At dawn The Wandelgek took a boat from the Diskoline ferry service to Qeqertarsuaq on Disko Island about 100 kilometers west from Ilulissat.

It was a 2 hr boat ride seeing the about a 1000 meters high mountains of Disko continuously grow. The weather was kind of dreary and the boat passed an occasional iceberg before arriving at the port of the small village.

Arrival at the port

 

Just like in Ilulissat, there were whale cheekbones through which to enter the village…

The location of the port when it was 1st inhabited:

 

Qeqertarsuaq

Qeqertarsuaq is a port and town in Qeqertalik municipality, located on the south coast of Disko Island on the west coast of Greenland. Founded in 1773, the town is now home to a campus of the University of Copenhagen known as Arctic Station. Qeqertarsuaq is the Kalaallisut name for Disko Island and is also now used for several other islands on Greenland, including those formerly known as Upernavik and Herbert Island. Qeqertarsuaq means ‘the big island’ in Kalaallisut.

In 2013, the town had 845 inhabitants. The remainder of the population of the island (less than 50 people) lives in the Kangerluk settlement, a few hours by boat to the northwest.

It was quite different from the mainland villages I visited before in that it seemed to have even less experience with Tourists ?

One of the things I noticed in Ilulissat was that there were always local people selling souvenirs to tourists in the harbour area when a large cruise ship was due to arrive.

Overhere there were people running to the shore with souvenirs to sell when the cruiseship people had already set foot on the shore. It seemed to be more like “oh wow a ship has dropped anchor and I almost missed that. Need to grab some stuff to sell and start running!”?‍♂️?‍♀️?.

First things first though. The Wandelgek went to install himself in:

Hotel Disko

Hotel Disko Island is located in the town of Qeqertarsuaq. It boasts a beautiful location on Disko Bay with the basalt mountains forming a backdrop and numerous waterfalls can be seen cascading down the mountainside.

Looking out of his bedroom window, The Wandelgek could see a beautiful church a bit down the road…

City Walks

After settling in Hotel Disko’s main building, The Wandelgek decided to go on a 1st brisk morning walk. The church of Qeqertarsuaq was the 1st building he visited. It had a strange octagonal shape and looked a bit like the nordic staff churches seen in Scandinavia…

 

 

Random streets and houses of Qeqertarsuaq…

The house named Linda was one of the buildings owned by Hotel Disko and used to house guests…

The Wandelgek found this long road along the coastal line and started to follow it…

Until he reached the end at what looked like an old dump for machinery and building materials…

Typical Greenlandic houses on a cold, grey and cloudy morning…

The Wandelgek could definitely see the beauty of this village, but it was missing …something… and he was not sure what that “something” was.

Behind the bright colored houses, in the Disko Bay he saw giant icebergs that had been floating overhere all the way from the Kangia icefjord, south of Ilulissat. A distance of about 100 kilometres.

But although this sight, of icebergs towering high above the tiny colored houses, was totally awesome, The Wandelgek still felt he missed …something…

Near some of the houses were frame works like this, used to hang and dry fish and meat, without dogs being able to steal some of it.

On the way back towards the city center and hotel, it seemed the clouds started to lift and drift apart, showing blue sky and the sun feebly peeped through…

Just opposite of Hotel Disko was an open space and behind it some of the other buildings that belonged to the hotel. On this space which looked like it was the village center, was a lage stone and on it all sorts of carvings. The Wandelgek did ask around about that stone because it reminded me of similar older/ancient stones in that The Wandelgek had seen in small Swedish villages. Those had been old stones that were used as altar for village council assemblies and these were called Ding or Thing.

A thing was a governing assembly in early Germanic society, made up of the free people of the community presided over by lawspeakers. The word appears in Old Norse, Old English, and modern Icelandic as þing, in Middle English (as in modern English), Old Saxon, Old Dutch, and Old Frisian as thing, in German as Ding, and in modern Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Faroese, Gutnish, and Norn as ting, all from a reconstructed Proto-Germanic neuter *þingą; the word is the same as the more common English word thing, both having at their heart the basic meaning of “an assemblage, a coming together of parts”—in the one case, an “assembly” or “meeting”, in the other, an “entity”, “object”, or “thing”. The meeting-place of a thing was called a “thingstead” (Old English þingstede) or “thingstow” (Old English þingstōw).

