SAGA TRAILS

Brattahlið, Garðar, Hvalsey Fjord's Church and Herjolfsnes: four chieftain's farmsteads

in the Norse settlements of Greenland.

Jette ArneborgThe National Museum of Denmark

SAGA TRAILS

Brattahlið, Garðar, Hvalsey Fjord's Church and Herjolfsnes: four chieftain's farmsteads

in the Norse settlements of Greenland.

Jette ArneborgThe National Museum of Denmark

SAGA TRAILS - CONTENT

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SAGA TRAILS - BRATTAHLID, GARDAR, HVALSEY FJIORD´S CHURCH AND HERJULFNES:Four chieftain’s farmsteads in the Norse settlement of Greenland.

Jette Arneborg The National Museum of Denmark; Nanortalik museum;Narsaq museum; Qaqortoq museum;

Text: Jette Arneborg

Editing: Jette Arneborg and ….

Cover photo: Ivar Silis

Photographic editing: Niels Algreen Møller

Tranlations from Danish into English:Anne Bloch and David Robinson

Layout & Printed by:Linde Tryk . Denmark

ISBN:????

Sponsors:This project is co-financed by the EU-programme Interreg III BThe Destination Viking: Sagas & StorytellingThe Municipalities of Nanortalik, Qaqortoq and Narsaq.NORA Nordisk Atlantsamarbejde

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Brattahlið ....................................................................... 14

Garðar............................................................................ 42

Hvalsey Fjord's Church .............................................. 60

Herjolfsnes .................................................................... 74

Concluding Remarks................................................... 88

Fact Boxes ..................................................................... 89

More to Read.................................................................92

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We would also like to emphasise that this book owes its successful outcome to theefforts of several individuals: stud.mag. Niels Algreen Møller for his work with the manyillustrations that form an important part of this book, as well as museum curator, eme-ritus Hans Kapel and author Finn Lynge for proof reading and many valuable commentson the text.This book has been published with support from the EU's Northern PeripheryProgramme: Project "Sagas & Storytelling" as well as NORA/Nordatlantisk Atlant-samarbejde.These have, furthermore, in collaboration with our local districts, formedthe economic basis for the restoration and communication work that has begun atsome Norse sites; work which we hope will continue in the coming years.

It is our wish that this book will enlighten and inform - and at the same time stimulatean appetite for further visits to the many attractions in the landscape. Let SouthernGreenland's history show the way in the cultural landscape, out in the terrain, along thefjords and paths in the footsteps of the past.The old folk - both Norse and Inuit - haveleft their mark almost everywhere in this magnificent country and there is plenty tolook for. Here is an opportunity for the total immersion that more and more towndwellers are willing to travel far and wide in search of. Here you can wander as a pil-grim within yourself. Many themes and aspects can be incorporated and combined intoa cultural journey.The possibilities are legion when you follow the saga trail …..

Enjoy yourself!

Kristine Raahauge, Nanortalik MuseumGeorg Nygaard, Qaqortoq Museum

Rie Oldenburg, Narsaq Museum

WELCOME TO THE SAGA TRAIL

This book is intended as a helping hand to visitors to Southern Greenland's Norse areas- either when planning their visit or when actually standing on the ruin sites.What wasit really like back then when Norse farmers and hunters lived here? How and wheredid they build their houses, how were they fitted out - for everyday life and for speci-al occasions? What do the sagas tell us and what can archaeologists reveal? Often theremains from the past appear incomprehensible, the ruins inconceivable and incoherentand the historic reality hazy or obscured.

It is therefore with great pleasure that the three local museums in Southern Greenland,in Nanortalik, Qaqortoq and Narsaq, are able to present this book. Here the experien-ced and knowledgeable archaeologist Jette Arneborg tells of the large classic Norsesites in our area: Brattahlið, where Erik the Red settled with his family at the end of the980s; Garðar, where the Norsemen's bishop lived; Hvalsey Fjord's Farm and Church,where the latter is one of the best preserved Norse ruins in Greenland; and finallyHerjolfsnes, with its very different location compared to the other sites.An account is given of the links between the sites and the saga texts and the history ofthe archaeological excavations.The individual ruins are dealt with one by one - and thenthe whole is placed in the context of the broader Norse history, as can only be doneby someone who has immersed themselves in the subject, both in theory and practice,for many years.At the end of the text there are fact boxes intended to help the readernavigate the various written sources concerning Norse history. Some of these accountswere written down at the time, others are from much later periods. They all have incommon the fact that they originate from a time which is not our own and thereforeit can be difficult to interpret and understand their message - a fact which, unfortuna-tely, is regularly overlooked.The fact boxes give the reader an insight into the nature ofthese sources and their origins.

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The Icelandic scholar Arí Fróðí Thorgilsson (1067-1148) recounts that Greenland wassettled from Iceland at the end of the 10th century.At the head of the settlers was Erikthe Red, and he named the new country Greenland in order to tempt others to follow.

The Icelandic settlement took place in two areas: the Eastern Settlement (Østerbygden)on the southern part of Greenland's west coast, which today comprises the three SouthGreenland municipalities of Nanortalik, Qaqortoq and Narsaq, and the Western Settle-ment (Vesterbygden) in the present-day Nuuk municipality.The settlements in the tworegions were made up of single farmsteads.

The Norse settlement lasted for almost five centuries. The last farmsteads in theEastern Settlement were abandoned by their inhabitants in the second half of the 15th

century. By that time the more northerly situated Western Settlement had probably lainuninhabited for almost a century.The reason or reasons for abandonment must presu-mably be sought in the changing climatic, political and economic situations in NorthernEurope at that time.

The story of the Landnam and of life as it unfolded on the farmsteads by theGreenlandic fjords was kept alive in Iceland where the gripping and fascinating tales ofthe first Norse Greenlanders and their new life in Greenland were passed on fromgeneration to generation - first by word of mouth and later as written accounts.Thestories of how Erik the Red found Greenland and settled there and how Leif the Luckyconverted the Greenlanders to Christianity and discovered America are inextricablybound up with the Norse settlement of South Greenland.

LANDNAM IN THE EASTERN SETTLEMENTThe Icelandic text Sturlubók Landnámu (fact box 1), from the first half of the 13th centu-ry, gives the first insight into the settlement history of the Eastern Settlement.Accordingto this text, 25 ships accompanied Erik the Red from Iceland. Only 14 of them reachedGreenland. Erik himself settled at Brattahlið in Erik's Fjord.The other Landnam settlersincluded Erik's cousin Thorkel Farserk who took possession of Hvalsey Fjord, Einar whotook Einar's Fjord, and Herjolf who took Herjolf's Fjord and settled on Herjolfsnes.Thefarmsteads in Hvalsey Fjord and in Einar´s Fjord are not mentioned directly, but in lateraccounts we are told about the farm at Hvalsey Fjord church and the farm of Garðarwhere later the Greenlandic bishop resided.

THE IDENTIFICATION AND EARLY INVESTIGATION OF THE NORSEFARMSTEADS IN THE EASTERN SETTLEMENTIn 1262 the Norse Greenlanders submitted themselves to the Norwegian king and withthis the responsibility for communication with the distant settlements passed toNorway and later - after the union with Denmark in 1380 - to the Danish-Norwegian

Figure 1: Greenland with the two Norse settlement regions.The northern Western Settlement was in now-adays Nuuk region where Nuuk the capital of Greenland is situated.

1110

Official communication ceased in the first decades of the 15th century and when thecontacts were re-established in 1721 the Norse settlements had been abandoned formany years.

The end of the 18th century saw the start of an intense search for traces of theNorsemen. On a map produced in 1844 for a large work on Norse Greenland, about10 groups of ruins are marked in the Western Settlement and about 85 in the EasternSettlement. Today there are around 100 recorded groups of ruins in the WesternSettlement and 500 in the Eastern Settlement, including the small settled area aroundArsuk-Ivittuut, which is also known as the Middle Settlement.

The names of prominent places in the landscape, fjords, farmsteads and churches, arefound preserved in the saga texts and, not least, in Norwegian priest Ivar Bardarson'sDescription of Greenland dating from the end of the 14th century (fact box 2).

Ivar noted the names of fjords and churches in order from south to north.The samesequence is used for the Greenlandic churches included in a church list found writtenin the large Flateyarbók, which dates from around 1390 (fact box 3).

As early as 1844, in connection with the production of the map showing the ruins, anattempt was made to allocate names to the numerous ruins recorded in the landscapeon the basis of the surviving place names.The many ruins in Igaliku in Igaliku Fjord wereidentified as Erik the Red's Brattahlið.The ruins in Igaliku Kujalleq, also in Igaliku Fjord,were identified as the Norse Episcopal Residence of Garðar, whereas the well-preser-ved church ruin in Qaqortoq Fjord was identified with Hvalsey, and the ruins at Ikigaatas Herjolfsnes.New reading of the old accounts at the end of the 19th century led the Icelandic philo-logist Finnur Jónsson to suggest that Erik the Red's farmstead Brattahlið was identicalwith the ruins at Qassiarsuk in Tunulliarfik Fjord, whereas it was the ruins at Igaliku, andnot those at Igaliku Kujalleq, that corresponded to the Episcopal Residence of Garðar.The finding of a bishop's grave in the churchyard at Igaliku during the excavations in1926 seems to confirm Jónsson's identification. Since then no significant objections havebeen raised to the sites identified as those of the four large Norse farmsteadsBrattahlið, Garðar, Hvalsey and Herjolfsnes. Erik the Red's Brattahlið lay on the site ofthe present-day settlement of Qassiarsuk.The Episcopal Residence of Garðar lay wherethe settlement of Igaliku now lies, Hvalsey lies at the head of Qaqortoq Fjord andHerjolfsnes now bears the name Ikigaat.

THE LARGE FARMSTEADS OF BRATTAHLIÐ, GARÐAR, HVALSEYAND HERJOLFSNESNorse Greenlandic society was hierarchical and status came to be expressed in the way

Figure 2:To day about 100 ruin groups are recorded in the Western Settlement (Vesterbygden) andabout 500 in the Eastern Settlement (Østerbygden & Mellembygden).

1312

the individual farmsteads were organised and equipped and this, in turn, reflects theeconomic basis for the farmstead.

The farmsteads' economy relied on a combination of livestock farming, hunting and fish-ing. Cattle were seen as being the most valuable and most prestigious of the Norse-men's animals.They were also the most laborious to keep alive. Due to the severe cli-mate, cattle had to be kept in byres for many months of the year and this required thecollection of great quantities of winter fodder.The large farmsteads are, accordingly, cha-racterised by large infields with rich pastures and large byre and barn complexes.

In addition to cattle, there were on the farmsteads also sheep, goats, horses, dogs andcats. In the early settlement period pigs were also kept. Cattle, sheep and goats werekept first and foremost for their milk. Sheep were also important as suppliers of woolfor the production of textiles. Horses were used for transport. Finds of animal bonesfrom the farmsteads' middens also show that the Norsemen satisfied the greater partof their meat consumption through hunting seals and - especially in the WesternSettlement - reindeer.This was also the case for all the large wealthy farmsteads.

The Norse Greenlanders were dependant on imports from outside. Iron was a veryimportant imported commodity, whereas walrus ivory was their most significant exportitem.The fact that it was the large farmers who organised the trade is revealed by thelarge stone warehouses located on the farmsteads and close to the water in placeswhere it was deep enough for trading ships to dock. The warehouses were used tostore walrus ivory and other commodities such as hides and furs until the merchantsfrom Norway came along.

The Norsemen were Christians and farmers at the individual farms built their churchesin close connection to the farmstead.As in Iceland, the church was the private proper-ty of the respective farmer and the church's income went to the church's owner.Thechurch was, accordingly, not an insignificant source of income for the Greenlandic largefarmers.The church building was a status symbol for the large farmers.Another way inwhich they could show their status and position in society was to gather their relationsand friends about them and entertain them royally. Not only was the entertainmentitself important, the surroundings were too.Therefore the large farmers had magnifici-ent halls built which were used only for this purpose.At Garðar, the Hvalsey farmsteadand Herjolfsnes, beautifully constructed halls were built in the later settlement period.At Brattahlið too there was a hall, but unlike the three other farmsteads, this was alsoused for everyday functions and activities.

Figure 3:The ruins in Qassiarsuk have been identified with Erik the Red's Brattahlið, the ruins in Igalikuwith the bishop see Garðar, the ruins at the head of Qaqortoq fjord with Hvalsey Fjord church (Hvalseyfjordens kirke), and the ruins at Ikigaat with Herjolfsnes.

1514

that the events are believed to have taken place and the time at which they were writ-ten down.

If we look at the accounts of such important events as the introduction of Christianityto Greenland and the discovery of Vinland, the two sagas are not in agreement - andthey cannot both be telling the true story.There must, therefore, have been manipula-tion of at least one of them. Accounts from distant Greenland and even more distantVinland have fascinated people for centuries, right up to the present day. However,uncritical acceptance of the Icelandic saga accounts as fully credible sources concerningthe events that unfolded in Greenland around 1000 would be a mistake.The sagas couldcontain credible details but the boundary between fact and fiction is very difficult toascertain.The saga accounts must, first of all, be seen as expressions of the contempo-rary perception of the course of events.That is to say, 13th century perceptions - thetime at which the accounts became fixed on paper.The fact that Brattahlið is given adominant role in the accounts must be seen as an expression of either Brattahlið havingplayed an important role in the surviving tradition, or that Brattahlið occupied a speci-al position at the time when the accounts were written. Both of these are probably trueas Brattahlið is also mentioned in other sources, which are believed to be independentof the sagas.

THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY TO GREENLAND AND THEFIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH AT BRATTAHLIÐIn Eirik's Saga there is an account of Leif Eriksson who was in Norway with King OlafTryggvasson, who reigned from 995 to 1000.The king asked Leif to spread the ChristianGospel among the Norse Greenlanders. On his way back to Greenland Leif discoveredVinland and he rescued shipwrecked mariners from a rock. For this reason he was giventhe epithet "the Fortunate" or "the Lucky". Leif worked as a missionary among theGreenlanders and his mother,Tjodhilde, converted. She had a church built at Brattahlið- but not too close to the farm. Erik the Red held on stubbornly to his old faith andTjodhilde therefore refused to sleep with him until he had allowed himself to be conver-ted.The church, which Tjodhilde had built at Brattahlið, was called "Tjodhilde's Church".

In Grænlendinge Saga we are merely told that Erik the Red was dead before Christianitycame to Greenland.

THE VOYAGES TO VINLAND FROM BRATTAHLIÐBoth in Grænlendinge Saga and Eirik's Saga, Brattahlið is the starting point for the Vinlandvoyages, but here too there is disagreement between the two sagas regarding the cour-se of events. In Grænlendinge Saga Bjarne - son of Herjolf at Herjolfsnes - is given thehonour of having discovered the new land to the west, whereas in Eirik's Saga it was LeifEriksson who first discovered and set foot on the new land.

Brattahlið, QassiarsukBRATTAHLIÐ IN THE ICELANDIC SAGASAn account of Brattahlið without the stories about Erik the Red, his wife Tjodhilde, theirson Leif the Lucky, the introduction of Christianity to Greenland and the journeys toVinland is unthinkable. Brattahlið was where these events either started or took place- if we are to believe the authors of the Icelandic sagas.

Eirik's Saga (fact box 4) and Grænlendinga Saga (fact box 5) are the two sagas, whichrecount events in Greenland and Vinland in the 11th century.The origin of the sagas isdated to the 13th century. Saga researchers disagree with regard to the extent to whichthe two sagas, in their original form, were written independently of each other on thebasis of the same oral tradition, or whether one of the sagas is older than the other,and whether the older of the two was the source of the younger.

Questions regarding the mutual relationship between the two sagas are not the onlyproblem met with in using the saga texts as narrative historical sources.As already men-tioned, the two sagas are believed to have been written sometime in the 13th century,whereas the events they describe allegedly took place around 1000. It is assumed thatthe sagas build on an epic tradition that survived orally from generation to generation.So even though there is a theory that it is the content rather than the form of the oraltransmission that - so to say - has kept the tradition alive, many changes in the accountscould have taken place in the course of the 200-250 years that elapsed between the time

Figure 4: Qassiarsuk, Erik the Red´s Brattahlid, today. Photo Ivars Silis.

1716

According to Eirik's Saga it was Leif Eriksson who first found Vinland. It tells that Leif,together with his ship's crew, lost their way at sea on a voyage from Norway and theycame to a land unknown to them where wild wheat, vines and maple grew. After col-lecting a little of everything, they continued to Greenland and shortly afterwards theylanded at Brattahlið, though first after saving shipwrecked mariners stranded on somerocks.

