- Where
- Head of a fjord near Qaqortoq
Kujalleq, south Greenland - Coordinates
- 60.8287° N
45.7817° W - Built
- About 1300
(UNESCO; Visit Greenland) - Size
- About 16 × 8 m, walls 1.5 m thick
(Wikipedia) - Last record
- A wedding, September 1408
- Status
- Part of Kujataa World Heritage Site
UNESCO, 2017 - Getting there
- Boat from Qaqortoq
about 30 minutes - Best visited
- June to mid-October
The little boat ran up a long fjord between bare grey hills, nudging past floating lumps of ice, and put me ashore. Sheep watched from the grass. Up the slope stood a stone chapel with no roof, its gables still sharp against the sky. It had the look of a place still expecting a boat, and was very polite about mine.
The short answer
Hvalsey Church is the ruin of a medieval Catholic church on a Norse farmstead at the head of a fjord near Qaqortoq, the largest town in south Greenland. UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre describes Hvalsey, Qaqortukulooq in Greenlandic, as the single largest and best-preserved Norse ruin in Greenland, and dates the church to around the year 1300. Wikipedia gives its size as about 16 by 8 metres, with walls about 1.5 metres thick; Visit Greenland, the national tourism board, says the walls still rise five to six metres. Since 2017 the site has been one of the five parts of the World Heritage Site Kujataa Greenland: Norse and Inuit Farming at the Edge of the Ice Cap, which UNESCO lists for its farming landscape of the tenth to fifteenth centuries and of the eighteenth century to today.
Why it's worth knowing
The last written word. On 14 or 16 September 1408, Wikipedia records, Thorstein Olafsson and Sigrid Björnsdóttir were married in Hvalsey Church. The wedding is mentioned in letters from a priest at Garðar, the bishop’s seat, and by several Icelanders, and the couple later settled in Iceland, where Olafsson came from. UNESCO calls the wedding the last known sign of the Norse in Greenland. By the fifteenth century, according to the Kujataa nomination as Wikipedia summarises it, the Norse farms of the Eastern Settlement, which numbered two to three hundred at their peak in the thirteenth century, had disappeared, and there was little farming in Greenland again until the 1780s, when an Inuk woman, Tuperna, and her Norwegian husband, Anders Olsen, began a farm at the old bishop’s residence at Igaliku.
Why this one stood. Wikipedia credits the quality of the building: granite fieldstones, carefully laid and fitted, some of them weighing four to five tonnes, with mortar made from crushed shell, so that the church would have been white when it was new. Because of that work, it records, Hvalsey has resisted the weather better than other Norse structures in Greenland. The same article suggests that Qaqortoq, a name meaning “the white place”, may have come from the church; it offers that as a possibility, not a finding.
The field notes
The farm around the church
The church stands about seventy metres from the water inside a classic Greenlandic Norse farmstead, Wikipedia records. According to the sagas, the land was claimed by Thorkell Farserk, a relative of Erik the Red. The farm’s main building covered about 1,300 square metres in eleven rooms, combining living quarters, livestock pens and a banqueting hall of about 8 by 5 metres; there were further pens, a horse enclosure for visitors’ horses, a storehouse up the hill and a warehouse at the water’s edge. UNESCO’s own photograph of the main dwelling identifies a well-preserved room thought to have been a feasting hall. The site is now part of a sheep farm.
One window with an arch
Every door and window in the church was made with a flat stone lintel except one, a window in the eastern gable, which has an arch, Wikipedia records. The window openings are wider on the inside than the outside, a detail not found in Icelandic churches but known in early churches in Britain, which the article suggests may have been the model for the building. Kirsten Seaver, the historian Wikipedia cites, places the church in the Anglo-Norwegian style of the early thirteenth century and dates its building to the early fourteenth; UNESCO and Visit Greenland both give about 1300, and finds on the site hint that an earlier church stood here first. It probably had a turf-covered wooden roof, and it held some thirty to thirty-five people.
A story with no smoke
Wikipedia records an Inuit legend of open war between a Norse chief, Ungortoq, and an Inuk leader, K’aissape, in which the Inuit attacked Hvalsey and set the Norse houses on fire. It also records that archaeological studies have found no sign of a fire there. The Kujataa nomination, as Wikipedia summarises it, describes a period of contact between the Norse and the Thule people, ancestors of today’s Inuit, that may have lasted up to 250 years, and the World Heritage listing counts the Inuit farms of the region, worked since the eighteenth century, as part of the same landscape.
The church walls, built of dry-laid granite blocks, beside the fjord.
Inside the nave: the arched window in the gable.
The gable end above the fjord, with mountains across the water.
Photograph: jtstewart · Hvalsey Church 2014 03 · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
- Keep off the walls and a good stride back from their foot. They have stood up this long without anyone leaning on them.
- The fields round the old stones are somebody’s farm. Close every gate behind you, and leave the sheep the best of the grass.
