This morning we went to Halsey Church, the oldest and best-preserved church in Greenland, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The church is made of local stone, with three doors and about six windows, plus a keystone arch over the main window over what would have been the altar. The rood was long gone, it was probably made of wood. It had a special feel to it, and I decided to sing “Nobilis, Humilis” there as it is a 12th century polyphonic piece about St. Magnus, a Norwegian saint. As we waited for the next group to leave the church, we spent some time looking out over the beautiful vista, seeing why this area was settled with farms and enough wealth to build a stone church, as it had plenty of green for herds to graze. Right before I sang, a mosquito flew into my mouth and I was choking on it, and somehow we had forgotten to bring our water bottle. I coughed a bit and tried to rehydrate, so the first time I sang was only so-so, and then I was able to get myself together for a better version the second time around, when no one was inside. I learned later that folks could hear me outside, softly. There were other ruins there, a longhouse and animal enclosures, all made of stone. I keep thinking about the people who sailed here, looking for a good spot to land with water and grazing and areas flat enough to build a house and farm. How brave they were.
Back to the ship, a nice lunch, and we had a briefing about cultural interactions with Greenlanders. In Greenland it is illegal to take a photo of a child without their parent’s permission, even in public places, and people in general don’t like being photographed. If someone squints, it means no, if they raise their eyebrows, it means yes, and because elders are highly respected, even if someone does not want their photo taken they might hesitate and appear to agree in order not to upset an elder. In the afternoon we went to Qaqortoq, a town of about 2,000 people, the 6th largest in Greenland. We get off the Zodiacs near a large container port, and we see cranes and construction equipment all over. This is the arrest settlement we’ve seen since Iceland. There are brightly-colored homes and apartment buildings, and we visit a ceramics workshop, a wood-carving workshop, and another shop selling artwork and carvings. Barney selected a tiny polar bear carving made of animal horn which is legal, while anything made of seal, walrus, whale, Arctic Fox, and other animals are illegal to export and definitely illegal to import to the US. We walked around the town on our own, saw the red Lutheran church and a rock club, as well as some beautiful carvings in the granite that runs throughout the town along the roads. There are enormous staircases that run 8-10 slights up the hill, which I gather must be preferable to driving or walking up a longer winding road. We had some samples of dried cod and lamb and Greenland beer which were all good, and saw many wildflowers everywhere, as it seemed warmed than where we were earlier.
In the evening we had our invited dinner. I had made little place tags for everyone with a drawing of a whale on each, and Reuben and I collaborated on the seating so people would be next to interesting people to talk to. It was a lovely event and very successful, and folks liked the little name tags, I saw a couple of them on room doors as we went to our rooms later.
Tomorrow we’ll be up hiking early so we went to bed fairly early (for us) and slept to the gentle rocking of the ship.
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