Thorstein, Leif¨s brother, wanted to explore the newly discovered land and organised aship and crew. Erik the Red agreed to take part.Thorstein and Erik, however, lost theirway at sea and after both sighting Iceland and observing birds that came from Irelandthey abandoned their venture and they returned exhausted to Brattahlið before thewinter set in.

Thorstein married Gudrid who had come to Greenland some time previously.Togetherthey moved to Thorstein's farmstead in Lyse Fjord in Vesterbygden, but Thorstein diedalready that same winter. His body was taken to Erik's Fjord where he was buried atthe church, and Gudrid moved in with Erik the Red at Brattahlið. In the autumn, tradingships arrived in Erik's Fjord and the merchants, including the Icelander ThorfinnKarlsefni, were invited to spend the winter at Brattahlið. Karlsefni accepted, and befo-re the winter was over he was married to Gudrid.

Throughout the winter the talk at Brattahlið was that they should seek out Leif'sVinland, and Karlsefni and another of the merchants, Snorri Thorbrandsson, decidedthat they would find and explore the new land. Many joined them, including Thorvald,son of Erik the Red, and when the group set sail from the Eastern Settlement the mem-bers of the expedition numbered no less than 160.They spent three winters in Vinland,but after several confrontations with the Skraellings, when among others ThorvaldEriksson was killed, they abandoned the idea of staying in this otherwise very rich land.The survivors in Karlsefni's group returned to Greenland, where they stayed with Erikthe Red at Brattahlið.The following summer, Karlsefni and Gudrid left for Iceland wherethey became the founders of a large and very respected Icelandic lineage, which inclu-ded several Icelandic bishops.

Was it Leif Eriksson from Brattahlið or Bjarne Herjolfsson from Herjolfsnes who firstsaw the new land? Whether it was Leif, Bjarne or maybe another person quite unknownto us today who first discovered Vinland, and whether it was Erik the Red's sons fromBrattahlið, Thorfinn Karlsefni or others who made the attempt to colonise the newlands we will never know for sure. Not only are we faced with the obvious critical pro-blems presented by the written texts, our lack of insight into how the tradition was han-ded down between the time the events are presumed to have taken place and the timeat which they were written down reduces the texts' value as historical sources.

If we follow Grænlendinge Saga, Bjarne Herjolfsson's discoveries greatly occupied mindsin Greenland and Erik's son Leif bought Bjarne's ship in order to find the new land forhimself. Leif persuaded his ageing father to accompany him but on the way to the shipErik's horse stumbled, Erik injured his leg and decided to stay at home at Brattahlið.

After having found and named Helluland, Markland and Vinland, Leif returned toBrattahlið the following spring with his ship heavily laden with grapes and timber. Onthe way he and his crew rescued a group of stranded mariners from a rock.Among theshipwrecked seafarers were the Norwegian merchant Thorir and his wife Gudrid, whoLeif invited to stay at Brattahlið.Thorir and his entourage stayed over the summer butduring the subsequent winter a serious illness broke out among Thorir's men and manydied at Brattahlið that winter, including Thorir and Erik the Red.

Talk of Leif's voyage would not die down and Thorvald, Leif's brother, decided that hewould investigate the newly discovered lands more closely.Thorvald's voyage did not,however, proceed quite so peacefully as Leif's. He and his men came into conflict withSkraellings and Thorvald was mortally wounded. He was buried in foreign soil, whereashis men returned home to Brattahlið the following spring with their ship filled with gra-pes.

Thorstein, Leif´s other brother, wanted to bring Thorvald's body home to Brattahlið inorder for him to be given a Christian burial.Together with his new wife Gudrid,Thorir'swidow,Thorstein set off that same summer. However, they never reached Vinland.Aftersailing lost around the sea most of the summer the ship reached Lyse Fjord in theWestern Settlement shortly before the onset of winter, and Thorstein, Gudrid and theirship's crew stayed here for the winter.Thorstein died in the Western Settlement thatsame winter and Gudrid, who had again been widowed, went to stay with her brother-in-law Leif at Brattahlið.

The same summer that Gudrid returned to Brattahlið, Leif received a visit from theIcelandic merchant Thorfinn Karlsefni. Karlsefni and his ship's crew settled at Brattahliðand before the winter was over Karlsefni had married Gudrid.

Talk of Vinland was still intense, and Karlsefni and Gudrid decided to seek the land tothe west. Like Thorvald before them, Karlsefni and his men came into conflict with theSkraellings and Karlsefni decided to return to Greenland.After a season in Vinland theyarrived safely in Erik's Fjord with the ship heavily laden with grapes and valuable pelts.

Freydis, Erik the Red's daughter, is the last Vinland traveller to be mentioned inGrænlendinge Saga. Freydis, who was married to the farmer at Garðar, set off togetherwith the Icelandic brothers Helgi and Finnbogi.After dramatic events in Vinland, whichcost the two brothers their lives, Freydis returned home to Greenland with the shipheavily laden with valuable Vinland products.

1918

The earliest description we have from the area is that of the Danish official Peder OlsenWalløe. In 1751 Walløe travelled south from Godthåb as it was then - now Nuuk - withthe intention of searching for the Norse Eastern Settlement.Walløe does not mentionQassiarsuk by name, but there can be little doubt that he must have been in the vicini-ty if not directly on the spot.After spending several nights with the Greenlandic famili-es on the way into Tunulliarfik Fjord he reached "…a large river which rises from the InlandIce and flows down through a sandy valley, the length of which from the Inland Ice and downto the shore of the fjord could be reckoned to about one Mile [= c. 7.5km]…".This placemust be Narsarsuaq where the airport lies today - directly opposite Qassiarsuk.Walløeinvestigated the inner part of Tunulliarfik which he found very attractive with "…smallwoods and scrub, also lovely, grass-covered water meadows, fields and plains where there weretraces of the habitations of the old Christian Norwegians and Icelanders". In two places hewas even of the opinion that he had found the ruins of church buildings.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT BRATTAHLIÐThe more systematic mapping of the Norse ruins in Tunulliarfik began at the beginningof the 1800s when officials from the then colony of Julianehåb - today Qaqortoq - tra-velled around and carried out surveys.The initiative for this mapping exercise was takenin Copenhagen by the newly established Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries (Detkongelige nordiske Oldskriftsselskab) and the results of the investigations were subseq-uently published, in the period between 1838 and 1845, in the three-volume workGrønlands Historiske Mindesmærker. A clerk at the colony of Julianehåb, Ove Kielsen, visi-ted Qassiarsuk in 1832 and he described the ruins on both sides of the river which divi-des the northern plain. He carried out excavations in the largest of the ruins, which layclosest to the shore, and established that here were the remains of a church. Eight yearslater, in 1840, Pastor Jørgensen, also from Julianehåb, made a similar journey intoTunulliarfik Fjord at which time he described Qassiarsuk as perhaps the most beautifulplace in all Greenland!

Captain Gustav Holm established the basis for the systematic descriptions of the indi-vidual Norse ruins in Greenland in 1880, and Holm's work was followed up by CaptainDaniel Bruun in 1894. Bruun introduced the system of numbering of the Norse ruins inGreenland which has been used ever since. The ruins on Qassiarsuk's southern plainwere given the term Ø (for Østerbygden/the Eastern Settlement) 28, whereas the ruinson the northern plain were given the term Ø29.The latter was subsequently subdivi-ded such that Ø29 now only covers the ruins south of the river.The ruins to the northof the river were given the term Ø29a and those at the so-called Fell Farm were giventhe term Ø29b (figure 5).

THE FARMERS AT BRATTAHLIÐ ACCORDING TO THE SAGASAccording to Sturlubók Landnámu (fact box 1), Erik's son Leif took over the farm atBrattahlið after Erik's death.This must have happened sometime in the years after 1000.According to the saga chronology Leif died around 1021, and in Fóstbrædra Saga (factbox 6), where the events apparently take place in the first decades of the 11th century,it is Leif's son Thorkel who is the farmer at Brattahlið.According to Eirik's Saga, Thorkelwas the son Leif had in the Hebrides with the chieftain's daughter Thorgunna.

We are not told who took over the farm after Thorkel, but at the beginning of the 12th

century, The Story of Einar, Sokke's Son (fact box 7) mentions Sokke Thorerson as the far-mer at Brattahlið.The events described in The Story of Einar, Sokke's Son allegedly tookplace at the beginning of the 12th century, when Sokke took the initiative to establish aEpiscopal Residence in Greenland, and Sokke's son, Einar, was chosen as the person toconvey the Greenlanders' wishes to King Sigurd Jorsalfar (1103-1130) in Norway.Theking appointed the priest Arnald, but before Arnald took up his position as theGreenlanders' first bishop, Einar had to swear that he would always defend the rightsof the Episcopal Residence.This was a promise, which later came to cost him his life.He was killed in a conflict about the bishop's right to inherit before he himself was ableto take over the Brattahlið farm.

Sokke Thorersøn is the last Brattahlið farmer to be mentioned in the survivingaccounts, and this was at the beginning of the 1120s.

Ivar Bardarson's Description of Greenland (fact box 2), from the end of the 14th century,mentions that the Lagmand used to live at Brattahlið.Whether the word used suggeststhat the Lagman (in the second half of the 14th century) no longer lived at Brattahlið isunknown.The Lagman was knowledgeable about the law and presumably acted as thejudiciary in legal matters. Following Greenland's accession to the Norwegian Dominionin 1262 the Lagman became a royal official.

THE EARLIEST DESCRIPTIONS OF THE RUINS AT QASSIARSUKThe settlement of Qassiarsuk lies on the eastside of Tunulliarfik Fjord, directly opposi-te the airport in Narsarsuaq.A bedrock feature divides the great plain into a northernand a southern part.The northern part of the plain is cut through by a substantial river,which empties into Tunulliarfik.

As early as 1723, only two years after his arrival in Greenland, Hans Egede, in his searchfor the Eastern Settlement, undertook a journey south from Håbets Ø near Nuuk inthe Norse Western Settlement, where he had settled. Egede and his company did nottravel into Tunulliarfik (Eriks Fjord) (figure 3), but it is apparent from the accounts of thejourney that they sailed past a fjord called Tunilliabik, and Greenlanders in the area toldhim that there were stone-built houses and woodland here.

2120

Daniel Bruun carried out a number of archaeological investigations in connection withhis visit in 1894.The main investigation of Qassiarsuk's ruins took place in 1932 withPoul Nørlund from the Danish National Museum at the fore. The most recent largearchaeological investigations took place between 1961 and 1964 when remains of thesmall, so-called "Tjodhilde's Church" was located near the present-day church. Theinvestigations of "Tjodhilde's Church" were carried out under the direction of firstJørgen Meldgaard and later Knud J. Krogh, both from the Danish National Museum.

BRATTAHLIÐ'S RUINSThe summary plan (figure 5) shows all the ruins recorded at Qassiarsuk since the firstsurveys took place. When Hans Egede and later Peder Olsen Walløe travelled inTunulliarfik Fjord in the 1700s, the latter was described as densely populated. In the1800s, the inhabitants had moved to the Danish colony of Julianehåb, but Ove Kielsen,Pastor Jørgensen and Gustav Holm all describe how the later Thule Culture people hadbuilt their houses inside old Norse ruins. Some of the ruins had been used as burial pla-ces. Due to the subsequent great construction activity, the larger ruins were heavilydegraded already in the 1800s, in comparison with other Norse farmsteads where therehad not been later settlement.The present-day sheep farming settlement was foundedin 1924 and several ruins have disappeared subsequently to make room for modernbuildings.

The many ruins which can be seen on the ruin map represent those structures whichwere built on the plain during the almost 500 years the place was occupied byNorsemen. In most cases we do not know when the individual houses were built butas a general rule we assume that the recorded ruins are of houses, which were in useup to the time of abandonment.

The North Farm's large ruined church, large house complexes, byre buildings, numerousanimal pens and storehouses dominate the groups of ruins.A stone warehouse by thefjord now disappeared may have belonged to the site as a whole (figure 5).

It is unclear whether the individual groups of ruins were independent units with diffe-rent owners within the same family or whether all the buildings at Brattahlið belongedto one large farm.

Figure 5: Overview/summary of the Brattahlið ruins produced in connection with the archaeological invest-igations in 1932.Ruin group Ø28, South Farm (Sydgården), composed of ruins 45-58.Ruingroup Ø28a, Ruins 30-40 are also referred to as "Thingstead" ("Tingstedet"). Ruin 45 lies betweenSouth Farm and the Thingstead at River Farm.Ruin group Ø29, River Farm (Elvgården), the ruins of which lie opposite to The North Farm, Ø29a.TheRiver Farm is composed of ruins 18-29. On the rocky outcrop between the River Farm and the"Thingstead" Gustav Holm in 1881 described a warehouse of stone.Ruin group Ø29a, North Farm (Nordgården), composed of ruins 1-17 and 59-61. North Farm is also cal-led Erik the Red's Farm.Ruin group Ø29b, Fell Farm (Fjeldgården) lies on the fell directly opposite the North Farm. Fell Farm iscomposed of ruins 1-8 (see also figure 21).

Ø29b

Ø29a

Ø29Ø28a

Warehouse

Ø28

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NORTH FARM, Ø29ANorth Farm (figure 6) has also been called Erik the Red's Farm as it was long assumedto be here that Erik the Red and his family settled when they came to Greenland at theend of the 10th century. However, Erik the Red had probably been dead for decadeswhen the houses, of which we see the ruins today, were in use. It seems more likely thatTjodhilde's Church, ruin 59, and the presumed living house, ruin 60, were among thefirst houses constructed on the plain and that they are from Erik's time.

Figure 6: Brattahlið - North Farm, ruin group Ø29a.Ruin 1. Church. External dimensions c. 15 x 7.5m. Investigated archaeologically in 1932. See descriptionbelow.Ruin 2. Dwelling house. External dimensions c. 50 x 10-15m. Investigated archaeologically in 1932. Seedescription below.Ruin 3. Storehouse. Internal dimensions c. 10.7 x 2.25m. Archaeological investigations in 1932. Duringthe investigations in 1932 Inuit graves were found in the ruin.These graves are dated to 17th-18th cen-tury.Ruin 4. Probable storehouse. Internal dimensions c. 10.5 x 2.5m.The building was constructed of stoneand turf and was presumably partly demolished already in Norse times.Ruin 5. Byre-barn complex with accommodation for 18-19 cows. External dimensions c. 53 x 8-12m.Archaeologically investigated in 1932. See description below.Ruin 6. Probably a byre - presumed to have gone out of use already in Norse times.Ruin 7. Byre or storehouse. Internal dimensions c. 14 x 3m.Ruin 8. Pen for milking. External dimensions c. 30 x 8-12m.Ruin 9. Storehouse (skemma). Internal dimensions c. 9.5 x 2m. Sited high up so that the wind could blowthrough the openings between the stones and in this way conserve what was stored in the building. Duringthe archaeological investigations in 1932 later Inuit graves were encountered in the building. Similarly, itcould be established that stones from the structure had been re-used as building material for the newerbuildings in the vicinity.Ruins 10 & 11. Byre and associated milking pen. Internal dimensions c. 9 x 2.5-4.5m.The ruins lie onopposite sites of the infield dyke (ruin 61).Ruin 11, the milking pen, lies outside this boundary.Ruin 12. Byre-barn. Internal dimensions c. 10-12 x 2.5m. Partially investigated archaeologically in 1932.Ruin 13. Barn or animal shelter. Internal dimensions c. 4 x 2.3m. Constructed of red sandstone blockswith no mortar or sealing medium between them.Ruin 14. Byre? Storehouse? Internal dimensions c. 12 x 3.5m. Investigated archaeologically by GustavHolm in 1881, though without it being possible to establish the function of the building.Ruin 15. Barn or storehouse. Internal dimensions c. 5 x 2m.The building was constructed in stone withoutany mortar or sealing medium.Ruin 16. Pen.Ruin 17: Pen.Ruin 59. "Tjodhilde's Church". Internal dimensions c. 3.5 x 2m.The church is from the 11th century. Itwas discovered in 1961 and excavated in subsequent years. See description below. A copy of this littlechurch was constructed in 2000 immediately north of the central part of North Farm.Ruin 60. Probably a dwelling house.The building was constructed in the same way as Tjodhilde's Churchand is probably contemporary with this.The remains of the house, which were investigated archaeologi-cally in 1974, cannot be seen above ground.Ruin 61. Stone-built dyke which separates the infield from the outfield.