- Go round the outside before you look in, slowly, as you would greet somebody you had not seen in years.
- Guard the list while you are among the sheep. One of them ate the corner with the boat times, and seemed thoroughly pleased with itself.
- Stand on the old floor between the gables and hear how the wind comes over the walls where a roof once sat.
The east gable. The eastern end wall of Hvalsey Church, built like the rest of it from carefully laid and fitted granite fieldstones, and pierced by the only arched window in the building: every other door and window was made with a flat stone lintel, Wikipedia records. It has stood since about 1300 without a roof to hold it, and Visit Greenland asks every visitor to stay two metres back from it.
Tally, in the marginSquare-topped doorways on every side, plain and sensible, and I had circled the place twice before I noticed one window had gone to the trouble of a curve. I thought better of the whole building after that.
Getting there
How to get there. Hvalsey is reached by boat from Qaqortoq. Visit Greenland says sailing is the most common way to see it and names Greenland Sagalands, the town’s tourist office, as the place to ask. Sagalands sells a boat trip of about thirty minutes each way up the fjord, two to three hours in all, in groups of up to twelve. From the landing, Visit Greenland puts the walk to the ruins at a little under a kilometre, on gravel roads and paths that can be steep in places, uneven and wet. Qaqortoq has its own airport, opened on 16 April 2026 in place of the town’s heliport and of Narsarsuaq Airport, according to Wikipedia: Air Greenland flies there from Nuuk, and Icelandair began summer flights from Keflavík in June 2026.
When to go. June to mid-October, when Greenland Sagalands runs the boat trips.
What to arrange ahead. A seat on the boat and a bed in Qaqortoq, and waterproof boots. At the site, Visit Greenland’s guidelines ask visitors to stay on the paths, keep at least two metres from the edge of every ruin, and never walk, sit, climb or stand on the walls of the church or any other ruin; larger groups should come with a qualified guide.
Safety. The State Department rates Greenland Level 2, exercise increased caution, for extreme weather and limited emergency services (advisory dated 29 October 2024, read on 4 October 2026). It advises comprehensive travel, medical and evacuation insurance, and travelling with a professional guide or organisation. No area of Greenland is singled out. The hazards here are the place’s own: cold water, changeable weather and wet, uneven ground.
Mark this place
Common questions
Where is Hvalsey Church?
Hvalsey Church stands at the head of a fjord near Qaqortoq, in Kujalleq municipality in south Greenland, about seventy metres from the water by Wikipedia’s account. The site, called Qaqortukulooq in Greenlandic, has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Kujataa Greenland since 2017.
Why is Hvalsey Church famous?
Hvalsey Church is the best-preserved Norse ruin in Greenland, according to UNESCO, and the place where Thorstein Olafsson and Sigrid Björnsdóttir were married in September 1408. UNESCO calls that wedding the last known sign of the Norse in Greenland; letters mentioning it are the last written record of them.
When was Hvalsey Church built?
UNESCO and Visit Greenland both date Hvalsey Church to about 1300. The historian Kirsten Seaver, cited by Wikipedia, places its building in the early fourteenth century in an Anglo-Norwegian style of the early thirteenth, and finds on the site suggest an earlier church stood there before it.
What happened to the Norse in Greenland?
The written record stops with the Hvalsey Church wedding of 1408. UNESCO’s Kujataa nomination, as Wikipedia summarises it, says the Norse farms of south Greenland had disappeared by the fifteenth century, after a period of contact with the Thule people that may have lasted up to 250 years. Wikipedia records an Inuit legend of Hvalsey being burned, and archaeological studies that found no sign of a fire.
How do you get to Hvalsey Church?
By boat from Qaqortoq in south Greenland. Greenland Sagalands, Qaqortoq’s tourist office, runs boat trips of about thirty minutes each way to Hvalsey Church from June to mid-October, and Visit Greenland puts the walk from the landing at a little under a kilometre. Qaqortoq’s airport opened in April 2026.
How big is Hvalsey Church?
Wikipedia gives Hvalsey Church as about 16 by 8 metres, with granite walls about 1.5 metres thick, some stones weighing four to five tonnes; Visit Greenland says the walls still stand five to six metres high. Wikipedia’s sources put its congregation at about thirty to thirty-five people.
What are the rules for visiting Hvalsey Church?
Visit Greenland’s guidelines for the Kujataa World Heritage Site ask visitors at Hvalsey Church to stay on the paths, keep at least two metres from the edge of the ruins, and never walk, sit, climb or stand on the walls of the church or any other ruin at Qaqortukulooq. Larger groups should be accompanied by a qualified guide.
What is Kujataa?
Kujataa Greenland: Norse and Inuit Farming at the Edge of the Ice Cap is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in south Greenland, inscribed in 2017. Its five parts, Hvalsey among them, cover Norse farming from the tenth to the fifteenth century and Inuit farming from the eighteenth century to today; Wikipedia, citing UNESCO, calls it the first known example of agriculture in the Arctic.