Building customs and architecture

The abandoned mining town of Qullissat was once one of Greenland’s largest towns. When the mine closed in 1972, the residents were forced to leave, and the town is now used only as a holiday resort by the families who used to live there.
LINDA KASTRUP/RITZAU SCANPIX, 2015

Ever since the first Inuit immigrated, building customs and architecture have been characterised by life in a harsh nature. From the dwellings of early nomadic people to modern standard houses, weather conditions, rocky ground and permafrost have been challenges to overcome, and past times are reflected in today’s modern architecture.

Paleo-Inuit, Independence and Saqqaq

In the Arctic cultural landscape, 4,500-year-old traces of early Inuit dwellings are still seen. Both building custom and architecture were adapted to the nomadic way of life and the Arctic climate. For thousands of years, animal skins were used as a cladding material for walls, ceilings and plank beds; fur side against fur side, the skin also served as insulation material. Driftwood was used to support the roof structure, while the walls were made of stone and peat. The snow was a seasonal building material, and for heating, blubber and driftwood were used.

Early Inuit houses were mostly overlooking the sea. The floor plan of the dwelling was circular, the structures, lashed tent poles covered with animal skins, were light.

The dwellings had a stone-paved mid-passage and central cooking facilities with two side platforms. The hearth was bordered by thick flagstones placed upright around a horizontal slab that served as the base, and the heating took place with heated stones. Structurally, the circular dome shape is the most stable structure in all sorts of weather, and at the same time it is the fastest shape to heat.

Paleo-Inuit lived in skin tents with a living area divided in two by a central mid-passage and a hearth. Later, a peat wall was added, where the floor area and entrance were below ground level.
INGE BISGAARD, 2022

Paleo-Inuit, Greenlandic Dorset

About 1,500 years later came the next big wave of immigration, bringing with it a building culture which was developed as the climate grew colder and snow volumes increased. With the colder weather, three different dwelling types were developed, depending on season.

The winter dwelling had peat wall covered with skins on the inside and with posts of driftwood/whale bone. A paved mid-passage structure stretched from entrance to rear wall. The lowered living area was square to oval and divided into three units; the mid-passage area with a central hearth, work table and a storage room for fuel, etc., and a sleeping area and working area on each side of the mid-passage area. These dwellings thus had a three-level structure.

In the spring, when daylight returned, and before the thaw set in, time had come to take off to the hunting grounds. The roof of the winter dwelling was removed to give the dwelling a much-needed vent, and when the people returned for the winter, a new roof made of driftwood, animal skins, and then peat and stone was installed.

The early spring voyages to the hunting grounds required the construction of temporary snow houses along the way. The suitability of snow as a building material varied greatly from place to place.

By summer, resources were more dispersed, and it was time to split up into family groups and head out to the hunting grounds near the archipelago. The settlements were carefully selected near a protected harbour and favourable hunting conditions. In all areas of the country, the summer dwelling consisted of a mobile skin tent bordered by a low rock mound that offered protection against the wind.

The layout of dwellings with a central mid-passage became the common architecture for almost 4,000 years and disappeared around the year 1350.

Paleo-Inuit developed three different types of housing adapted to winter, winter/spring and summer, respectively.
INGE BISGAARD, 2022

The Inuit culture

The last major immigration from the north happened around 1150 with the Inuit culture that had developed a zoned dwelling adapted to a colder climate. Gradually, vessels and implements had been developed which enabled whale hunting, and the large animals were a source of new building materials as well as oil for heating.

Building customs were closely aligned with the season, hunting opportunities, and generations’ accumulated knowledge of what worked in different weather conditions.

The winter dwellings of the precolonial Inuit culture varied in their architecture according to the regional conditions, but the architecture was much the same as in the past, though now with a level division of living area, floor area and entrance area.

Sometimes a small extension used as a kitchen annexe was found just inside the entrance. Plank beds were covered with skins laid on mats made of whale baleen strips, preventing the skins from getting wet.

