
REBECCA GUSTAFSSON/VISIT GREENLAND, 2016
All towns and settlements in Greenland, even the smallest ones, have a church. The churches are very different; in the towns you finds large, often architecturally valuable churches, exquisitely decorated with altarpieces and other adornments. In the settlements, with a few exceptions, small towerless, red-painted wooden school chapels from the 1900s dominate, often decorated with only one or two edifying images. In many places, the church room still serves as a schoolroom during the week, and the altar is hidden behind a folding door or rolled aside. On Sundays, the school desks are pushed away and the room is made ready for the churchgoers.
Churches in Nuuk
Nuuk has two large churches, the cathedral consecrated in 1849 and Hans Egede’s Church consecrated in 1971. In the suburb of Nuussuaq, space has been reserved for a third church, but it is not known when it will be built.
The earliest curch buildings

KATHRINE KJÆRGAARD, 2003
The first real church buildings outside Nuuk were erected in 1758 (Paamiut), Bethel Church in Sisimiut (1775) and Zion Church in Ilulissat (1779‑83). Of these three 18th-century churches, the first one has been demolished, and the church in Sisimiut has become part of Sisimiut Museum. Only the church in Ilulissat is still in use, although it has been altered several times, most extensively in 1904 and 1929‑31, respectively.
The eastern section of the building was initially used as a hospital, but in 1904 this part was merged with the rest of the church. In 1929‑31, the large wooden building, which was located directly on the ground close to the water’s edge, was dismantled, partially renewed and moved 50 m up in the hinterland. The Zion Church (22 × 10 m) is a wooden church built of heavy logs with exposed corner posts. The roundarched windows are painted white, and the chancel section now faces east. The church’s high pitched roof is clad with shingles, and in the middle of the nave rises a large fleche with a pulled back upper floor and a pyramidal roof, which was originally covered in lead. However, during the war in 1807‑14, the lead roof was replaced and the lead was distributed among the town’s hunters who desperately needed it for bullets.
Inside, the church is clad in boards with a flat ceiling carried by two rows of white-painted wooden columns. The altarpiece with baptismal font and kneeler is adorned by a copy of Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Christ. On the south choir wall hangs the painting The Sacrament (150 × 115 cm), donated by the Mission College in 1785 and originally used as an altarpiece. One of the distinctive features of this painting is that it renders the words of the sacrament in Greenlandic in an early version.
Churches built in the 19th century

KATHRINE KJÆRGAARD, 2003
Time has been hard on the churches that were erected in the main towns during the 19th century. This is largely due to demographic change; the rapidly growing population meant that the churches became too cramped and therefore were demolished and replaced by larger churches one by one. However, the church in Upernavik from 1882 has survived as a museum, while the church in Qasigiannguit from 1889 has been used by the scout movement since 1969, and for some time also as a place where you could ‘park’ your children.
Of all the 19th-century town churches, only the beautiful and minimalist Church of Our Saviour from 1832 in Qaqortoq is now used for its original purpose. The red-painted wooden church has a green, half-hipped roof with an octagonal fleche that has been added later. Inside, the ceiling is supported by two parallel rows of columns, which are painted light grey with red fields at the top. The altarpiece Jesus Calms the Storm was made in the late 1800s by the highly popular Anker Lund. Not far from the altarpiece hangs a lifebuoy from Hans Hedtoft, the only trace of the large ship, which shortly after having left the port of Qaqortoq wrecked and disappeared in the Denmark Strait off Cape Farewell (Uummannarsuaq) on 30 January 1959, there is also plaque with the names of the 95 people who died. The church has two large paintings, the Baptism of Jesus and the Supper at Emmaus, the latter possibly by Adam Müller, as well as three portraits of Bone Falch Rønne, Hans Egede and Poul Egede. Rønne founded the Danish Missionary Society (1821), which initially worked mainly for Greenland, and he donated the church to the then colonial town.
Churches built in the 20th century
Of the large number of churches that have been built in the 20th century – in many cases to replace demolished churches from the previous century – it may be mentioned that from the first half of the century new churches were built in the settlement of Alluitsup Paa, and in Paamiut, where a red wooden church in Norwegian stave church style was built in 1909, as well as Sisimiut, which in 1926 got a redpainted church with room for no less than 400 church goers. The church in Sisimiut is built on a cliff overhang near the old church from 1775, with which it engages in an impressive aesthetic-architectural interaction.
