he chose
to encourage others to come to Greenland,” Guldager explained. “You see,
in Greenland he would be king, where as in Iceland he would just be a
farmer — so he grabbed the chance to be the father of a nation.”
Today, visitors can fly into the short runway at Narsarsuaq — considered one of the ten most dangerous runways on earth
— and visit the Norse ruins at Qassiarsuk (formerly Brattahlid) across
the bay. Located at the mouth of the fjord, the modern day farming
village surrounds a reproduction of a Viking longhouse, the first church
in Greenland, as well as an ancient Inuit turf house. The scene is
bucolic — until one imagines what life is like for the people here eight
months out of the year.
“The fjord freezes up 10 meters thick and 20 kilometers long during the winter,” Sam Rutherford, owner of the Vintage Air Rally and pilot who has flown into Narsarsuaq several times, said. “It’s quite brutal.”
But
during the summer, the area is a slice of heaven. The weather warms and
stabilizes and visitors can hike to the ice sheet just two miles away,
mountain bike to glaciers, kayak, sail, and fish in the fjord — all
while keeping a look out for whales, polar bears, and seals.
The
main hotel in the area is the Narsarsuaq Hotel, which has 92 rooms and
stays open all year round. The hotel — as with most places in the
arctic, including Iceland — is not cheap. At $250 a night, it is a basic
hotel, but the restaurant serves world class food like ocean trout with
hollandaise, root vegetables, green beans, and a fresh salad. All
produce and meat are from the farms across the fjord or off the fishing
boats that set out daily and, considering how far away one is from the
rest of the world, surprisingly delicious.
For the more rugged amongst us, the Leif Erikkson Hostel in Qassiarsuk
is just down from the ruins and directly below a statue of Erik’s son,
Leif, that dominates this end of the fjord. For just $40 a night it is
clean, comfortable, and provides guests with mountain bikes and guides.
“The
Vikings lived here for 500 years — a very long time,” Guldager said.
“It is the same time span from Columbus to the present day — and then
they disappeared. Most scientists believe it was due to several things:
the environment, lack of trade. And the black plague had coursed through
Europe, opening up a back migration for betterment in Europe. A lot of
people simply vanished slowly.”
Thanks to tourism, the pristine landscape, and historical ruins, they are starting to come back.