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Figure 7: Dwelling house, ruin 2 - according to the plans from the excavation in 1932.Room I has internal dimensions of c. 15 x 4.5m.The building was constructed of flat sandstones with thinturf layers between them.The rear wall to the west is also insulated externally with a thick turf wall. Asingle door leads into the room and the entrance area is paved with flat stones.There was a stampedearth floor with some sections covered with flat paving stones.There were several hearths in the roomand the finding of animal bones and broken soapstone vessels around the hearths shows that, in addi-tion to functioning as sources of light and warmth, these hearths had also been used for cooking.Approximately in the middle of the room the archaeologists found a c. 1m broad and 60cm deep stone-lined cistern for the collection of ground water. A stone-lined channel from the rear wall carried water tothe structure, whereas another carried the surplus water away from the cistern so that no flooding occur-red in the room itself.In addition to the animal bones and soapstone vessels, equipment for the production of textiles has alsobeen found in the room, showing that the farm's loom was located here, while beads, gaming pieces andother small items bear witness to the everyday life which went on here.Cistern structures such as that described above are only known from one other farmstead in the Norsesettlements in Greenland, namely from the so-called Landnam Farm (Landnamsgård) at Narsaq. TheNarsaq house has been radiocarbon dated to the 11th century and the Brattahlið house could be fromthe same period.The latter, however, clearly overlies the remains of walls from an earlier house, i.e. room1 is not the oldest building at this location.Rooms II, III, IV and V make up the house complex's northern end.The rooms are connected by a pavedpassage, although it has not been possible to establish with certainty the existence of an entrance lea-ding from the passage into room II. Room II has an entrance at its southern end.There are also uncer-tainties regarding the entrance to room V.While the functions of rooms III, IV and V are unclear, room IIwas occupied on a daily basis and it was here that, among other things, food was prepared.The internaldimensions of the room are c. 6.5 x 4m. In the centre of the room there was a large hearth with an ashpit, and along the west wall there was an earth platform which presumably had wooden cladding.Thisbench served as a sitting and sleeping place.The finding of a small piece of glazed European potteryshows that the room was in use in the 14th century.The southern end of the house complex (room VI) comprises a well-built cistern house with two waterreservoirs, an upper and a lower, which gathered water from a natural spring at the site.The upper basinhas internal dimensions of c. 2.2 x 0.55m.The depth at the time of the excavation was c. 1.15m.Thelower basin measures c. 1.25 x 0.7m and at the time of the excavation it had a depth of 1.55m.Waterran from the upper basin down into the lower, and from here surplus water was led away through stone-lined channels to the midden in front of the house.The cistern house was covered.The finds from it inclu-ded a double-sided comb, which shows that the structure was in use after 1200.How the area in front of the hall (room I) and between the northern part of the house and the cisternhouse was used remains unresolved.Various sections of wall suggest that there were also buildings here.The water channel from the great hall, room I, leads directly out into this area and it is therefore incon-ceivable that there were living quarters here at the same time as the cistern structure in room I was inuse.

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THE DWELLING HOUSE, RUIN 2The dwelling house (figure 7) comprises a series of rooms lying in extension of oneanother and with some further individual rooms built on to the rear of the row.Thehouse was constructed using alternate courses of stone and turf.A glance at the plan,which was produced in connection with the excavations in 1932, shows that the exca-vators had problems with interpreting the various sections of wall and their relations-hip to each other.This is due to the fact that the excavations were carried out at onelevel only - not stratigraphically as would be the case today. We know that theNorsemen almost as a rule never moved their houses once they had found the rightlocation. Instead they built on top of the previous building or built on extensions.Accordingly, a house from the 15th century could lie over the remains of earlier hou-ses, of which the oldest could be from the 11th century.The stratigraphic method ofexcavation ensures that the archaeologists maintain an overview of the internal chro-nological relationships between the individual structures, enabling the identification ofdifferent periods of time and construction phases of the house.

As the ruin now stands, it has been possible to identify seven rooms, the most remar-kable of which is the great hall (room I) on the plan figure 7).The house was probablyoccupied up until the time of abandonment.

BYRE AND BARN, RUIN 5The byre-barn complex (figure 8) lies in direct association with the dwelling house.Thecomplex comprises two byres with associated hay barns.Vertical flagstones separate thebyre stalls. The building complex also includes a building - presumably for sheep andgoats - where the animals were housed un-tethered.West of this is a pen which presu-mably was also used for sheep and goats.The building is constructed of stone and turfand has a very thick protective external turf wall.

The byre complex was presumably in use up to the time of abandonment.

THE CHURCHES, RUINS 1 AND 59Contrary to all the other Norse farmsteads in Greenland two church buildings arerecorded from Qassiarsuk, both with links to Brattahlið's North Farm. The earlier ofthe two churches is the small so-called "Tjodhilde's Church", ruin 59, near the river,while the large church ruin (ruin 1) near the house is the remains of the last church atBrattahlið, constructed after 1300. It was the latter church that Kielsen described alrea-dy in 1832 (see above). Since 1832, numerous small excavations have been carried outin the church.

Figure 8: Byre and barn complex, ruin 5 - plan from the excavations in 1932.The long byre complex comprised originally two separate byre-barn buildings (rooms I + II and rooms IV+ V), which at some point in time were linked by the construction of room III, which presumably was usedto house sheep and goats.Room I, which has internal dimensions of c. 9.8 x 3.5m, functioned as a barn for the byre, room II.Thebyre measures c. 7.5 x 3.5m internally.The floors were paved with flagstones with a dung channel run-ning down through the middle of the room.Vertical flagstones separate the individual stalls and from theseit appears that the byre had room for 11 cows.The western part of the building comprises a byre, room V, with associated barn, room IV.The barn mea-sures c. 7 x 3m internally, while the byre's internal dimensions are c. 5 x 3m.This byre too had a flagsto-ne floor with a dung channel in the middle and vertical stones separating the stalls.The byre had roomfor seven or eight cows. During the excavations in 1932, archaeologists found a large flat piece of wha-lebone in the opening between the byre and barn.This could have functioned as a door between the tworooms.Sheep and goat house, room III, measures c. 11 x 3.8m internally, and had similarly a flagstone floor.

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The main investigation of the latest church took place in 1932, 100 years after Kielsen'svisit.The church was constructed in stone and consisted of a single room. Under thewalls the archaeologists found the remains of an earlier church of Romanesque typewith a nave and a narrower chancel to the east (figure 9).

A small churchyard surrounded the church building.The stone-built churchyard wall isone of the best preserved in the Norse settlements in Greenland. Excavations in thechurchyard revealed several layers of burials and the many disturbed graves suggest thatthe churchyard was in use over a longer period.

The burials had taken place both with and without coffins. Heavily degraded fragmentsof cloth showed that some of the deceased were buried wrapped in items of clothing,others were buried in wooden coffins. In several graves, either a stone or cut turves hadbeen placed behind the deceased's head. In another grave, a little rectangular stone cistcontaining charcoal and ash had been placed by the deceased's feet.Above ground, seve-ral of the graves were marked with gravestones (marked on the plan with a small cross).Most were without an inscription. One bore a cross (figure 10). Several graves had alittle headstone above ground at the end of the horizontal gravestone to mark the placeof burial.

Figure 10: Gravestone with a cross found at the church yard. Thegravestone today belongs to The Greenland National Museum &Archives. Photo: National Museum of Denmark.

Figure 9: Church, ruin 1 - plan from the excavations in 1932.Only the lowermost courses of the church walls were preserved in 1932.The church had one room andmeasured c. 15 x 7.5m on the outside.The building material comprised large and small pieces of localstone, some of which had been shaped.The stones forming the external surface of the walls had beencarefully chosen, whereas the internal surface of the walls was constructed less carefully.This is perhapsan indication that the internal walls of the church were clad with wooden panels or woven tapestries.Thestone walls themselves were c. 1.4m thick.The archaeologists found no sealing medium between the sto-nes but they suggest that they could have been sealed with turf.Two doors led into the church, both located on the southern side. One door was for the ordinary church-goers, whereas the door closest to the chancel was presumably used by the church's priests. Neitherstamped earth floor nor flagstones were found in the church - perhaps the floor was of wood. In themiddle of the room was a hearth to provide heating.

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THE DWELLING HOUSE, RUIN 18The dwelling house at River Farm, ruin 18 (figure 14) is thought to have been built inLater Norse times.The walls were constructed of stone and turf and are preserved upto a height of c. 1m.The north and west walls were, furthermore, insulated with a thickturf wall.The 1932 excavation did not establish the existence of other buildings bene-ath the last standing building and if an earlier living house was associated with RiverFarm it must have lain elsewhere.

BYRE AND BARN, RUIN 19River Farm's byre-barn complex is one of the best preserved in Greenland (figure 15).The buildings are constructed of stone and turf and insulated externally with a c. 2.5mthick turf wall.The entrance has the character of a long funnel, which is at least c. 7.5mlong and c. 70 cm wide.The byre and barn were investigated archaeologically in 1932and during this archaeologists found a loom weight with a Thor's hammer engraved onit (figure 16).

"THINGSTEAD" RUIN GROUP Ø28AIn 1932 archaeologists found slight traces of turf walls to the south of a rocky outcrop,and concentrated in an area between these features were a number of well-builthearths (ruins 30-44) (figure 17 & 18).

A fence to the south separates the area from South Farm, ruin group Ø28. Only in asingle case, in ruin 38, was a hearth found in association with the turf walls. No buildingswere found in association with the hearths.The function of these features is a bit of apuzzle.There were no traces of midden deposits to suggest an ordinary settlement.Theturf walls were very indistinct and some of the structures were rather small - the smal-lest measured c. 3 x 2m - and the excavators suggested, therefore, that the turf con-structions had acted as foundations for tents made of hides or textiles, and that thewhole area should be seen as a gathering place which was, for example, used in connec-tion with meetings of the Thing.

SOUTH FARM, RUIN GROUP Ø28The ruins of South Farm lie clearly separate from the other ruins on the Brattahlið plainand probably constitute an independent farm (figure 19).

The farmstead comprises 13 structures.Two of the ruins (46 and 47) have been identi-fied as dwelling houses. In one of these, ruin 47, people, sheep and goats lived togetherunder the same roof.The boathouse, ruin 51, possibly belonged to River Farm.

The most remarkable grave marker was located on the north side of the church, about2m from the east gable. Over the grave itself there was a stone-built open cist, coveredat the head end by a small flat stone on which, in runic letters, stood: Ingibjörg's grave(figure 11).

The bodies in the graves at the Qassiarsuk churchyard were so badly preserved that noanthropological investigations of the skeletons were possible.

In 1932, when the large church was investigated, the great question to be answered wasthe location of the church, which Tjodhilde, according to Eirik's Saga, had built atBrattahlið.The excavations in 1932 gave no clear answer. Many were of the opinion thatthe problem had been solved when workmen in 1961 chanced upon skeletons duringpreparations for the building of a boarding house for school children near the present-day church in Qassiarsuk. During the subsequent archaeological investigations archaeo-logists uncovered the turf walls of a small church building (ruin 59 on the plan figure 6),surrounded by a churchyard (figure 12).

The church itself was constructed of wood, of which nothing was preserved.The turfwalls that the archaeologists found functioned both as protection for the valuable woodand as insulation against the cold. Buildings similar to the little church at Brattahlið areto be found in Viking Age Scandinavia, and at first the archaeologists were in no doubtthat they had excavated Tjodhilde's Church from the saga. Subsequently, some doubtswere expressed because of the uncertainty regarding the sagas' credibility as historicalsources. It is estimated that the church was in use for about 30-50 years.

RIVER FARM, RUIN GROUP Ø 29River Farm comprises ruins 18-29 (figure 13) and an unnumbered ruin of a warehousewhich had lain out towards the fjord on a rocky outcrop south of the farm.

Figure 11: Ingebjörg's grave. The grave today belongs to The Greenland National Museum & Archives.Photo: National Museum of Denmark

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Figure 12: "Thodhilde's Church", ruin 59 - plan after Knud J. Krogh, 1982Only the turf walls of the church, built of horizontally-laid turves, were preserved.The long sides of thebuilding were slightly convex; the east wall was straight, whereas there was no west wall. Inside, the floorwas paved with red sandstone flags, which occur naturally in the area.The building's internal dimensionswere 3.5 x 2m.The shape of the walls dates the building to the time around 1000.In the churchyard around the little church archaeologists found 143 individual graves and a communalgrave.Virtually none of the graves had been damaged by later burials, which suggests that they were mar-ked on the surface and that the churchyard was only in use for a short period.The graves were shapedas oval pits; in 12 of them there were traces of wooden coffins.The deceased were buried in a prostrateposition in the usual east-west orientation. Radiocarbon analysis of the skeletons has dated them to the11th century.No suggestion of a churchyard wall was found around the little church but the location of the graves sug-gested that the church had been enclosed within a circular dyke.Determination of the sex of the deceased in the churchyard shows that there is a predominance of menburied on the south side of the church. Most women were found buried on the north side, whereas mostchildren lie buried east of the church.We know from Scandinavia that the early medieval churchyardswere divided up on the basis of gender, but at Brattahlið there are too many women buried on the southside and too many men on the north side for there to have been a consistent gender-based division.Investigations of the graves and of parts of the skeletons, including their teeth, suggest that also their soci-al position in society determined where in the churchyard people were buried.The south side, which is regarded the "most prestigious" side, is where the upper class lay buried.The gra-ves here were carefully made and were generally the deepest. On the north side lay the less well-off.Thegraves in this part of the churchyard were prepared less carefully.The state of health was best amongthose buried on the south side of the church. Similarly, the age at death was greater here than on thenorth side.The majority of the deceased did, however, die at a mature age.The deceased had good teeth without cavities, but they were worn down due to the coarse diet. Severalof the women on the north side had wear on their front teeth showing that they had used their teeth astools, perhaps in textile production. Similar wear was not found on the teeth of the women who lay buri-ed on the south side of the church.In the communal grave on the south side of the churchyard there were the remains of 11 adult malesand two boys of about 10 and 17 years of age respectively.Three skulls bore cut wounds from battle.Thedeceased had clearly not been laid in the communal grave immediately after death.The skulls lay neat-ly arranged in a row at one end of the grave, whereas the other bones lay randomly and many of thesmaller bones were lacking altogether. In a few cases parts of bodies lay articulated, which suggests thatthe corpse had not completely disintegrated before burial.A hereditary tooth defect seen in several of thedeceased shows that they were closely related.We can only guess as to the nature of the tragedy whichis buried along with the deceased. Some of them had been killed by a sword stroke and perhaps thegroup died in battle on foreign soil and were brought home by caring family members to be buried inconsecrated ground at their home farm.

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Figure 14:The dwelling house at River Farm, ruin 18 - plan from 1932.Room I is seen as the house's living room. Its internal dimensions are c. 7 x 5m.The floor in front of thedoor was paved with flat stones.The rest of the room had, perhaps, a wooden floor.Approximately in themiddle of the floor the archaeologists found a hearth and along the north wall there was an elevatedplatform, which had, perhaps, functioned as a bench. Room II is rather narrow and excavations were notable to reveal its function. Room III is a c. 9m long and c. 1.2m wide passage giving access to rooms IV,V,VI and through VI to room VIII. Room IV was equipped with several hearths and ash pits.Together withfinds of animal bones, this suggests that cooking took place here. Room V lies at the end of the passageand was probably the house's storeroom.The archaeological investigations do not provide answers to thequestion of the functions of rooms VI and VII, whereas room VIII was probably the farmstead's weavingworkshop.

Figure 13: Brattahlið - River Farm, ruin group Ø29.Ruin 18. House. External dimensions c. 22 x 15m.Archaeologically investigated in 1894 and 1932. Seedescription below.Ruin 19. Byre with accompanying barn. External dimensions c. 31 x 12m. Investigated archaeologically in1932. See description below.Ruin 20. Byre. Internal dimensions c. 8 x 1.5m.Ruin 21. Byre. Internal dimensions c. 13 x 3.5m.Ruin 22. Storehouse (?).Ruin 23. Not used.Ruin 24. Storehouse (?). Internal dimensions c. 10 x 1.3m. Constructed of stone and turf. Located at agood landing place for boats and could have functioned as a storehouse for fishing and hunting equip-ment and the like. Investigated archaeologically in 1894.Today the building is covered by a football pitch.Ruin 25. Byre with accompanying barn. Internal dimensions c. 13 x 3-5.5m.Ruin 26. Storehouse (skemma). Internal dimensions c. 6.5 x 2.7m. In 1881 Gustav Holm found the ruinre-used for Inuit burials.Ruin 27.Animal pen.Ruin 28.Animal pen.Ruin 29. Not used.Ruin 30.Animal pen.Without no.Warehouse. Described by Gustav Holm in 1881.The building had been constructed of largestones. Most of the stones had been re-used in an Inuit house, the remains of which could still be seenin 1881 and 1894.The water off the site is deep, allowing ships to dock.