A new church was erected in Qeqertarsuaq in 1914, and in 1935, a quite unusual church made of hewn boulders with a massive 15 m high square tower with pyramid tip was erected in Uummannaq. In the church hangs an outstanding painting in a gilded frame with Greenlandic inscription, Jesus With His Disciples At The Sea Of Galilee. The painting has recently been identified as the work of Eckersbergapprentice Peter Gemzøe (1836).
The Danish(-Norwegian) dominance in church building and decoration remained virtually total until the mid-1900’s when new ideas emerged also here.
Egede’s Church, Aasiaat
The first significant example of this change is the church in Aasiaat. In the early 1960s, it was decided to build a new church to replace the old one from 1901, which had become too small. Danish architect Ole Nielsen was chosen, and the Greenlandic artist Jens Rosing was chosen to be in charge of the decoration.
With its low outer walls of almost all black-painted wood and its high, shingled, hipped roof, which protrudes above the flimsy wooden bell frame to the west of the church, Egede’s Church is a significant landmark in the townscape, especially from the seaside. However, the real sensation at the consecration on 29 August 1965 was the interior of the church. A large, high-ceilinged church room with white brick walls and naturalcoloured woodwork, where your gaze is naturally drawn towards the altarpiece – two white brick plinths with a wooden board in natural colour – no matter where you stand. Above you can see Jens Rosing’s The Creator and the Creature, a grand relief made of glazed ceramic inserted into a wrought-iron frame and divided into four equal fields (231 × 118 × 5 cm).
Elijah Church, Maniitsoq
Jens Rosing’s altarpiece heralded a style that has since been replicated, first in Maniitsoq (1981), then in Tasiilaq (1989) and in Qaqortoq (1996). In Elijah Church in Maniitsoq, which was built in 1980‑81 based on the design of Bo Jørgensen in collaboration with Holger Mørch-Sørensen and Lise Sonne Nielsen, the inside of the church was decorated by the young artist Aka Høegh . Above the communion table made of round natural stone gathered from all over the parish, cast in cement and covered with a thick plank of driftwood, Høegh has placed a cross, also of driftwood, decorated with Lapland rosebay. The artist has stated that by using driftwood and Lapland rosebay, she wants to signal that Christianity arrived in Greenland by boat just like driftwood, and that it – like Lapland rosebay – has taken root throughout the large Arctic island. The baptismal font is a roughly hewn granite stone from Atammik on which Høegh has carved five fish painted in blue. The silver baptismal basin was donated in 1862 by Dowager Queen Caroline Amalie, who had great veneration for Greenland.
Tasiilaq Church
When a new church was to be built in the East Greenland capital of Tasiilaq in 1989, it was designed by the Danish architect Holger Jensen, and Aka Høegh was commissioned to decorate the church. The altar decoration is a large crucifix (132 × 106 × 6.5 cm) formed by sawn-out driftwood and painted with five red and black circles. Above this is placed a crucifix outline formed by narwhal tusk. The baptismal font is a large polished tree root of Siberian larch (height 79 cm, largest diameter 100 cm), washed ashore off Aka Høegh’s hometown of Qaqortoq.
Gertrud Rask Church in Qaqortoq
Gertrud Rask Church in Qaqortoq was built in 1973 based on Ole Nielsen’s design as an auxiliary church to the Church of Our Saviour from 1832. A 4 m high and 6 m wide painting made in 1996 by Kîstat Lund dominates the north wall of the large white-painted brick church room. Let the little children come to me is painted with acrylic and airbrush directly on the wall. It shows a barefoot Jesus Christ wearing a blue robe placing his blessing hands on two Greenlandic little girls. The girls are in national costume and stand surrounded by other children and with their watchful mothers in the background. Above the magnificent scenery shines a golden arc of light.
The altarpiece, which almost disappears under the weight of Kîstat Lund’s enormous wall painting, was made by Marie Haagen-Müller (1973) and shows 47 Greenlandic plants painted with great accuracy.
Further reading
- Annaassisitta Oqaluffia, Greenland’s cathedral
- Building customs and architecture
- Education
- Greenland painters
- Hans Egede and the work for the mission service
- Hans Egede’s Church in Nuuk
- Hans Lynge and Jens Rosing
- Museums of cultural history and heritage
- Religion and religious communities
- The colonial period until the war years
- The five regional municipalities
- The Norse
- Towns and settlements
- Traditions and tales
- Visual arts and crafts
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