Lighting and heating of the dwelling consisted of blubber lamps with a wick of moss, over which the food was also prepared. In the facade, the dwellings had a window that was covered with a stretched expanse of stitched gut skins.

Traditionally, each summer people gathered at selected summer gathering places, aasiviit, or festival houses. The traces from the gathering places show rectangular building facilities, which vary from 8 m to 43 m in length and with a width of about 5 m. The building orientation is north-south with the longitudinal axis parallel to the coastline and thus views towards the sea. The stone blocks walls are up to 1 metre high, and the entrances are located at the gables.

The buildings had a 1 metre wide mid-passage marked by flagstones placed edgewise — in some places mid-passages were filled with pebbles and then covered with flagstones. The buildings could house up to 30 families arranged in pairs opposite each other throughout the length of the building. Nothing indicates that the buildings were roofed, and presumably, they were used for ceremonial events when weather allowed.

The building structures of the Inuit culture evolved from a cloverleaf shaped floor plan, landscaped alone or in clusters, to types with a rectangular, square or even trapezoidal outline.

The later house types, such as the longhouse and the square house, were given a saddle roof used especially on the east coast, where large amounts of snow traditionally fall.

The longhouse, which can be more than 20 metres long, shows a substantial break with both architecture and social patterns. The floor plan of the longhouse resembles the layout of the summer gathering facilities with a long row of family apartments.

The architecture of the longhouse is believed to be rooted in the 18thcentury whale hunting industry. First, Dutch ships arrived each year in February or March to conduct whale hunting on the West Coast and exchange European consumer goods for whale and seal blubber, furs and walrus and narwhal tusks. They started to gather in large settlements at the colonies and created housing communities, which had advantages, both in terms of housekeeping and whale hunting. It was no longer necessary to go on long hunting trips, and as a result, the nomadic way of life gradually disappeared and urban communities started to form.

The Norse

With the Norse immigration in the Viking Age from the late 900s to about the 1400s, settlements were established in Greenland by a northern European people. The Norse mainly settled as farmers, and the settlements were usually located at the head of the deep fjords and valleys. The sizes of the farms were very diverse, and ranged from large building facilities to single farms.

The most common family home of the early colonial era was a copy of the Norwegian and Greenland peat house.
INGE BISGAARD, 2022

Building customs and architecture after colonisation

The pattern of settlement after colonisation gradually changed from a dynamic to a more stationary life form. As the country developed, the settlements grew from being small colonial sites to form actual urban communities. With the missionaries’ settlements from 1721 and the subsequent arrival of traders, the first colony on an island in the mouth of Nuup Kangerlua (Godthåb Fjord) became a place where people came from afar to trade.

The trade included all public construction, such as churches, schools, shops, official residences, hospitals, fish and salt warehouses. The house types included stone houses, timber houses and board-covered half-timbered houses, all inspired by Norwegian-Danish building customs.

The early colonial buildings were formed and carved so that they were ready to be assembled on the building site without the use of nails and fittings. The building foundation consisted of natural stone without binder, which prevented the timber from rotting. Therefore, in many public buildings erected before 1900, only wooden dowels and nails were used to assemble the main structures, while hand-forged nails were used for fixing cladding, brackets, etc. When a building no longer served a function in the country, it was carefully disassembled, moved and reassembled to serve a new function.

From peat house to wooden house

At the onset of colonisation, the peat house and longhouse were still in use, but with the advent of the mission and trade, the traditional dwelling gradually changed.

The most common family home of the early colonial era was a clone of the Norwegian wooden house and the Greenland peat house. The house, a one-room dwelling with a living area, kitchen and plank bed, evolved over the years. First, glass windows were installed in the facade, then the long house mid-passage was replaced by a shorter and taller storm porch, and then one or more of the outer walls were made of boards. Eventually the house had a high pitched roof, a saddle roof just like the houses of Europeans. Greenlanders’ peat huts, skin tents and longhouses were slowly replaced with these wooden houses.