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Figure 17: "Thingstead", ruins 30-44 - survey from 1932.The "Thingstead" comprises 12 small turf houses or tent foundations, of which the largest, ruin 38, mea-sures c. 20 x 6-9m externally.The smallest measures c. 3 x 2m. Ruin 38 was equipped with a hearth inone corner.

Figure 16: Loom weight with engraved Thor's ham-mer. Kept at the National Museum in Copenhagen.Photo: National Museum of Denmark.

Figure 15: River Farm's byre, ruin 19 - plan from1932.The byre measured c. 8.8 x 3.5m internally. Thefloor was paved with stone flags and the dungchannel ran down through the middle of the buil-ding.There was no drain running out of the byre.Instead there were a number of pits in the dungchannel where the manure was collected. Therewas room for 12 cows in the byre.The associatedbarn measures c. 13 x 3.2m.

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Figure 19:The ruins of South Farm.Ruin 46. Dwelling house with midden.The ruins were - probably - re-used in the 17th-18th century asInuit winter accommodation. External dimensions c. 60 x 30m.Ruin 47. Dwelling house with sheep and/or goat housing, barn and smithy. In front of the ruin is a mid-den. Investigated archaeologically in 1932. Removed.Ruin 48. Storehouse. Removed.Ruin 49. Byre and barn. Internal dimensions c. 17 x 3m.Ruin 50. Byre. Internal dimensions c. 8.5 x 3m.Ruin 51. Boathouse. Belongs possibly to River Farm.Ruin 52. Sheep and goat house, built on either side of a natural dyke, such that the latter forms a wallbetween the two rooms in the house.The internal dimensions of the two rooms are c. 24 x 3m and c.13.5 x 3m respectively.Ruin 53. Sheep and goat house. Consists of two rooms, built in the same way as ruin 52. Internal dimen-sions c. 14.3 x 2.5m and c. 8.8 x 4.3m respectively.Ruin 54. Byre and barn with dyke. Internal dimensions c. 20 x 4m.Ruin 55.Animal pen. Internal dimensions c. 8 x 2.5m.Ruin 56. Dyke.Ruin 57. Byre and barn.Total internal length c. 11m.Ruin 58. Byre and barn.Total internal length c. 16m.

Figure 18:The "Thingstead's" hearths, ruin 37 - plan from 1932.The hearth area comprises 12-15 hearths, including two well-built long fires.The best preserved of theseis 2.7m long.The hearths lie close together and the excavations could not demonstrate building tracesassociated with the hearths.

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The combined dwelling house and auxiliary building, ruin 47, was investigated archaeo-logically in 1932 (figure 20). Apart from a single room, room VIII, which had pure turfwalls, the house was constructed of stone and turf and surrounded by an insulating turfwall. In addition to living quarters, the house contained a workshop, byre and barn. Asingle room, room VIII, could belong to an earlier phase in the house's history.

FELL FARM, RUIN GROUP Ø29BIn order to save the grass in the immediate vicinity of the farmstead and in order toexploit the grazing resources in the mountains, in summer the animals were driven upto grazing areas at higher altitudes. Fell Farm lies c. 2km west of Qassiarsuk (figure 21).

The ruins of five houses have been recorded from the site and archaeological investiga-tions have been carried out on one of these, ruin 3 (identical with ruin 33 on the planshown in figure 21). None of the ruins has yet, with certainty, been identified as a dwel-ling house. Ruin 3 was accommodation for sheep and goats and this was probably alsothe case with the other ruins.The pastures around the farmstead were used for summergrazing by the Brattahlið farmers and at least one of the houses probably served tohouse the shepherds who, together with the animals, spent most of the summer here.

Figure 21: Overview of Brattahlið with the Fell Farm, ruin group Ø29b, included. Produced by Daniel Bruunin 1894. Please note that the numbering of the individual houses differs from the other plans presentedin the text.

Figure 20: Ruin 47 - survey from 1932.Rooms I and II are living quarters, probably adjoining. Hearth in room I's northeastern corner. Internaldimensions c. 5 x 4m and 4 x 2m respectively. Room III is the building's sheep and goat accommodation.Here there is a flagstone floor. Internal dimensions c. 4 x 2m. Room IV is a passage which links rooms II,III and V. Room V is a sheep and goat house with a flagstone floor; internal dimensions c. 2.7 x 2.6m.Room VI is the associated barn; internal dimensions c. 7 x 3m. Room VII is a workshop, also with flagsto-ne floor and, furthermore, with a hearth.The room's internal breadth is only c. 1.5m.The function of roomVIII could not be identified. Perhaps it belongs to an earlier phase in the house's history.

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large part of their time abroad (fact box 9). It is worth noting that all the Greenlandicbishops came from Norway and that this distant Episcopal Residence in Greenland wasapparently not so attractive! The last bishop who resided in Garðar was Alf who diedin 1378.

Difficult communication between Garðar and the mother institutions could partlyexplain the bishops' reluctance to spend time in Greenland. In a letter to Bishop Thordin Garðar, which survives from 1308, Bishop Arne in Bergen recounts the latest eventsin Norway.These include the news of King Erik's (the 2nd Magnusson) death in Bergenin 1299. In his letter Bishop Arne expresses his uncertainty about this "news" havingreached Thord in Greenland!

The last mention of Garðar is in 1409 in the so-called Hvalsey letters (see below).Priests Eindridi Andreasson and Paul Hallvardsson in Garðar drew up a letter in whichthey gave witness that they had published the banns between Thorstein Olafsson andSigrid Bjørnsdottir in the church of Hvalsey Fjord in 1408. Eindridi refers to himself asofficialis, deputy for the absent bishop.

IVAR BARDARSON'S DESCRIPTION OF GREENLAND ON THEEPISCOPAL RESIDENCE AND GARÐARFrom Ivar Bardarson's Description of Greenland (fact box 2) it is clear that many privile-ges and large property possessions were linked with the Episcopal Residence at Garðar.On the southern part of Greenland's east coast, fishing in Bære Fjord belonged to theEpiscopal Residence; the same was the case for polar bear hunting on Korsø. NeitherBære Fjord nor Korsø are identified.The curative warm springs on the Uunartoq islandin Uunartoq Fjord were owned by the cathedral together with the neighbouring nun-nery.The cathedral owned all the farms in Einar's Fjord, today Igaliku Fjord, and all thefarms on Rensø, which is presumed to be today's Akia. Furthermore, the cathedral alsoowned all the farms on Langø, while tithes from these farms were due to the church ofHvalsey Fjord. Langø is probably the same as Tuttuttoq, which lies off Narsaq. At thehead of Einar's Fjord, according to Ivar, there was "a large wood" and the cathedral, too,owned this (figure 22).

THE OLDEST DESCRIPTIONS OF THE RUINS AT IGALIKUThe Norwegian Aron Arctander is one of the first to mention the ruins at Igaliku. Hevisited the place in 1779 and described the ruins even then as being much damaged.Thesituation became even worse when the Norwegian colonist Anders Olsen settled per-manently in Igaliku in 1782 with his family.The family lived off their cattle herd and flockof sheep, and the stones for building their houses were taken from the old Norse ruins,while the thick midden layers around the ruins were used to seal the gaps between thestones and as fuel.The tradition of building houses using stones from the ruins continu-

Garðar, IgalikuGARÐAR IN THE ICELANDIC SAGASAccording to Sturlubók Landnámu (fact box 1) Einar took Einar's Fjord.The farmsteadGarðar is not mentioned.That was at the end of the 980s. In Grænlendinga Saga's Vinlandstories from the time around 1000 (fact box 5) there is an account of Erik the Red'sdaughter Freydis' voyage to Vinland. In this, mention is made of the fact that Freydis wasmarried to Thorvard, and that they lived at Garðar. Allegedly, from the same periodthere is a reference in Fóstbrædra Saga (fact box 6) to the fact that the Greenlanders'Thing lay at Garðar.

No further information is given about Garðar in the time of the Landnam. Events cen-tred on the farmstead first really take off in connection with the ordination of theGreenlanders' first bishop at the beginning of the 12th century. According to The Storyof Einar, Sokke's Son (fact box 7), there is the story of Brattahlið farmer Sokke and howhe summoned the Thing in order to obtain the other farmers' agreement for the crea-tion of the Greenlandic Episcopal Residence.The motion was carried, and Einar, Sokke'sson, was sent to the Norwegian King Sigurd Magnusson Jorsalfare to ask for his help inobtaining a bishop. The king agreed and appointed the Norwegian cleric Arnald asGreenland's first bishop. According to the story, Arnald subsequently set up hisEpiscopal Residence at the farmstead of Garðar.

THE BISHOPS AT GARÐARWe can read about the Greenlandic bishops in the Icelandic Annals (fact boxes 8 & 9),and here it appears that Arnald was not, as one is given the impression in The Story ofEinar, Sokke's Son, the first Greenlandic bishop. Before Arnald there was Erik who, accor-ding to the annals, set out from Greenland in order to find Vinland. Subsequently thereis no mention of Bishop Erik, perhaps he never returned from his voyage to Vinland.With the appointment of Bishop Helge around 1210 it is underlined for the first timein the Icelandic records that Helge did, in fact, travel to Greenland.With regard to thepreceding bishops,Arnald, Jón Knud and Jón Smyrill, it is merely noted that they wereelected as bishops.We can also read, concerning Arnald that he was in Iceland at thetime when he was chosen as Greenland's bishop. In 1152 Arnald was elected bishop ofHamar in Norway. Previously, in 1150, Jón Knud was appointed as the Greenlanders' bis-hop. In 1186 Jón Knud was in Iceland and he died in 1187 or 1188.Whether he was inGreenland in the period from his appointment in 1150 until his stay in Iceland in 1186,the annals make no mention. Jón Knud's successor, Jón Smyrill, was elected as bishop inthe same year that Jón Knud died.The following year the newly appointed bishop wasin Iceland, and we are told that this was also the case in 1194, 1200 or 1202 and in 1203.Jón Smyrill died in 1209. In subsequent years, there is regular mention in the annals thatthe Greenlandic bishops set off for Greenland, but it is characteristic that they spent a

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Gustav Holm decided only to pay Igaliku a short visit when he carried out his ruin sur-vey in 1880.

Daniel Bruun produced a new description of the ruins at Igaliku in 1894. On the sameoccasion, Bruun also undertook archaeological investigations of selected ruins.The mainarchaeological investigation of the ruins in Igaliku took place in 1926 when PoulNørlund of the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen carried out archaeologicalinvestigations, which included the church and the large dwelling house. Subsequently, aseries of smaller investigations were undertaken at Igaliku by the Danish architect KnudJ. Krogh for the National Museum. These included the irrigation system which theNorwegian author Helge Ingstad drew attention to after his visit in 1956.

THE RUINS AT GARÐARIgaliku lies strategically well-placed on the large fertile plain at the head of Igaliku Fjordand surrounded by low soft-contoured grass-covered fells and with good access to theneighbouring Tunulliarfik Fjord,where Brattahlið lay. Including the irrigation canals,whichare part of the extensive irrigation system at Garðar, 52 Norse structures have beenrecorded at Igaliku (figure 24).The most significant buildings lie together on the infield,which is enclosed by a stone-built infield dyke. Smaller auxiliary buildings lie outside theinfield, as do the warehouses, which are located with easy access to the fjord.

The farmstead's many buildings reflect its economy and the activities, which took placeat the wealthy and important farm Garðar.The degree to which Garðar had ecclesiasti-

Figure 23: Overview of Igaliku, the Episcopal Residence of Garðar. Photo Ivar Silis.

ed for many years subsequently and it was first broken with the passing of a law pro-tecting ancient monuments in the middle of the 20th century. Igaliku is today characte-rised by its many old stone houses, and the stones all come from the local Norse ruins(figure 23).

ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT GARÐAROn his visit in 1828, the Danish lieutenant W.A. Graah described Igaliku's ruins as awhole town and, in 1830, when one of the inhabitants in his search for suitable buildingstones found a gravestone with an engraved cross and runic text, antiquarian interest inthe many ruins at Igaliku became seriously aroused.

On the incentive and at the expense of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries seve-ral excavations were carried out in the early 1830s, especially of the church and thechurchyard. Local Danish priests and merchants performed the investigations. Thereports they sent home to Denmark were published in the Royal Society's publicationGrønlands Historiske Mindesmærker. The descriptions were so comprehensive that

Figure 22: Some of the cathedral's possessions according to Ivar Bardarsson.

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Ruin 11. Smithy. Internal dimensions c. 5.25 x 2.85m. C. 1.5m thick walls built in stone and turf. In theroom there were the foundations for a forge and in the northeastern corner an air channel for the bel-lows. Archaeological investigations in 1926. See description below.Ruin 12. Storage building, perhaps a hay barn constructed solely in stone. Internal dimensions c. 16 x3.5m. Entrance towards the south.Ruin 13. Dwelling house. Internal dimensions c. 10.5 x 3.5m.Archaeological investigation in 1894.Ruin 14. Byre and barn. Internal dimensions c. 41.5 x 4.2m.The walls were constructed in the same wayas the other byre, ruin 9.The walls are enclosed within thick insulating turf walls. In 1894 Daniel Bruunrecorded that there were three stone stall partitions preserved along the south wall and one on the northwall. In the byre there was room for about 42 cows. Minor test investigations in 1926. See descriptionbelow.Ruin 15.Well. Rectangular stone-lined well built over a natural spring.Water is led from the well's nort-heastern corner out into a c. 4.5m long reservoir. A well house had probably been built over the well.Archaeological investigation in 1926.Ruin 16. Byre, c. 20m long. Removed.Ruin 17. Sheep and goat house, c. 26 x 3.5m. Removed.Ruin 18. Sheep and goat house. Most of the ruin removed.Ruin 19. Storage building, c. 2.7 x 2.3m. Partly removed.Ruin 20.Warehouse. Internal dimensions c. 13.5 x 4m. See description below.Ruin 21. Boathouse? Dimensions c. 10 x 4m. Removed.Ruin 22.Warehouse? East gable open. Dimensions c. 7.6 x 3m. Removed.Ruin 23. Unidentified. Removed.Ruin 24. Byre with barn. Partly destroyed.Ruin 25. Horse enclosure, where the guests could keep their horses during a visit. Partially removed. Seedescription below.Ruin 26. Unidentified. Removed. Not on overview plan.Ruin 27. Shepherd's house or byre.Ruins 28 and 29. Unidentified. Removed. Does not appear on overview plan.Ruin 30. Sheep/goat house.Ruin 31. Sheep/goat house.Ruin 32. Sheep/goat house. Most of it removed.Ruin 33. Sheep/goat house.Ruin 34. Sheep and goat house. Internal dimensions c. 17 x 4m.Ruin 35. Sheep and goat house. Internal dimensions c. 30 x 4m.Ruin 36.Warehouse. Dimensions c. 12 x 2.5m. See description below.Ruin 37. Storage building. Dimensions c. 25 x 2.5m. Removed.Ruin 38. Animal pen with smaller subsidiary pen. The large pen has internal dimensions of c. 10.5 x10.5m.The small pen measures c. 5.5 x 3.5m.The pen has been used as a burial ground by later occu-pants of Igaliku. See description below.Ruin 39. Enclosure. Internal dimensions c. 130 x 55m. See description below.Ruin 40.Animal pen. Internal dimensions c. 117 x 80m. See description below.Ruins 41, 42 and 43. Dam for the irrigation system. See description below.Ruin 44. Not used.Ruin 45. Sheep house with hay barn. Does not appear on overview plan.Ruin 46. Dam, part of irrigation system.Ruins 47 and 48. Stone wall around the infield in double wall construction.Ruins 49, 50, 51 and 52. Canals belonging to the irrigation system. See description below.