The Anglo-Saxon folkmoot (Old English folcgemōt, “folk meeting”; Middle English folkesmōt; modern Norwegian folkemøte) was analogous, the forerunner to the witenagemōt and a precursor of the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Today the term lives on in the English term hustings, in the official names of national legislatures and political and judicial institutions of Nordic countries and, in the Manx form tyn, as a term for the three legislative bodies on the Isle of Man.

Greenland

In the early twentieth century, scholars identified two potential Greenlandic thing sites at Brattahlíð in Eiríksfjörður and Garðar in Einarsfjörður; both are located in the Eastern Settlement of Greenland. These two sites were located through a combination of written sources and archeological evidence. Between these two Greenlandic sites, there are a number of overlapping characteristics that support the hypothesis that these booth sites are assemblies. However, not all “assembly features” previously seen in Scandinavia appear at every assembly site, and there are also characteristics that have either not been recorded in Greenland or are unique to Greenland.

The temporary turf structures of the Greenlandic booths have only been recorded in Iceland and would not have been seen at the assembly sites of Viking Age Sweden. Further, the booth sites at Brattahlíð and Garðar were located close to high-status farms. Taken together, it indicates that trade would have taken place at these sites, and given the sparse nature of the Greenlandic settlement, it is reasonable that the participants of the thing would have taken the opportunity for social interaction or trade when gathered with others.

And although the people The Wandelgek spoke said it was nothing more than a modern work of art, he couldn’t stop thinking that it at least had to be linked to the Ting. Maybe it was just a work of art, but it was placed in the town center, where villagers meet and it was a stone covered with reliefs, which  was the custom in many other nordic countries.

Another reason why this had to be the city center was the presence of a column covered with communal messages…

I noticed the below note about the Greenlandic law concerning the dogs in town. The title translates as: “loose dogs in qaasuitsup communia must be chained immediately”.

And yes there were lots of chained dogs around the houses…

Only young dogs were allowed to walk around unchained.

 

Although adorable and beautiful to watch, still The Wandelgek felt as if …something… was missing…

A lot of Greenlandic people were or still are involved in hunting and fishing and apparently the houses were decorated accordingly…

I’m guessing not every bone or skull was meant for decoration. Some looked as if they were leftovers from skinning a seal in the garden or maybe a whale on a beach…

Mr. Blue Sky

Although the clouds had gradually been dissolving, it did take a while for the grey shroud to lift and finally make place for Mr. Blue Sky.

…and very slowly…but surely, The Wandelgek started to notice and understand what he had been missing. The sunshine of course! And it had such a great and vigourating impact on the tiny village:

Everything suddenly looked like an old black and white movie turned into Technicolor 🙂

The village is a photographer’s wet dream when Mr. Blue Sky shows his face…

The Wandelgek decided to walk to the beach…

Disko Island is actually much, much younger than Greenland and the island has a volcanic origin, unlike its larger brother. This volcanic origin could be seen on this beach, because it was a black sand beach. More about this in my next blog.

Icebergs keep passing by Disko Island and Qeqertarsuaq every year…

The blue hues of the icebergs and the icy waters around the island were like a true work of art…

On the column with messages from the community, which The Wandelgek had found in the center of the village, another message had been popping up in his mind a few times since 1st  1st reading it…

It reminded him of a Football tournament which was held right now in Qeqertarsuaq, between teams from different towns and villages all over Greenland. Had to see that!

For Europeans it is such a strange unworldly sight to see a soccer game with icebergs drifting in the background…

After the game, which was at the edge of the village, The Wandelgek went back into the village to see a bit of traditional Greenlandic dancing and music…

After this it was time for some groceries at the local Pilersuisoq supermarket and for diner at the Disko Hotel’s restaurant.

The quite large supermarket (for a village of about 850 inhabitants) had Kelloggs’s Star Wars Rogue One cereals on the shelf.