Many of the new self-built houses were of very poor quality compared to the traditional building customs. As a result of inadequate guidance in building wooden houses, the self-built houses were cold and draughty and generally in poor condition.

The most widely used house paint in early times was the cod liver oil paint, which dates back to the Norwegian cod liver oil recipe. In the Greenlandic variant, seal blubber was used as a binder and colour pigments were added along with crushed resin. The house colours of the colonial period are mainly red ochre, ochre-yellow, white, blue, green, black and brown. Based on the colour of the houses, the various public buildings can be roughly identified.

Stone wall houses

At the beginning of the 19th century, a distinctive building custom emerged in South Greenland, where the Danish-Greenlandic house took on a new look. The peat wall was replaced by a sheer stone wall. The chairman of the trade, the Norwegian Anders Olsen, moved to Igaliku with his Greenlandic wife and their children to run a sheep farm, and here they built their house from the stones from the ruins of the Norse. With small distinctive stone walled houses made of the red Igalikusand stone, Anders Olsen created a distinctive built heritage which has been partially preserved in the settlement.

Modern materials from the United States

During World War II, Greenland was cut off from Denmark and became an important staging point for Allied air transport from the United States to England. The missing supplies from Denmark were replaced with new ones from the United States.

During World War II, US airbases were built with the best developed technical aids, and in the aftermath, self-building gained new breeding ground. New materials such as concrete, plywood, corrugated sheets, insulation, paint, etc. became available, and at the same time, the number of peat houses was further reduced.

During the war, Greenland had a reasonably good economy, based mainly on the extraction of cryolite and cod fishing. American air bases and buildings were constructed in several places in the country. This sketch shows the former trade inspectorate in Nuuk.
INGE BISGAARD, 2022

The years after 1950

Better housing was on top of the agenda of the Greenland Commission of 1950 (G-50). The new houses had to be of good quality, both in terms of construction and insulation. The living space was to be larger, and the kitchen, living room and toilet room had to be separated. Houses had to be heated by a coal stove or tiled stove, but there were no water installations.

Denmark devoted more money to an improved infrastructure, and the population became more concentrated in the towns. With the abolition of the monopoly trade, several shops gradually appeared in the townscape. Under the Ministry of Greenland, the Greenland Technical Organisation (GTO) was established, bringing together the country’s construction and operation activities.

This resulted in frenetic building activities in the years after 1950. Quayside facilities, water supply plants, warehouses, power plants, shops, hospitals, schools, sanatoriums, fisheries facilities and official residences were constructed. Fishing and sheep farming intensified. Scattered settlements were the main obstacle to the financial gain of fishing, and by tempting the population with lenient loans for building houses, the population was pooled into larger urban areas.

The GTO carried on the house colour traditions of the 19th and 20th, but now the different colours were used for the residential houses, giving the settlements life and variety and helping to identify who lived where. The picturesque urban areas with the house colours red, ochre yellow, green and blue can be seen in many levels in the hilly landscape.

The years after 1960

A new committee, the G-60, was established, and its overall goal was to depopulate the settlements and concentrate the population in four openwater towns, Paamiut, Nuuk, Maniitsoq and Sisimiut.

Standard house construction developed rapidly, and by the mid-1960s, houses were erected in many places with one and a half floors. They could be provided with central heating systems, hot and cold water installations, bathrooms and utility rooms/boiler rooms. Urban settlement plans were now intended to accommodate as many homes as possible, though for fire reasons with due distances.

Building in the Greenland landscape presented great challenges, and for reasons of establishing access roads, drainage conditions and suitable land plots, many single-family homes had disproportionately high concrete foundations.

The early house types had a small entrance hall, but later the classic storm porch was added as a wind lock or cold trap. A dream house in the 1960s consisted of separated kitchen, living room and toilet, a habitable attic, storm porch and entrance hall, and water and a gas stove installed. Due to prevailing wind and snow conditions, the inward-opening exterior door was located in the south or north facade. A good view of the sea was – and still is – weighted almost as highly as the living room and kitchen.