Figure 24: Overviewof the ruins at Igalikuafter Knud J. Krogh1982.Ruin 1. Church andchurchyard. Thechurch's nave andnarrower chancelmeasure c. 27 m inlength. Chapels havebeen constructed tothe north and southof the chancel so thatthe church nowappears cruciform.The churchyard mea-sures c. 50 x 40m.The church has beensubject to archaeo-logical investigationson several occasions.The main investiga-tion took place in1926. See descrip-tion below.Ruin 2. Foundation

for a bell tower? Remains of lime mortar were found between the stones.The internal dimensions werec. 2.7 x 2.7m.The building probably belonged to an earlier phase in the church's history.Ruin 3. Foundation for a bell tower? Internal dimensions 1.8 x 1.7m. Entrance from the churchyard.Thebuilding belongs to the latest phase of the church and must, therefore, have replaced the bell tower, ruin2.Ruin 4. Storage building, built near the churchyard wall. Originally dwelling house.Ruin 5. Storage building also called Tithe Barn built up against the churchyard wall.The impressive lintelover the door leading into the building is still preserved.The building's internal dimensions are c. 10 x 5m.Ruins 6 and 7. Storage buildings. Ruin 6 measures c. 4.5 x 3m internally.Ruin 8. Dwelling house, c. 50m long. Archaeological investigations in 1894 and the main investigation in1926. See description below.Ruin 9. Byre with barn. Internal dimensions 63.5 x 4.2m.Walls constructed with sides of stone and a coreof earth.The walls were enclosed within thick insulating turf walls.The stone stall partition could still beseen in place in 1894. Calculations show that there was room in the byre for about 65 cows. Small testexcavation in 1926. See description below.Ruin 10. Storage building.

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cal functions, as known from other Episcopal residences elsewhere in the Nordic coun-tries - for example as a school, is unknown. As a large farm, the farmstead of Garðardiffers from the other farmsteads in Greenland only in its size.

The central part of the group of ruins is dominated to the north by the ruin of the largechurch building with its surrounding churchyard (ruin 1) and is bordered to the southby the byre-barn complex (ruin 9). Between the two buildings lies the dwelling house(ruin 8), and a series of smaller buildings, ruins 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13.Anotherlarge byre-barn building (ruin 14) lies immediately to the east of the church. Theeasternmost structure is the well, ruin 15.

THE CHURCH AND CHURCHYARDThe church is, not surprisingly, the largest in the Norse settlements. Garðar was proba-bly the only one to have a stone-built bell tower. The archaeological investigations in1926 showed that the latest church at Garðar had had at least one predecessor.Thelatest church (figure 25) was constructed of red Igaliku sandstone, which is characteri-stic of the locality.The church comprised a nave with chancel to the east.Two chapelshad been built on to the north and south of the chancel.The western gable was open,and it has been suggested that the church building itself was constructed of wood, whe-reas the preserved stone walls were protective walls around the wooden church - equi-valent to the turf walls around the little "Tjodhilde's Church" at Brattahlið.

Foundation stones are virtually all that remain, and there are only slight traces of thedoors.The finding of small pieces of green window glass shows that the bishop's churchwas fitted with glass windows. In 1926, no traces of a floor were found within thechurch building. Similarly, there were no signs of an altar in the church's chancel. On thecontrary, the archaeologists found the foundation of an altar in the southern chapel.There were hearths in both chapels.

Substantial foundations (ruins 2 and 3, figure 24) built close up against the churchyardwall and the finding of fragments of shattered church bells suggests that the bishops'church had bell towers built of stone, one of which, at some point in time, replaced theother.

In the churchyard around the church the graves lay close together and in several layers,which shows that the churchyard had been used over a long period of time. Often gra-ves had been damaged by later burials. Some of the deceased were buried in woodencoffins; others had been laid directly in the ground wrapped in cloth.

In addition to the churchyard, burials were also found in the church itself during theinvestigations in 1926. One person had been laid to rest at the eastern end of the nave.

Figure 25: Church and churchyard at Igaliku.During the investigations in 1926, several building phases could be demonstrated in the Episcopal Churchat Igaliku.The latest church was the largest. It had a Romanesque ground-plan with a nave and a narro-wer chancel to the east. Side chapels were built on to the chancel to the north and south.The church isabout 28m long.The nave has an internal width of about 9m, whereas the chancel is about 4m wide.Thechancel and the two side chapels measure a total of about 6m transversely north-south (external dimen-sion).The church had two doors, both on the south side. One of these led into the nave, and the otherled into the southern chapel.The latter was probably used by the bishop himself and by the priests whowere associated with the church.The church appears today as stone foundations and here and there, with some remains of walls and theopen west gable.

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hin the period from 1223 to 1290, with the most probable date towards the end of thisperiod, around 1270.This means that the dead bishop could be either Nikolaus, whodied in 1242, or, perhaps more likely, Olaf, who died in 1280.

Remarkably, the churchyard at Garðar was not just reserved for human graves, walrusand narwhal skulls had been interred both in the churchyard and within the chancel ofthe church itself. In 1832, Pastor Esman found four to five narwhal skulls in the easternend of the chancel. It is, however, possible that they, like the burials in the chancel men-tioned above, had originally been buried in the churchyard, prior to the last functioningchurch on the site being extended towards the east. The same applies to the row ofwalrus skulls, which were found buried close to the eastern gable of the chancel.All inall, between 20 and 30 walrus skulls were found in the church and churchyard.What theintention was with these buried walrus skulls is unclear. Regardless of whether it tookplace in the chancel of the church or in the churchyard to the east of an older church,the burial of the skulls of these animals, the tusks of which were the Norsemen's mostimportant trading commodity, was not quite according to normal Christian practice.

DWELLING HOUSE, RUIN 8To the south of the church lies the dwelling house (figure 28).This building is one of thelargest and most impressive in the Norse settlements. It is built up against the south-western corner of the churchyard wall and consists of a series of rooms, which lie in

Figure 27:The crozier and the ring of the bishop buried the Garðar church.

Photo National Museum, Copenhagen.

All the others had been buried in the chancel and in the two side chapels. Here too, thedead were buried either in wooden coffins or wrapped in cloth before they were laidin the ground. Some of the graves in the chancel extended in under the eastern wall ofthe chancel. It seems probable that the latest church had been extended towards theeast such that several of the burials now in the chancel had originally lain outside andto the east of an older and smaller church. Probably only the highest ranking clericswere buried within the church itself, even though the possibility cannot be excludedthat secular persons were also interred here. If this is the case, the latter were in lifevery important people. In the northern chapel lies one of the probably few bishops whodied in Greenland, and who was buried in the bishop's church at Garðar (Figure 26). Ina grave below the bishop lay the skeletons of a man and a woman in a double grave -perhaps the farmer at Garðar and his wife? Both the skeletons in the double grave andthat of the bishop have been radiocarbon dated, and the dates show that the bishopmust have been buried shortly after the two people in the double grave.

The bishop's head had been partially removed as a consequence of later burials in thechapel, and the same was also true of one of his feet. Apparently the bishop had notbeen buried in a wooden coffin, but the crozier and the bishop's ring are clear indica-tions of the deceased's status (figure 27).The bishop has been radiocarbon dated to wit-

Figure 26:The bishop's grave in Igaliku immediately after it had been uncovered in 1926.The dead bis-hop could be Olaf, who was bishop in Greenland in the period from 1246 to 1280. Photo Poul Nørlund1926.The crozier, which had been placed over the dead bishop, measures 143cm in length.

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Figure 28:The dwelling house - plan from the excavations in 1926.The plan shows the dwelling house as it could have appeared during the last period when Garðar wasoccupied. But it is also clearly apparent that there were several building phases in the house's history, andas the building was not excavated stratigraphically, different phases may have become mixed up.The total length of the house is c. 50m. Rooms I,VIII and XIV are perceived as one room, and this toget-her with rooms II, III and V were the living and sleeping quarters. Room I/VIII/XIV was the house's mainroom, where a large part of the daily activities took place.The entrance to the room leads into room VIIIand is marked externally by an enormous flagstone.The room was found to contain many broken pots-herds of soapstone, and hearths and fire pits for cooking and heating was found in the southern end ofthe room.Room IX is the beautifully built banqueting hall.The western wall of the hall comprises a compact stonewall which had been insulated externally by a thick turf wall. At the northern end of the hall there is along fire.The internal dimensions are c. 16.75 x 7.8m.The hall was only used on special festive occasionsand in connection with gatherings, for example to deal with church matters.Rooms IV,VI,VII, XI and XII are perceived as storage rooms.The floor of room XII was paved. Passage Xlinks living rooms I/VIII/XIV with storage rooms XI and XII.

extension of one another, and with a small number of rooms built on to the rear.Thetotal length of the house is c. 50m and the walls are constructed in alternating coursesof stone and turf.At the front, a flagstone path leads to the churchyard; a similar pathextends off in the direction of the well.The excavations in 1926 showed that the househas been altered numerous times.The most striking room was the great banqueting hall,which is unquestionably the largest in the Norse settlements. Here the men of both thechurch and the farm would certainly have gathered for serious ecclesiastical businessand for gatherings of a more festive character.

BYRES WITH BARNS, RUINS 9 AND 14To the north and south, the central part of the farmstead is bordered by two massivebyre-barn complexes (figures 24 & 29). On the basis of the byres' length it has been cal-culated that the two structures together could hold around 100 cattle, which is a largeherd in Greenlandic terms. In comparison, North Farm's byre at Brattahlið could house18 to 19 cows, whereas the byre at River Farm had room for about 12 cows.

SMITHY, RUIN 11Iron was indispensable in the Norse Greenlandic society. Without tools, such as forexample knives to cut grass for winter fodder, Norse animal husbandry could not bemaintained.The Norse Greenlanders imported both finished tools and raw iron.The lat-ter was then worked in Greenland. Only a few farmsteads had their own smithy and

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Figure 30: Smithy, ruin 11. Plan from excavations in 1926.The smithy is built of courses of stone and turf.The walls are about 1.5m thick and the room has inter-nal dimensions of about 5.25 x 2.85m.The forge is located at the eastern end of the room.The bellowswere positioned in the southeastern corner, where a channel through the wall ensured the necessary airsupply.

Garðar was one of these.The smithy (figure 30) lay in the centre of the farmyard bet-ween the two byre-barn complexes, and here tools were probably produced both forthe farm itself and with a view to sale or exchange.

STONE WAREHOUSES, RUINS 20, 22 AND 36Three stone buildings have been identified as warehouses.A characteristic of the ware-houses is that they are constructed of stones with no mortar or sealing medium bet-ween them.This ensures the through passage of air necessary to conserve the storeditems. One warehouse, ruin 22, laid on the northern side of the point, which extendsout before the central part of the farm.The ruin no longer exists.Another warehouse,ruin 36, lies on the small island to the north of the point (figure 24 & 31), while the thirdwarehouse, ruin 20, lies rather atypically some distance from the coast, where it hasbeen constructed up against a rock face (figure 32).

Figure 29: Ruins 9 and 14, byre and barn - plan from the excavations in 1894The larger of the two byre-barn complexes (ruin 9) is about 63.5m long and about 4.2m wide (internaldimensions).The building is divided into two rooms of approximately the same size, of which one is thebyre itself, while the other is the barn belonging to it.The smaller byre (ruin 14) has internal dimensionsof about 40 x 5m. Both buildings are constructed with double walls, with stones at the sides and earthforming the wall core.The walls are about 1.5m thick and externally there are up to 5m thick protecti-ve turf walls.The door opening leading from the byre to the barn in ruin 9 is preserved.The height of theopening is about 1.6m.When Daniel Brown visited Igaliku in 1894 there were still stall partition stonesin place in the two byres. In 1926 there were none remaining.The large byre (ruin 9) could house about65 cows, while the smaller byre (ruin 14) had room for about 42 cows.The two byres have not been fullyinvestigated.

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Figure 32Stone warehouses, ruin 20 has internal dimensions of about 13 x 4m.

The large enclosure, ruin 39 (Figure 24), must have been of particular importance, asone of the canals from the irrigation system ends here.An account of life in Greenlandfrom the beginning of the 13th century mentions that rich farmers in Greenland attemp-ted to grow cereals. If this is true, the crop was probably barley.Quern stones have beenfound both at Garðar and other Norse farmsteads but it is also possible that thesewere used to grind imported grain.

IRRIGATION SYSTEMThere was room in the two large byres for a total of 100 cattle. Fully occupied byresare dependant on fully stocked barns and the impressive irrigation system for wateringof the about 15 hectares of infield bears witness to the importance attached to grassproduction.

Figure 31: Stone warehouse, ruin 36.Warehouses for the storage of trading commodities, probably firstand foremost the valuable tusks of walrus and narwhal, which were so important for the Greenlanders'trade with Europe. Ruin 36 measures about 12 x 6m.

ANIMAL PENS AND ENCLOSURES, RUINS 25, 38, 39 & 40As with almost all the Norse farmsteads in Greenland, there were a number of enclo-sures and animal pens at Garðar used to keep the farm animals together. Several typesof pen and enclosure have been described from the farm.

The circular pen, ruin 25 (figure 24), lies characteristically enough outside the infieldboundary and probably served as a horse enclosure, where visiting guests could stabletheir horses, keeping them away from the valuable and, for the horses, very temptinggrain in the infield.

Ruins 38 and 40 (Figure 24) were separating pens used to keep calves and lambs sepa-rate from their mothers so the latter could be milked.

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The irrigation system comprised a number of dammed water reservoirs in the moun-tains and a system of canals, which led the water down to the infield (figure 33).Thedams in the mountains were built of cut turves shielded from water in the reservoir bya substantial stone wall.The necessary openings in the dams were blocked with turves.The reservoirs served two purposes.They made it easier to control the water in thecanal system, which was important considering the risks of erosion and potentialdestruction of the young plants.They could also be used to store water for use whenneeded.

The Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad was the first to recognize and describe theremarkable irrigation system at Igaliku, and perhaps his findings inspired the modernsheep farmers.At the beginning of the 20th Century sheep farming was re-introduced inSouthwest Greenland and several families settled at Igaliku. It was, however, difficult forsheep farmers to harvest all the hay they needed for the winter due to the prevailinggrowing conditions in the area.The soil on the Igaliku plain is rather thin and is, there-fore, vulnerable to drought, especially early in the growing season, and the strong warmFoehn winds can be quite damaging.To prevent the damage caused by the warm sum-mer winds, the sheep farmers in the 1960s decided to construct an irrigation system.They built a small concrete dam across the river uphill from the infield and realised thattheir predecessors, the Norse farmers, had placed one of their dams at exactly thesame spot (ruin 41, figure 24). It was from this dam that the main medieval canal hadbranched off. However, the modern sheep farmers soon realised that one small reser-voir was insufficient to provide all the water they needed as it dried out during the sum-mer.The Norse Greenlanders may have had the same experience and this explains thecomprehensive structures higher up in the mountains.

Figure 33:The irrigation system at Garðar. Reconstruction after Knud J. Krogh 1982.The irrigation system at Garðar consists of a network of dug canals (49, 50, 51 & 52, figure 24), whichdistribute water from the dams to the infield.The main canal (49) runs along the upper ridge. From themain canal, smaller canals (50, 51 & 52) divert water into the infield, running transversely across theedge of the ridge right down to the next terrace. One of the canals (50) feeds water into the separatesmall field (ruin 39) mentioned above. Extensive dams (41 & 46) were built at strategic places in themountains to gather spring water in reservoirs.

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Hvalsey. Despite these latter letters there is, however, no doubt that the farmstead andchurch at Qaqortukulooq are identical with the farmstead and church in Hvalsey Fjordmentioned in the old accounts, and that it is the same church in which the above-men-tioned wedding took place (figure 34). Hvalsey Fjord is identified with Qaqortup Imaa,and Hvalsey, from where Thorkell brought his sheep, is the island of Arpatsivik.

In 1408 on the Sunday after Exaltation of the Cross (Exaltatio S. Crusis) Sigrid Bjørns-dottir and Thorstein Olafsson were married in Hvalsey Fjord's Church. Exaltation of theCross always falls on the 14th September. The following Sunday was in 1408 the 16th

September. In a letter issued in Garðar on 19th April 1409 the priests Eindridi Andreassonand Paul Hallvardsson testified that they had published the banns over Sigrid andThorstein in the church on three successive Sundays, as is right and proper, and the pri-ests added that there was a large congregation. On the 11th May 1414 Brand Haldorsson,Thord Jørundsson,Thorbjørn Bardsson and Jón Jónsson testified that they were presentin the church in Hvalsey when the marriage between Sigrid Bjørnsdottir and ThorsteinOlafsson took place.On the 4th September 1424 Sæmund Oddson testified the same, andThorgrim Sølvesson, Brand Haldorsson,Thor Jørundsson and Jón Jónsson put their sealon the letter in further confirmation of the correctness of the testimony. Both letterswere issued at the farmstead of Ökrum in Blönduhlið in Northern Iceland. Thorsteinbelonged to a powerful chieftain's family from Northern Iceland and the same was thecase for Sigrid.The farm of Ökrum, where Thorstein and Sigrid apparently settled afterthey returned to Iceland, was Sigrid's inheritance. We do not know why Sigrid andThorstein needed to have their marriage confirmed back home in Iceland so many yearsafter it had taken place in Greenland, but inheritance may well have been involved.

