July 18 – Qassiarsuk

Qassiarsuk is the site of the original settlement established by Erik the Red.  It is still primarily a farm but we were told there is a new café and hostel in the village.

The local small school had a very colorful sign.

And there is a small hostel.

The white stripe on the Greenland flag represents the glaciers and ice cap that covers the island and the red strip is the ocean.  The red semi-circle is the sun half in the ocean and the white semi-circle is the iceberg in the ocean. 
  
The houses were rather scattered and there were very few of them.

While on our walk we saw a man with his baby and his Icelandic Horse.  

We actually saw several Icelandic Horses around the area.

From a distance we saw the cemetery

and a sheep sorter (all the sheep can be driven down from the hills into the central pen and then sorted into separate pens, one for each farm).

There were also convenient benches to sit and relax.  They were made of wooden pallets.

There was a monument that was erected to commemorate the 1000 year anniversary of the founding of the settlement. 

There was also a large statue of Erik the Red from a hilltop overlooking the fjord.

We stopped at the new (built in the last century) Lutheran Church. 

We also stopped at the home of Otto Frederiksen, the sheep farmer (and first full time sheep farmer in Greenland) who founded the village in 1924.  It is now a museum and we were able to go inside.  It was a cozy cottage with no bathroom. 

The area has a lot of Norse ruins, mostly the rock foundations.  There was an interesting “map” of the ruins on the side of a large rock.

The area still has a lot of wildflowers in bloom, but not quite as much as in some other places we have visited. 

Alpine Chickweed

Harebells

There was a lot of Angelica and sea mayweed growing along a pretty stream.

Angelica

Angelica and Sea Mayweed

There was a reconstruction of Tjodhilde’s Church.  Tjodhilde was the wife of Erik the Red and she had the original church built.  The reconstruction is not at the original site but is on a small hilltop overlooking the fjord. 

Adjacent to the church was a reconstruction of a traditional Norse Longhouse. 

On the way back to the pier we stopped at a restored Inuit House.

We also saw an eagle flying near the Erik the Red statue.

From the ship you could see many ice bergs from the nearby glacier.  The other major shore excursion was boat trips out to the ice flows.  We saw many of the small boats going back and forth from the ship to the ice.  

As the ship left the fjord we sailed by many of the the icebergs, many quite close.