Due to the hilly rock landscape and subsurface permafrost layers, it is a major economic challenge to install water supply and sewer lines in scattered single homes. If you wanted these facilities, it had to be done through rationalised construction.

The following years, many multistorey concrete element buildings were constructed. In 1965, the longest block of flats of the Unity of the Realm, colloquially called Block P, was erected in Nuuk. The 200 m long five-storey balcony access building was Greenland’s first prefabricated building. By the standards of that time, the building had the comforts of modern times: light, air, rubbish chute, running water and heating, modern toilets and kitchens. The following years, many prefabricated buildings were constructed along the coast, though none as voluminous as Block P.

In the late sixties came a new series of standard houses in four different sizes, based on different principles than before. The standard house went from half-timbered structures to frame structures. The drawback of the houses was that they were too tight, often resulting in rot and mould in wall and roof structures.

In the 1970s, the Greenland Technical Organisation introduced enhanced self-built houses, which hunters in the settlements could buy and build with financial aid.
INGE BISGAARD, 2022

The years after 1970

Around 1970, the high-density lowrise buildings started to leave their mark. The up to three storey high buildings were adapted to terrain conditions and emphasis was placed on variety and good common areas.

While urban house construction was in full swing, the opposite was the case for improving the standard of housing in the settlements. In the early 1970s, a self-build house was introduced, which was supplied as an assembly kit with drawing illustrations in Greenlandic, allowing anyone to build their own house. The self-build house became very popular, especially in the settlements, and over the years, it was revised and modernised.

The building regulations took into account local conditions, for example that houses on the east coast are exposed to severe Piteraq storms and must therefore be designed to withstand these.

In 1977, the country’s first act on land use, urban development and housing development was adopted. The act was based on the prior legal condition that land cannot be purchased and that permission must be obtained to take an area of land into use. A land planning committee was established and it was agreed, among other things, that Greenlanders, through the land planning committee, should have a greater influence on the land management of the country. In the ensuing decade, municipally owned service houses were erected in most settlements.

The purpose of the service houses was to provide people of the settlement with access to any facilities they might lack in their homes, such as laundry facilities, shower facilities and facilities for large events. At the same time, the service houses had housekeeping workshops and more.

The years after 1980

The cooperative housing movement saw the light of day in the mid-1980s. The interest was based on a desire to ease the pressure on the public construction funds for housing. In addition, the idea as to increase private savings, create more resident influence and responsibilities and to reduce the cost of operation and maintenance. With thoughts of social community and common facilities, the cooperative housing idea fits nicely with the Greenlandic building customs.

Greenland’s first housing company was created in 1994, and it today manages much of the country’s rental housing. The homes are either multi-storey buildings or high-density low-rise buildings. Each home is provided with kitchen and cooking recess as well as shower, toilet and storage room.

The years after 2000

Australian graffiti artist Guido Van Helten created this work at Block 5 in Nuuk in 2014. The subject is a portrait of the hunter Pooŋojorteq taken by W. Thalbitzer in 1906.
MARINE GASTINEAU/RITZAU SCANPIX, 2018

The country’s first capital strategy was presented in 2016. It forms the basis for the development of the capital. Nuuk is experiencing increasing relocation from the coast and the infrastructure is undergoing a massive expansion. The capital strategy sets out for Nuuk to be a sustainable pioneering town in the Arctic. Renewable energy, which has so far been hydropower plants, needs to be developed, and other options, such as solar cells, hydrogen and geoenergy, waste heat from industrial and waste incineration, must be exploited and expanded in the future.

In the urban landscape, rows and rows of high-rise buildings sprout up. The large panoramic windows often face each other, and only a few overlook the town and sea. The building culture is the most visible part of cultural heritage. Despite the acquisition of other external materials and architectural trends, the building custom has been continuously adapted to Greenlandic culture. It forms the framework of a life in a harsh nature and has deep roots. Today’s modern cooking islands and sociable kitchens are not new in traditional Greenlandic kitchens.