Just like Sigrid and Thorstein, the signatories of the 1414 and 1424 letters were all fromIcelandic chieftain's families. From their own testimonies they had arrived in Greenlandafter being blown off course on a voyage from Norway to Iceland. According to theIcelandic Annals (fact box 8) the voyage took place in 1406 and it is first under the year1410 that the annals tell us that Thorstein Helmigson,Thorgrim Sølveson and SnorreTorfesson sailed from Greenland to Norway.Thorgrim was one of the signatories of the1424 letter.

In the year 1410 we are also told that Snorre Torfesson's wife Gudrun Styrsdottir re-married. This is an indication that at home on Iceland the travellers who left in 1406were presumed to be dead. At this time, contact between the Norse settlements inGreenland and the rest of the world was very scant. Four years were to elapse beforepeople on Iceland learned the fate of the 1406 voyagers, and the information about thewedding, which was celebrated in Hvalsey in Greenland in 1408, was to be the last signof life from the Norsemen to escape from Greenland.After this the written sources aresilent, whereas archaeology shows that there was life in the Eastern Settlement for atleast the next 50 years (see below).

The farmstead and church of Hvalsey Fjord,Qaqortukulooq - ruin group Ø83HVALSEY IN THE WRITTEN ACCOUNTSAccording to Sturlubók Landnámu (fact box 1) Thorkell Farsek, Erik the Red's cousin, tra-velled with Erik to Greenland where he took land in Hvalsey Fjord.We are given theadditional information that when Thorkell died, he was laid to rest in a burial mound inthe infield at the farmstead in Hvalsey Fjord.Where the farm lay in Hvalsey Fjord weare not told. It is also written of Thorkell that he was very strong. Once he was visitedby his cousin Erik, whom he wanted to entertain in the best possible way.Thorkell appa-rently had his sheep grazing on the island of Hvalsey, because the account tells that forthe lack of a boat, he swam out to Hvalsey from where he brought back a fully-grownsheep. Similarly, in Flateyjarbók (fact box 3) mention is made of a church in Hvalsey Fjordand Ivar Bardarson in his Description of Greenland (fact box 2) also uses the place nameHvalsey Fjord's Church. According to Ivar, the church owned the whole of HvalseyFjord. In contrast to the above, letters concerning a marriage in 1408 (see below) useonly the place name Hvalsey: The church, in which the wedding took place, lay in

Figure 34:The farmstead and church Hvalsey have been identified with the ruins at Qaqortukulooq.Photo: J. Arneborg.

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THE RUINS AT HVALSEY FJORD'S FARMSTEAD AND CHURCHHvalsey Fjord's farmstead and church lie on a large fertile plain, which is bordered tothe north by a steep rocky cliff that rises up behind the farmstead buildings.The farm-stead lies strategically well placed between the approaches to the two main fjords,Igaliku Fjord, where the bishop's farm Garðar lay, and Tunulliarfik, where Brattahlið lay.In contrast to Brattahlið and Garðar, the infield was not enclosed within a dyke, butotherwise the Hvalsey farmstead is a textbook example of a large Greenlandic farm.There is a large residence with a banqueting hall, church with churchyard, byres andbarns, warehouse by the fjord for trading commodities, horse enclosure for the use ofvisiting guests, and storage building (skemma) lying high up on a little mountain to thenorth of the settlement complex (figures 35 & 36).

CHURCH AND CHURCHYARD, RUIN 8The well-preserved church ruin at Qaqortukulooq has, since Hans Egede's time, attrac-ted much attention. For example, during colonial times many of the Danish employeesfrom both commerce and the church in nearby Julianehåb, present-day Qaqortoq, havethrough time carried out excavations inside the church (figure 37).The main investiga-tion took place in 1910, when the architect Mogens Clemmensen was given the task ofexecuting a detailed examination of the church (figure 38.1 & 2). In addition to anarchaeological analysis of the building, Clemmensen also carried out minor excavationsin and around the church, but without any major findings.The original floor had more-or-less been dug away in the course of previous investigations, but roughly in the middleof the church's interior he found the remains of a wooden coffin. However, both thecoffin and the skeleton inside it were in such a poor condition that they crumbled todust at the slightest touch.

Clemmensen, along with his contemporaries, compared Hvalsey Fjord's Church withchurches built in Ireland in the 11th and 12th centuries, and he dated its construction tothe early part of the Norse period in Greenland.Aage Roussell, on the other hand, wasof the opinion that the nearest comparable churches were Norwegian examples, andon the basis of this he dated its construction to some time after 1300. It is the latterdate, which is referred to today.

Already Hans Egede noted in his diary after his visit to Hvalsey Fjord's Church thatthere was a large crack in the stonework of the east gable and that the eastern part ofthe south wall leaned markedly outwards. In 1910 it was one of Clemmensen's tasks toevaluate if there was a danger that the south wall of the church would collapse, as wellas suggesting how this catastrophe could be avoided. Clemmensen concluded that thecracks and the leaning wall were due to poor foundations and that the damage couldhave happened shortly after construction of the church was completed (figure 38.1 & 2).

INVESTIGATIONS OF THE RUINS AT QAQORTUKULOOQ"..... 8 fathoms [c. 15m] long and about 3½ fathoms [c. 6.5m] broad, within, and the wallalmost 1 fathom [c. 1.8m] thick. It is 2 to 3 fathoms [c. 3.8-5.6m] in height, it has two doorson the southern side, and a large door at the western end. On the northern side has been awindow and on the southern side four windows, broad inwards and narrow outwards.A furtherlarge window in each gable.The wall is still intact and strong, and with lime between the sto-nes, and at the southern corner it [the wall] was cracked and some of the stones, along withsome of the gable had fallen down, a good part of the stones in the building were very large,flat and even, as if they had been worked and the whole building strong and odd with mottledstones black and white, same church is enclosed within a large walled churchyard."

Such is the oldest description we have of Hvalsey Fjord's Church, probably the best pre-served Norse ruin in Greenland.The description is from 1723 and it was written by firstofficer Erik Larsen in connection with his and Hans Egede's voyage southwards alongthe west coast of Greenland in search of the Norsemen's Eastern Settlement.The visitto Hvalsey Fjord's Church took place on 28th August and further to the church; Larsenalso describes another "stone-built" house, which must be the banqueting hall (seebelow). In connection with the visit, Hans Egede organised a small excavation inside thechurch, but according to Larsen they were not able to dig in depth as they did not havesuitable tools, and they only found a little charcoal and some bone fragments.

Lieutenant-commander W.A. Graah was rather better prepared when he visitedHvalsey Fjord's Church in 1828. Using 21 men he managed to clear out the inside ofthe church in 12 hours! But the result was disappointing for Graah, who found nothingof interest, either inside the church or the hall, where he also carried out a small exca-vation. In connection with the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries' investigations inGreenland in the 1830s, Pastor Jørgensen from Qaqortoq carried out new excavationsin the church and the hall in 1839, but on this occasion, too, a poor result was repor-ted. Conditions for the preservation of organic remains at the site are poor and all thatJørgensen recovered were some potsherds of soapstone. In 1880 the floor of HvalseyFjord's Church was again subject to excavation.This time it was Gustav Holm who wasresponsible for the investigations. Holm recorded remains of human bones within thechurch, but otherwise was forced, like the preceding excavators, to conclude that theconditions for preservation on the site were poor.

In 1910 the architect Mogens Clemmensen was sent to Greenland with the special taskof carrying out a detailed survey and description of the church in Hvalsey Fjord.And in1935 the main investigation of the ruins of the associated chieftain's farmstead tookplace under the leadership of the architect Aage Roussell, museum curator at theNational Museum in Copenhagen.

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Figure 36: The ruins at Hvalsey, detailed survey from 2004 by Niels-Christian Clemmensen, KUAS,Copenhagen.

Figure 37:The Hvalsey Fjord's Church. Photo: J. Arneborg.

Figure 35: Overview of the ruins at Hvalsey Fjord - after Knud J. Krogh 1982.Ruin 1. Stable with associated barn.The building's total external length is about 20 x 11m. An additionalstable has been built on to the west.The building lacks stall partition stones and was probably intended forsheep and goats. Investigated archaeologically in 1935. See description below.Ruin 2, 3, 4, 5. Buildings not investigated. Function unknown.Ruin 6.The dwelling house was constructed to the west of the byre-barn complex, ruin 7, and ended to thenorthwest with the banqueting hall. External dimensions c. 36 x 36m. Investigated archaeologically in 1935.See description below.Ruin 7. Byre with barn built to the west of, and up against, the wall of the churchyard. External dimensionsc. 26 x 8m. To the north of the barn the remains of an unidentified building can be seen. Investigatedarchaeologically in 1935. See description below.Ruin 8. Church with churchyard. External dimensions of the church c. 16 x 8m.The walls are about 1.5mthick.The church is enclosed within the churchyard, which has internal dimensions of c. 31.2 x 24.8m. Maininvestigation in 1910. See description below.Ruin 9. Storage building (skemma), where the farmstead's provisions were stored.The building is constructedof stone without mortar or any other sealant between the stones, and is located high up to ensure throughpassage of air and consequent preservation of the food, for example dried meat and fish.Ruin 10.Warehouse located on the fjord where ships could dock.The farmstead's trading commodities werestored here.Ruin 11. Sheep and goat house with barn.The building is cut into a slope. External dimensions c. 10 x 7m.Not investigated archaeologically.Ruin 12. Sheep and goat house. Not investigated archaeologically.Ruin 13. Unidentified ruin.The form and state of preservation could indicate that the ruin is older than theother buildings described here.Ruin 14. Horse enclosure.The inner part of the circle was cleared of stones in 1880. Internal diameter c.13m.Ruin 15. Unidentified ruin. Previously interpreted as Thorkell Farsek's heathen grave. Internal dimensions c.3.75 x 1.25m. See description below.Ruin 16. Spring, lies in a c. 6m broad horseshoe-shaped depression. Not investigated archaeologically, butstones around the site perhaps represent remains of a built-up well house. Closest access to water from thefarm.Ruin 17. Animal pen, located up towards the mountains behind the dwelling house and the byre-barn com-plex.

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Figure 38.1 & 38.2: Hvalsey Fjord's Church - after a survey by Mogens Clemmensen 1910.The external dimensions of the church are c. 16 x 8m.The church was constructed of local stone throug-hout its full thickness, i.e. flat stones were laid as stretchers and headers in courses throughout the wholethickness of the walls.The stones were laid in clay and then pointed with lime mortar.The floor was pro-bably of stamped earth. No traces have been found of an altar.When Clemmensen carried out his invest-igation in 1910 the area where an altar could possibly have stood had been completely dug over.

The church had three entrances.The main entrance lay in the west gable and must be presumed to havebeen for the local large farmer and his family.The western entrance of the southern side of the churchmust be presumed to have been used by visiting churchgoers from the neighbouring farms, while theeastern door to the south, which leads into the chancel, was the priests' door.There is a window abovethe western door, four windows in the south wall, one in the east wall and one in the north wall.The win-dows have a simple funnel shape.The smallest opening is in line with the outer wall and opens in towardsthe interior of the church, allowing much more light to enter the room than would a simple straight shaft.The east window differs from the other windows, which all have lintels, in that the upper part of the ope-ning is arched.The arch is formed of radially-set stones, a technique known from Norway from the 12thcentury. Inside the church there are wall niches in both the south and north walls in which there havebeen wooden cabinets presumably for storing the church's holy vessels. A third niche to the right of thedoor for the visiting congregation was probably intended for the aspersorium (font) with holy water. Here,the churchgoers could dip their fingers and make the sign of the cross before entering the church. It isdifficult to say much about the roof. It probably had a wooden construction with grass turves laid over.The church is dated to the time after 1300.

On the lintel over the door in the west gable W.A. Graah and his travelling companions have carved theirsignatures.

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became covered in thick spoil layers. These were partially levelled out during AageRoussell's investigations in 1935.

THE DWELLING HOUSE, RUIN 6The dwelling house at Hvalsey Fjord's farmstead lies together with one of the farmste-ad's two byres west of the church.Towards the northwest, the dwelling complex endswith the carefully built banqueting hall (room X in the dwelling complex). Apart fromthe hall which, like the church, has stone walls, the house was in a ruinous state priorto the excavation in 1935.The poor state of preservation meant that the director ofthe excavations,Aage Roussell, had great difficulty in identifying the individual rooms, asis apparent from the plan he produced of the house (figure 40).We can be almost cer-tain that additional building remains are still to be found under the excavators' spoilheaps.

BYRE AND BARN COMPLEXES, RUINS 1 AND 7Immediately west of the church and churchyard lies one of Hvalsey Fjord Farm's twolivestock and barn complexes (ruin 7, figure 41).The byre and barn lie in extension ofone another.To the north of the barn the remains of walls can be seen from anotherbuilding or room, which has not been excavated.The byre could house nine or ten cows.

The other byre-barn complex (ruin 1, figure 42) lies westernmost in the group of ruins.The building comprises three rooms. A byre with associated barn (to the east) andparallel to this a sheep and goat house. As is usually the case on Greenlandic Norsefarmsteads the byre was very well insulated with thick turf walls, whereas the associa-ted hay barn was constructed of stones with no sealant between them in order to ensu-re good ventilation.The byre could house five to six cows.

"HEATHEN GRAVE", RUIN 15Easternmost in the group of ruins lies the almost circular horse enclosure (ruin 14, figu-re 35) and the unidentified ruin 15 (figure 43). Ruin 15 lies across the fall of terrain andcomprises a single row of large stones.The "building" has internal dimensions of c. 3.75x 1.25m and there is no entrance.

According to Sturlunók Landnámu (fact box 1) Thorkell Farsek was interred in a burialmound in the infield by the farm in Hvalsey Fjord, and it has been suggested that ruin15 is the stones in Thorkell's grave.The earth is missing but this could, explains Roussell,have been eroded away by rain and strong winds. If this were true, one would expectthat the walls of ruin 13 beside ruin 15 would have suffered the same fate, but this isnot the case and we have to conclude that it has not been possible to identify thefunction of ruin 15 with certainty.

At the beginning of the 1960s the architect Knud J. Krogh from the Danish NationalMuseum put the church under observation. Annual control surveys were to revealwhether the cracks and the leaning wall were stable or whether the wall was stillmoving outwards.The latter proved to be the case, and in 2000 Greenland's NationalMuseum in Nuuk, in collaboration with Qaqortoq Museum, stepped in.With the aid ofa 30-ton hydraulic jack the wall was righted and a concrete foundation was cast belowthe eastern part of the church's south wall (figure 39). Before this restoration work wasstarted, archaeological investigations were carried out along the foot of the wall wherethe concrete foundation was to be cast.The investigation showed that the eastern partof the south wall had been built over earlier graves and that these were the reason thatit had begun to lean outwards. Poor foundations as Clemmensen had concluded! As anadded bonus the excavation provided the extra information that the church had had atleast one predecessor.

The churchyard around the church has never been investigated systematically.The earlyinvestigations on the site focussed first and foremost on the church building itself. Earthand stones cleared out from the church were deposited on the churchyard, which then

Figure 39:The Hvalsey Fjord church, restoration of the south wall. Photo. G. Nyegaard.

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Figure 41: Byre with barn, ruin 7 - plan after Roussell 1935.Room I: Byre with stalls along the north wall and paved dung channel along the south wall.The entranceto the byre is in the south wall. Internal dimensions c. 12 x 3m. Room II is the accompanying barn, whichmeasures c. 10 x 5m internally.

long fire, which functioned both as a source of heat and light. In addition to this there was in the room,by the wall to the right of the entrance, a small hearth, which could have been used for cooking. Alongthe side walls and the west gable there were probably wood-clad wall platforms or benches.At floor levelin the southern wall, by the west gable, there is a canal or vent of unknown function.At a guess, this wasprobably to provide the air supply for the long fire.East of the hall, room X, lie the two rooms VIII and IX. Room IX has internal dimensions of c. 14 x 4m.The entrance to the room is through the south wall. The room was equipped with long fire, smallerhearths, fire pits and wall settees, showing that everyday functions took place here.Towards the east thereis access from this to room VIII, which perhaps was a storage room.South of rooms VIII and IX lie rooms V and VII, separated from each other by passage VI.The function ofroom V has not been identified, and the same is the case for room VII.North of the rooms VIII and IX lies yet another room or building, room XI, which is interpreted as a smit-hy.

