Qaqortoq
Qaqortoq is the largest town in South Greenland, with around 3,000 residents, its colourful houses climbing steeply up the hillside above a sheltered harbour on the Labrador Sea. Founded as a Danish colonial trading post in 1775 by Anders Olsen, it is one of the oldest European-established settlements in Greenland and has been continuously inhabited for around 4,300 years, with traces of Saqqaq culture from that period. The town centre is compact and walkable, centred on a historic square with Greenland's oldest fountain. The Stone and Man open-air sculpture project has placed 30 carvings by local and Scandinavian artists into the rocks, staircases, and cliff faces around the town, turning a walk through Qaqortoq into an informal art trail. It is the main hub for boat connections to the Norse ruins at Hvalsey and the UNESCO site at Igaliku.
South Greenland's Most Accessible Town, Where 4,300 Years of Arctic History Meets Colourful Colonial Architecture
Human presence around Qaqortoq stretches back to the Saqqaq culture around 2300 BCE, followed by the Dorset people and later the Thule culture, direct ancestors of the modern Greenlandic Inuit population. Norse settlers arrived in the area around 985 AD with Erik the Red's Eastern Settlement, and the landscape around Qaqortoq holds multiple Norse ruin sites accessible by boat. The modern town was founded in 1775 by Danish-Norwegian trader Anders Olsen, whose wife Tuperna was Greenlandic Inuit, and the colonial-era buildings around the town centre date from this period. The Church of Our Saviour, built in 1832, is one of the oldest continuously active churches in Greenland. The town's history is documented in the Qaqortoq Museum, which covers Inuit traditions, Norse history, and the colonial trading period, with a notable collection of tupilak carvings, traditional Greenlandic spirit figures made from bone, ivory, and antler.
The Stone and Man project, initiated in 1993, placed 30 artworks carved directly into the natural rock surfaces, staircases, building facades, and cliff faces around the town. The works were created by Greenlandic and Scandinavian artists and range from abstract forms to figurative representations of local life, mythology, and landscape. A map of all 30 locations is available from the tourist office, and finding them is one of the more engaging ways to explore the town on foot. The town square at the centre of Qaqortoq holds Greenland's oldest fountain, installed in 1928, and is surrounded by the most intact concentration of colonial-era buildings in South Greenland. The Great Greenland fur house, one of the town's main employers, processes sealskins and is sometimes open to visitors.
Qaqortoq is the practical hub for exploring the southern part of the Kujataa UNESCO World Heritage Site. Boat trips connect the town to Hvalsey Church, the best-preserved Norse ruin in Greenland and the site of the last recorded event involving the Norse in Greenland, a wedding celebrated in 1408. Igaliku and the Gardar cathedral ruins are also reachable by boat. The hot spring island of Uunartoq, where outdoor geothermal pools are surrounded by icebergs, is around an hour away by speedboat. Qaqortoq is accessible by helicopter from Narsarsuaq, by Air Greenland domestic flights, and by the Arctic Umiaq Line passenger ship which connects South Greenland settlements along the coast. Summer is the main visiting season, with most boat connections running from June to September.
