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Hvalsey is located on a narrow strip of land at the head of a fjord, with the church situated around 70 m (230 ft) from the water.The church is located in a classic Greenlandic Norse farmstead, [1] with several additional adjacent buildings.
Beside Einar's Firth lies Hvalsey Fjord. There is a church there called Hvalsey Fjord Church. It serves the entire fjord and all of Kambstad Fjord as well, which is beside it. On this firth stands a large farmstead, which belongs to the king and is called Thjodhild's Stead. The farmstead was a major center in South Greenland.
Hvalsey Church is the best-preserved Grænlendingar building today. The simple, rectangular church was built around 1300 on a gentle slope not far from the fjord shore. As is usual with old churches, it is oriented east-west. The approximately 1.5 m thick walls are artfully stacked stone. Clay may also have been used as mortar.
Approximately 500 groups of ruins of Norse farms are found in the area, with 16 church ruins, including Brattahlíð, Dyrnæs, Garðar, Hvalsey and Herjolfsnes. [2] The Vatnahverfi district to the southeast of Einarsfjord had some of the best pastoral land in the colony, and boasted 10% of all the known farm sites in the Eastern Settlement.
The last written records of the Norse Greenlanders are from a 1408 marriage in Hvalsey Church – today the best-preserved of the Norse ruins. The Norse colony in Greenland faded out during the 15th century and the church with it. [9] In 1519, Pope Leo X named Vincent Peterson Kampe bishop of Gardar. [13]
The ruins of the Hvalsey Church in Greenland. Medieval architecture in North America is an anachronism. Some structures in North America can however be classified as medieval, either by age or origin. In rare cases these structures are seen as evidence of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact.
Whalsay (Old Norse: Hvalsey or Hvals-øy, meaning 'Whale Island') [4] [6] is the sixth largest of the Shetland Islands in the north of Scotland. Geography.
Ruins of the Norse Hvalsey Church. Peder Olsen Walløe (1716 – 27 April 1793) was a Danish Arctic explorer most noted for his historic exploration of the former Norse settlements on Greenland. Biography