Figure 40: Dwelling house, ruin 6 - plan after Aage Roussell 1935.A total of 11 rooms have been identified in the building. Room I is described as the house's kitchen, wherefood was prepared over open hearths and in fire pits.The entrance to the room is found in its south wall.The passage, room II, which on the plan begins east of room I, links rooms II,V and possible an unexca-vated room south of room V. Room II was perhaps used for storage, and the same applies to room III.There does not seem to be an entrance to room III from the passage but instead from a probably unex-cavated room north of room III.There is access to this unexcavated room from the passage, room IV.The western row of rooms ends to the north with the banqueting hall, room X, which quite clearly is oneof the last rooms to be added to the dwelling complex.The hall has internal dimensions of c. 8 x 5m. Itwas probably constructed at the same time as the church, i.e. after 1300.The walls of the hall are con-structed in the same way as those of the church and are preserved up to a height of 2.8m.The entran-ce to the hall is located in the east gable of the building. Mid in the hall's longitudinal axis there was a

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Figure 43: "Heathen grave". Photo: J. Arneborg.

Figure 42: Byre and barn complex, ruin 1 - plan after Roussell 1935.The building comprises three rooms.A byre with associated barn (to the east) and parallel to this a sheepand goat house. Room I is the byre. It is one-sided with stone stall partitions along the building's west walland a c 20 cm deep paved dung channel along the east wall.The byre has internal dimensions of c. 6 x3m.The associated barn, room II, measures 7 x 3m internally. Parallel with the two rooms lies room III,which was probably used to house sheep and goats.The latter room has internal dimensions of c. 17 x3m.

"DAIRY FARM", Ø83ACompared with the farmsteads at Brattahlið and Garðar there are not many buildingsassociated with the Hvalsey Fjord Farm and this is perhaps why Aage Roussell sugge-sted that the small farm, which lies east of Hvalsey Fjord Farm, had functioned as a sub-sidiary dairy farm.This small farm, ruin group Ø83a, originally comprised eight ruins. Ofthese, four are preserved today, including a small boathouse by the fjord.The other buil-dings are longhouses in which the individual rooms lie in extension of each other.Thebuildings were constructed with almost pure turf walls and both their form and thebuilding technique suggest that they are of considerable age. Archaeological investiga-tions in 2004 showed that the surviving houses had only been used for a short time.The small farmstead was probably built already in Landnam times in the 11th century,and rather than being an integrated part of the Hvalsey Fjord Farm it seems more like-ly that the small farm was abandoned at an early stage and its land incorporated underthe larger Hvalsey Fjord Farm.

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If we turn to the other great Greenlandic saga, Eirik's Saga (fact box 4), we run into pro-blems regarding the name of the first farmer at Herjolfsnes. After the account of Erikthe Red's departure for Greenland we are told of the large farmer Thorbjørn that he,apparently shortly after Erik had left Iceland, ran into financial problems at home inIceland and therefore decided to travel to Greenland, where Erik had promised to helphim. On the way,Thorbjørn and his entourage numbering 30 people were forced to staythe winter at Herjolfsnes, where the farmer Thorkell gave the strangers a warm recep-tion. In the following spring Thorbjørn travelled to Erik the Red at Brattahlið. He wasgiven land in the vicinity of Brattahlið and became a rich man in Greenland.Thorbjørn'sdaughter Gudrid married Erik's son Thorstein and later, after Thorstein's death,ThorfinnKarlsevne, together with whom she travelled to Vinland (see above in the section onBrattahlið).

Thorkell or Herjolf? We shall never know the answer, but what is certain is that theplace names Herjolf's Fjord and Herjolfsnes became established and are repeated inlater written sources which are seen as being independent of the saga texts.

THE EARLIEST DESCRIPTIONS OF HERJOLFSNESIvar Bardarson (fact box 2) begins his description of the Eastern Settlement atHerjolfsnes. Firstly, he describes the localities east of Herjolfsnes and then those that lieto the west of here. Ivar did not mention a word about the farm and church atHerjolfsnes, but in the list of churches in Flateyjarbók (fact box 3) a church is mentionedin Herjolf's Fjord, and Herjolfsnes is described as lying easternmost in the EasternSettlement.

In navigation instructions written in the same book as Ivar's Description of Greenland,mention is made of a harbour by the name of Sand, which lies at Herjolfsnes.The ori-gin of these navigation instructions is unknown, but they describe the journey fromIceland to Greenland and Sand Harbour is described as an ordinary harbour forNorwegians and merchants.

On the basis of the medieval descriptions, the Cape Farewell area was singled out alrea-dy at the end of the 18th century as the location for Herjolfsnes. It was, however, first in1830 in connection with the finding of a gravestone re-used in an Greenlandic house inIkigaat that it became clear that the Norse ruins here must be identical with Herjolfsnes(Figure 45).

The location of Sand harbour is still the subject of discussion. Some have suggested thenearby bay of Makkarneq, west of Ikigaat, from where a couple of farms and three stonewarehouses have been recorded (figure 46). Limited archaeological investigations in2002 provided, however, no grounds to identify the area as a trading place and harbour.

Herjolfsnes, Ikigaat, ruin group Ø111THE FIRST SETTLERS ON HERJOLFSNES

Herjolf was one of the first settlers who, according to Sturlubók Landnámu (fact box 1),came to Greenland from Iceland. The account says that Herjolf took possession ofHerjolf's Fjord and that he settled on Herjolfsnes (figure 44). It is added that Herjolfbecame a great man in Greenland.

In Grænlendinga Saga (fact box 5) we are introduced to Bjarne who, according to thissaga, was the first who discovered the new land to the west (see section on Brattahlið),Bjarne was the son of Herjolf and Herjolf's wife Thorgerd. Bjarne was a promising youngman with a desire to travel overseas to trade and he soon also became a prosperousman. Herjolf took the decision to travel with Erik the Red from Iceland to Greenlandat a time when Bjarne was in Norway. On his return to Iceland, Bjarne found that hisfamily farm had been taken over by someone else and therefore he continued toGreenland. It was during this voyage that Bjarne discovered America. Bjarne was, howe-ver, more interested in reaching his family in Greenland rather than investigating thenew land, and finally he arrived safely at Herjolfsnes where he stayed with his father solong as he lived.After Herjolf's death Bjarne took over the farm.

Figure 44: Overview of Herjolfsnes. Photo Niels Algreen-Møller.

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In 1834 the Royal Greenlandic Trading Company (Den kongelige grønlandske Handel)founded the trading station Østprøven on the small promontory of Ikigaat, but it clo-sed again already in 1877.The census lists however show that the place was inhabitedright up until 1909. In 1959 a sheep farmer established himself on Ikigaat, but the placewas finally abandoned in 1972.The ruins of the trading station and the later settlementare still visible in the terrain (figure 47).

W.A. Graah saw the ruins at Ikigaat in connection with his journey to the east coast in1829. Similarly, the German missionary at the Moravian Brethren Mission inFrederiksdal,Val. Müller, in the years up to 1830, sent in reports to the Royal Society ofNorthern Antiquaries concerning the Norse ruins in the area.

Interest concerning, in particular, the ruins at Ikigaat was, however, first properly awake-ned after the finding of Hroar's gravestone in 1829 (figure 45). A few years later, OveKielsen, a clerk from Nanortalik, reported that a violent autumn storm had uncovereda ship at Ikigaat and remains of sailors' clothes were found close to the wreck. On clo-ser examination of the site it became apparent that the "ship remains" came from woo-den coffins and the clothes were shrouds. Further to this, Kielsen reported the findingof intact coffins with "…recognisable remains…" of the deceased.As proof of the skele-

Figure 47: Ikigaat, drawn by H.J. Rink's drawing in 1853. Kept in The National Museum of Denmark.

Figure 45:The gravestone is 1.14m long and 48cm broad.Thereis an inscription on the gravestone in Latin characters: HERHUILER: HRO(AR) KOLGRIMS:S(ON) (Here lies HroarKolgrimsson).The stone was found by one of the MoravianBrethren missionaries at Frederiksdal and sent to the RoyalSociety of Northern Antiquaries in Copenhagen in 1831 by theFactor J. Mathiesen in Julianehåb (today Qaqortoq).The stone iskept at the Danish National Museum. Photo:The National Museum of Demark.

Figure 46:Warehouse at Makkarneq. Photo H.C. Gulløv.

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THE RUINS AT HERJOLFSNESHerjolfsnes lies on a peninsula that extends out directly into the Atlantic Ocean c.5.5km northwest of Cape Farewell.The actual group of ruins lies on a small promonto-ry which is only sheltered from the Atlantic storms by some small islands and rockyskerries. In contrast to the more northern part of the Eastern Settlement, the landsca-pe around Cape Farewell is alpine with high, jagged mountain tops. Behind the group ofruins the mountains rise up to 1200m above sea level. The vegetation on the narrowstrip of land between sea and mountains is, in sheltered places, dominated by grass andherbs. In more exposed locations the strong wind has revealed the bare rock.The pro-montory on which the ruins lie is constantly exposed to the sea's destructive powers.In the period between 1840 and 1921 alone, more than 12m of land disappeared fromin front of the church building.

A total of ten Norse ruins have been recorded at Herjolfsnes (Figure 48). In additionto the church (ruin 1), these comprise a dwelling house with a banqueting hall (ruin 2),a presumed byre and barn complex (ruin 3) and various storage buildings. A storagebuilding sited higher up was perhaps the farm's storage house (skemma) (ruin 5).To thewest of the buildings there are the remains of an infield dyke (ruin 8).

CHURCH AND CHURCHYARD, RUIN 1The church lies closest to the coast and today a large part of the churchyard has beenswallowed up by the sea (figure 49). During the archaeological investigations in 1921 itwas demonstrated that the church has had one or more predecessors.The church is,like that at Igaliku, of a type with a Romanesque ground plan, and on this basis there isno reason why it could not have been constructed as early as some time in the 11th-12th

centuries. It appears as a stone church with courses of turf built on substantial founda-tions.There is no west gable and the preserved walls were, like those at Igaliku, proba-bly also protective walls around a wooden church building. During Nørlund's excavationsin 1921 a plank was found which could originate from one of the gables.The shape ofthe plank shows that the church must have had pitched roof, probably covered with grassturves.The interior of the church was so disturbed that Nørlund did not gain much fromhis investigations here. In one corner some stone paving was preserved, and perhaps thefloor of the church had been paved with flagstones.The excavators found two graves inthe nave. In one of them there lay, under the head of the deceased, a small box made ofwhalebone with a pinewood base.The box probably contained food.As was the case withthe buried walrus and narwhal skulls at Garðar, the giving of food for the deceased totake along on their last journey does not quite correspond to Christian burial practice.

Whereas the results inside the church gave no great results, Nørlund had more luckwith the excavations in the churchyard, from where Ove Kielsen, a former clerk, hadreported good conditions for preservation. The whole of the southern part of the

tons' state of preservation he submitted a golden lock of hair that he had taken from askull in one of the coffins.

Reports concerning the severe erosion of the churchyard at Ikigaat and the continuingfinds of damaged wooden coffins, remains of clothing and skeletal parts in the coastalcliff caused the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries to take the initiative for furtherexcavations.At the Society's expense, Ove Kielsen carried out excavations both insidethe church and in the churchyard.The inside of the church was cleared of earth and fal-len stones, but nothing of significance was found.The majority of the church's interiorwas, according to Kielsen's report, dug over to a depth of about 1m and the finds inclu-ded completely or partially preserved coffins, pieces of cloth and memorial crucifixes,which had been placed in the graves with the deceased.

The continuing erosion of the coast meant that the cliff, which cut through the sout-hern part of the churchyard, appeared as an open wound with visible traces of burialsin situ. And up until 1921, when the main investigation of the ruins at Ikigaat took place,numerous more-or-less authorised excavations were carried out in the churchyard. In1880, Gustav Holm visited Ikigaat and he carried out excavations: "… along the beach ofthe well-known churchyard…". In 1855 the Inspector for Southern Greenland, Heinrich J.Rink, carried out limited excavations. In 1900, the doctor in Julianehåb (Qaqortoq),Gustav Meldorf, carried out excavations in the erosion cliff in the churchyard, and in1906 the famous Danish author Mylius-Erichsen dug textile remains and a couple ofwell-preserved skulls out of the cliff. It was clear that there was a need for a substanti-al rescue operation if the whole churchyard were not to fall prey to the sea - and more-or-less authorised excavators. The outbreak of World War I resulted, however, in thesuspension of archaeological investigations in the Norse settlements and it was first in1921 that it proved possible to begin the long awaited investigation. Poul Nørlund, fromthe Danish National Museum's Medieval Department, was sent to Greenland with theprimary task of excavating what remained of the churchyard. In addition to this,Nørlund also carried out limited investigations in the remains of the dwelling house.

Apart from the investigations on the site in 2001-2002 under the direction of HansKapel, the efforts of the museum in Nanortalik have, in recent years, been primarilydirected towards maintenance of the coastal defences in front of the churchyard inorder to prevent the sea's further destruction of the ancient monument.The investiga-tions in 2001-2002 were concentrated on earth banks some 300m north of the churchruin.The earth banks were, in the first instance, presumed to be the remains of a boat-house where ships were stored during the winter, but the investigations revealed thebanks to be of natural origin. In connection with the investigations, the archaeologistsalso excavated a little smithy and they demonstrated traces of other craft activities.Theresearch also revealed that there had been a major landslide in Ikigaat in the 18th cen-tury, which had probably destroyed ruins at the site.

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Figure 48: Overview of the ruins at Herjolfsnes, ruin group Ø111 - after Joel Berglund 1988.Ruin 1. Church and churchyard.The church has a Romanesque ground plan with a nave and a narrowerchancel.The west gable is open.The walls are constructed with alternating courses of stone and turf.Totalinternal length c. 14.5m. The breadth of the nave is 6.5m, whereas that of the chancel is 4.3m.Archaeological investigations in 1840 and 1921. See description below.Ruin 2. Dwelling house. Limited archaeological investigations in 1840 and 1921.The division into roomshas only been partly established. See description below.Ruin 3. Presumed byre-barn complex.Total internal length c. 25m. Partially excavated in 1840.The buil-ding was altered and fitted out as living quarters by the Inuit population of the area. Constructed of stonewith courses of turf. See description below.Ruin 4. Storage building. Built exclusively of stone. Dimensions c. 10 x 2.25m.Ruin 5. Storage building (skemma?). Built exclusively of stone. Dimensions c. 9 x 4m.Ruin 6. Building of unidentified function. Constructed of stone and turf. Perhaps divided up into two rooms.Dimensions c. 17 x 6mRuin 7. Building of unidentified function. Constructed of stone and turf. Dimensions c. 11 x 6m.Ruin 8. Infield dyke. Constructed of stone and turf.The dyke can be traced over a distance of c. 140m.Ruin 9. Rock shelter for sheep and goats.Ruin 10. Building of unidentified function. Constructed of stone and turf. Dimensions c. 13 x 5.The buil-ding has two rooms and an entrance to the south.

Figure 49: Plan of church and churchyard - after Poul Nørlund 1921.The church has a Romanesque ground plan.The internal length is c. 14.5m; the chancel is c. 4.3m broadand the nave c. 6.5m.The stone and turf walls probably served as protective walls for a wooden church.The main entrance to the church was through a door in the west gable. In the north wall a narrow door-way can be seen which has been secondarily closed with turf. Most of the southern side of the church-yard has been lost to the sea.

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Day. Later, a less thoughtful posterity had opened her coffin and no fewer than twocorpses had been laid in it, on top of the little runic message.

In addition to being buried in wooden coffins, the deceased at Herjolfsnes were alsointerred wrapped in old clothes. Due to the good conditions for preservation manyitems of clothing were still intact.The finding of these well-preserved costumes was asensation, which went around the world. In total, Nørlund took back to the NationalMuseum in Copenhagen 23 more-or-less well-preserved costumes for both men andwomen, while three were for children. In addition to these there were 16 hoods, fourhats and one pair plus four single socks (figure 52.1, 52.2 6 52.3).

The clothes were made in Greenland, but according to European fashion. By compari-son with contemporary illustrations, Nørlund could date the majority of the costumepieces to the 1300-1400s, and radiocarbon dating has subsequently confirmed thesedates.The latest costume is from the first half of the 15th century and it is, accordingly,the last evidence we have of life on the Norse settlements in Greenland.

Together with the graves the archaeologists found, in several cases, small memorial cru-cifixes, which had accompanied the dead to the grave. Some of these were very simple;others were beautifully carved and equipped with religious sayings (figure 53).

The skeletons from the churchyard at Herjolfsnes were investigated at the Anthropo-logical Laboratory in Copenhagen, and the results of these investigations gave rise tothe theory the Norsemen in this late period were very much plagued with illness andin a very degenerate state. More recent anthropological investigations have, however,disproved this theory.

Figure 51: Gudveg's rune staff.The small stick measures 19.5 x 1.5 x 1cm. Kept at the National Museumin Copenhagen. Photo:The National Museum.

churchyard had been eroded away and Nørlund concentrated his excavations on theeroded edge southeast of the chancel, on the areas west of the church and on a smallarea in the northeastern corner of the churchyard.

The burial density in the churchyard was high. Nørlund estimates that the excavatorsin the areas examined came into contact with 200 burials, of which at least 20 werewell-preserved.The graves lay in several layers and often the early graves were distur-bed by later. Many of the deceased lay in wooden coffins and often these coffins werewithout a lid and contained several corpses (figure 50)

Apparently the coffins were recycled. In one case a coffin contained a small rune staff,on which was inscribed: This woman, whose name was Gudveg, was laid overboard in theGreenland Sea (Figure 51).Apparently Gudveg had died during the voyage to Greenlandand her fellow travellers had buried her at sea. By burying the rune staff with the sadstory, thoughtful relatives or friends wanted to ensure Gudveg's salvation on Judgement

Figure 50:The excavations of the church at Herjolfsnes in 1921. Photo: Poul Nørlund.

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Figure 53: Memorial crucifixes from Herjolfsnes.Kept at the National Museum in Copenhagen.Photo:The National Museum of Denmark.

there can be no doubt that this is the farm's banqueting hall (Figure 54).A small pieceof Rhenish stoneware from the floor layer shows that the hall was in use in the 15th cen-tury.

BYRE-BARN COMPLEX?, RUIN 3Close by, to the north of the house, lies a c. 25m long building which is divided up intotwo rooms (figure 55).The larger of the two rooms had been about 13m long.The buil-ding was constructed of stone with courses of turf. It had been altered secondarily andsubsequently inhabited by the local area's Inuit population.The building has been tenta-tively identified as a byre-barn complex - probably because it was thought that thereshould be a byre for cattle at Herjolfsnes.With the caveat that later changes to the buil-ding cannot be ruled out, the archaeological investigations give no immediate groundsto ascribe this function to the house. On the contrary.The byre part was not equippedwith the thick protective turf walls which we normally see around the Norse byres, andthe smaller room in the complex, which would then be the barn, is constructed of stoneand sealed with turf, which is very unusual. Other barns in the Norse settlements hadwalls constructed exclusively of stone, which allows ventilation.

During the excavations in 1840, artefacts from the 17th and 18th century were found thatcan be attributed to the later use of the building.

Figure 52.1, 52.2 & 52.3:Costumes, hoods, hats and socks fromHerjolfsnes. Kept at the National Museum inCopenhagen. Photo:The National Museum ofDenmark.

THE DWELLING HOUSE, RUIN 2The dwelling house has only been partially investigated and the full extent of the roomorganisation has not been fully elucidated (figure 48).The house consists of a series ofrooms, which lie in extension of one another and with rooms built on to the rear ofthe house.The walls are of stone with courses of turf.Westernmost in the complex liesa well-built room, which deviates from the rest of the house in that it is constructed ofcarefully chosen stones, which have been laid in clay.The entrance to this room facestowards the remaining part of the dwelling house.The floor had been paved with thinflagstones, which, like the stones of the wall, had been laid in clay.The room measures11 x 5.75m, and even though distaffs and loom weights were found in the floor layer,

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THE FUNCTION OF THE HERJOLFSNES FARMAs the farmstead at Herjolfsnes appears today, it differs from the three other largeNorse Greenlandic farms described above. The exposed location right out on theAtlantic coast is a very atypical site for a Norse farmer to build his farm. It has not beenpossible to locate a definite byre for the prestigious cattle and no warehouse has beenrecorded. It is not, however, possible to discount the possibility that the original farm-stead had both byre and warehouse, and that these buildings were either built so closeto the coast that they have fallen prey to the sea or that they were destroyed by thelandslide demonstrated in connection with the archaeological investigations in 2001-20.Modern agricultural investigations recommend that Ikigaat today can bear, as a maxi-mum, a flock of 50 sheep and even though good infield has been lost to the sea, the sitedoes not appear to have been best-suited to agriculture. Even so, the church atHerjolfsnes is one of the largest in the Norse settlements and the hall is more than20m2 larger than the impressive hall at Hvalsey Fjord.

Poul Nørlund described Herjolfsnes as a hand stretching out in welcome to the shipsthat approach land, and perhaps it was this very access to the sea, which determinedthe farmstead's location. On the basis of the navigation descriptions in the Descriptionof Greenland (fact box 2), it is suggested that the harbour at Sand functioned as theNorsemen's central trading place and Atlantic harbour. The warehouses at the largefarms do, however, tend to suggest that trade with foreign merchants took place at theindividual large farms and this is also the way that trade is described in the Icelandicsagas. Nevertheless, it was at Herjolfsnes that Thorbjørn landed on his voyage fromIceland to Brattahlið, and for many other sea travellers Herjolfsnes was probably alsothe place where they first felt solid ground under their feet. Or it was from here thatthey set off on their dangerous expeditions across the Atlantic. Herjolfsnes lies alsostrategically well placed for hunting on the southern part of the east coast, as descri-bed by Ivar Bardarson (fact box 2).The warehouses in Makkarneq could, in this respect,have been a kind of collection point for the hunting products from the east coast, in thesame way that a similar warehouse on the point of the Nuussuaq peninsula in Disko Bayis interpreted as a collection point for hunting products from North Greenland.

Figure 55: Ruin 3. Interpreted as a byre-barn complex. The building is c. 25m long - plan after PoulNørlund 1921.

Figure 54:The banqueting hall at Herjolfsnes - plan after Poul Nørlund 1921.

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FACT BOXES

Fact box 1. Sturlubók LandnámuContains the oldest known reference to the individual Landnam settlers and to theareas of land they took when they came to Greenland together with Erik the Red.Sturlubók Landnámu has its name from the Icelander Sturla Thórdarson (1214-1284) andthe book deals primarily with the Icelandic Landnam at the end of the 9th century.Theaccount of the latter is presumed to have its origins in a lost work by the scholar AríThorgilsson (1067-1148). Whether the information concerning the GreenlandicLandnam settlers can also be attributed to Arí is unclear.Sturla Thórdarson is thought to have written his version of Landnamabók in the yearsup to his death. Unfortunately, Sturla's original work was destroyed in the Copenhagenfire of 1728, but prior to this, transcripts were made which survive today.

Fact box 2. Ivar Bardarson's Description of GreenlandIvar was a Norwegian priest who was sent to Greenland in 1341 by the Bishop ofBergen.We do not know why, but in the light of the Description of Greenland's detailedaccount of Greenlandic churches and their ownership, it seems obvious to concludethat the Bishop wanted an overview of the churches, probably for taxation purposes.Ivar´s Description of Greenland was allegedly not written by Ivar Bardarson himself. Herecounted his experiences in Greenland to someone else who then wrote down theaccount in Norwegian.Today it exists as a Danish translation in a collection of accountsof Greenland, which were gathered and written at the beginning of the 16th century. Thecollection, which is called The Old Greenlandic Description, survives in the form of tran-scripts from the 17th century.

Fact box 3. FlateyarbókThe beautifully illustrated Flateyarbók was, for the most part, written by two Icelandicpriests, Jón Þorðarson and Magnús Þorhallsson, at the end of the 1380s.The book is acollection of manuscripts, and contains first and foremost accounts of the Norwegiankings.

Fact box 4. Eirik's SagaEirik's Saga is known from the Middle Ages in two versions. One of these is in Hauksbókwhich was written at the beginning of the 14th century at the request of the IcelandicLagman, Hauk Erlendson.The other is in Skálholtsbók, which was written in NorthernIceland around 1420, presumably by the wealthy farmer Ólafur Loftson.The style of thetwo versions deviates somewhat, but researchers agree that it is the later Skalholtsbókversion which most closely approaches the original text.The original text is presumedto have been written in the middle of the 13th.

SAGATRAILSCONCLUDING REMARKS

Brattahlið, Garðar, Hvalsey and Herjolfsnes represent some of the richest farmers'farms in the Norse settlements of Greenland. The majority of farms were, however,humble and are not to be found described in accounts from the time.The ruins of these,some fairly large, others quite small, are everywhere in the landscape of SouthernGreenland. Some lie side by side with present-day sheep farms and are easy to reach.Others lie in much more inaccessible places, where a visit requires greater effort.All areworth a visit, and together they tell the story of the Icelandic farmers who took landhere around the year 1000 AD and became Greenlanders.

tury and the entries from the time previous to this originate from other historical sour-ces such as, for example, Sturlubók Lamnámu (see fact box 1).

Fact box 9. Greenlandic bishopsThe Icelandic Annals include, among other things, information on who was ordained bis-hop over Greenland, when the bishops travelled to Greenland and when they died. Inaddition to this information there is also a list of the Greenlandic bishops in Flateyjárbók(see fact box 3).

List of bishops in Flateyjárbók Icelandic Annals about the Greenlandic bishops

Erik 1221: Erik, the Greenlanders' first bishop ordained1121: Bishop Erik set out from Greenland to find Vinland

Arnald 1124:Arnald ordained bishop for Greenland1126:Arnald in Iceland1152:Arnald of Greenland ordained bishop for Hamar

Jón Knud 1150: Jón Knud ordained bishop for Greenland1187: Jón Knud dies

Erik No informationHarald No informationJón Smyrill 1187: Jón ordained bishop for Greenland

1202: Jón arrives in Iceland1203: Jón in Iceland1209: Jón dies

Helge 1212: Bishop Helge arrives in Greenland1230: Helge dies

Nikolaus 1234: Nikolaus ordained bishop for Greenland1239: Nikolaus travels to Greenland1242: Nikolaus dies

Olaf 1246: Olaf ordained bishop for Greenland1247: Olaf travels to Greenland1262: Olaf in Iceland1263: Olaf in Iceland1267: Olaf in Norway1271: Olaf travels for a second time to Greenland1280: Olaf dies

Thord 1288:Thord ordained bishop for Greenland1289:Thord travels to Greenland1309:Thord travels from Greenland1310:Thord in Norway1314:Thord dies

Arne 1313:Arne ordained bishop for Greenland1315:Arne travels to Greenland

Jón 1343: Jón Skalle ordained bishop for Greenland 1368: - Arne still alive1349: Jón Skalle in Norway1357: Jón Skalle ordained bishop for Hólar in Iceland

Alf 1365:Alf ordained bishop for Greenland1368:Alf arrives in Greenland, which had been 1368: without a bishop for 19 years1378:Alf dies

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Fact box 5. Grænlendinge SagaIs only known from a copy in the great Flateyjarbók (fact box 3), which was writtenaround 1390.In Flateyjarbók the saga about the Greenlanders is inserted into another saga dealingwith the Norwegian King Olav Tryggvason.Grænlendinge Saga begins with an account of Erik the Red's Landnam in Greenland. Thissection is, however, not thought to have been part of the original text, but was insertedinto the text by the writers of Flateyjarbók with Hauksbók's Eirik's Saga (fact box 4) asits basis.

Fact box 6. Fóstbrædra SagaFóstbrædra Saga belongs to the group of Icelandic sagas dealing with Icelanders andIcelandic families in the time from Iceland's Landnam in the last half of the 9th centuryuntil about 1030.The sagas were written down in the 13th century, and they are presu-mably based on older texts and oral traditions.Fóstbrædra Saga is about the foster brothers Thorgeir Hávarsson and ThormodKolbrúnarskáld, and it is in connection with Thormod's voyage to Greenland that weare introduced to Thorkel Leifsson at Brattahlið. Thormod subsequently died in thebattle at Stiklestad in 1030 and his stay in Greenland must, therefore, have been priorto this date.Fóstbrædra Saga survives in three, very different, versions from the Middle Ages: InMödruvallabók, which was written between 1316 and 1350, in Hauksbók similarly fromthe beginning of the 14th century, and in Flateyarbók written between 1387 and 1394 (seefact box 3).When Fóstbrædra Saga originated is much debated. Researchers were previously of theopinion that it was among the oldest of the Icelandic sagas. However, new research sug-gests that Fóstbrædra Saga, as we know it, was composed around 1300.

Fact box 7. The Story of Einar, Sokke's SonThe events in The Story of Einar, Sokke's Son were written down in Flateyarbók (fact box3).The story is only known from this source and its origin is unknown. It is suggestedthat it could have been composed from a series of different stories told by people whothemselves took part in the events.The induction of the Greenlanders' first bishop, Arnald, which is presented in the TheStory of Einar, Sokke's Son is also mentioned in various Icelandic Annals (fact box 8) underthe year 1123, 1124 or 1125, for example in Flateyarannáll, Koniúngsannáll and in ResensAnnáll. The annals are, however, copies of each other and none of them can be tracedfurther back in time than to the end of the 13th century at the earliest.

Fact box 8. Icelandic AnnalsIn the Icelandic Annals, the year's events, both large and small, were noted.The annalswere kept in churches and monasteries.The oldest date from the end of the 13th cen-

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Lynnerup, Niels. The Greenland Norse.A Biological-anthropological Study.Meddelelser om Grønland, Man & Society. Copenhagen 1998

Nørlund, Poul. Buried Norsemen at Herjolfsnes. Meddelelser om Grønland vol.LXVII. Copenhagen 1924

Nørlund, Poul. Norse Ruins at Gardar. Meddelelser om Grønland vol. LXXVI(I).Copenhagen 1929

Nørlund, Poul & Mårten Stenberger. Brattahlid. Meddelelser om Grønland vol.88(1). Copenhagen 1934

Roussell,Aage. Farms and Churches in the Mediaeval Norse Settlements ofGreenland. Meddelelser om Grønland vol. 89(1). Copenhagen

Seaver, Kirsten. The Frozen Echo. Stanford University Press. Stanford, California1996

Østergård, Else. Woven into the Earth. Aarhus University Press 2004. Århus

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MORE TO READ:

Alexandersen,Verner & Finn Prætorius. Hvad tænder kan fortælle om de førstenordboere. Aktuel Arkæologi vol. 3. 2003

Arneborg, Jette. Det europæiske landnam - Nordboerne i Grønland.I: H.C.Gulløv (ed.) Grønlands Forhistorie. Copenhagen 2004

Berglund, Joel. Kirke, hal og status. Grønland vol. 8-9. Copenhagen 1982

Berglund, Joel. Hvalsø - kirkeplads og stormandsgård. Qaqortoq 1982

Berglund, Joel. Herjolfsnæs - kirken ved havet. Nanortalik kommune 1988

Clemmensen, Mogens. Kirkeruiner fra Nordbotiden m.m. i JulianehaabDistrikt. Undersøgelsesrejse i Sommeren 1910. Meddelelser om Grønland, vol. 47(8).Copenhagen 1911

Christiansen, Dorte Veien. Fra Europa til Verdens Ende. NationalmuseetsArbejdsmark. Copenhagen 2004

Grønlands Historiske Mindesmærker vol. 1 - 3. Copenhagen 1838-45

Guldager, Ole, Steffen Stummann Hansen & Simon Gleie. Medieval Farmsteads inGreenland. Danish Polar Center, Copenhagen 2002

Halldórsson, Ólafur. Grænland í Miðaldaritum. Reykjavik 1978

Jónsson, Fínnur (ed). Det gamle Grønlands Beskrivelse af Ívar Bárðarson.Copenhagen 1930

Jørgensen, Jørgen Balslev. Nordbogravene ved Brattahlid. Grønland, vol. 3.Copenhagen 2001

Krogh, Knud. Viking Greenland. The Danish National Museum, Copenhagen 1967

Krogh, Knud. Erik den Rødes Grønland. The Danish National Museum,Copenhagen 1982

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Sponsors:This project is co-financed by the EU-programme Interreg III BThe Destination Viking: Sagas & StorytellingThe Municipalities of Nanortalik, Qaqortoq and Narsaq.NORA Nordisk Atlantsamarbejde