Nanortalik Museum – Trap Greenland

© Styrelsen for Dataforsyning og Infrastruktur

Evening light over Nanortalik Museum and a section of the old town. Most of the local museums are centrally located down by the water. Like other local museums, the museum makes a point of presenting the ancient Inuit hunting culture. The hunting culture was in sharp decline from the 1950s with the increasingly dominant role of fishing. This decline acts as a catalyst for the creation of more local museums.
MADS PIHL/VISIT GREENLAND, 2016

A museum committee was formed in Nanortalik on 31 October 1977, and the municipality made the old hospital available. From 1981 to 1982, the old remote trading post manager’s residence was restored and handed over, and it became the first home of the Nanortalik Museum, which inaugurated the building on 1 August 1982.

The Nanortalik Museum is set up as an open-air museum in the old colonial port. The museum includes almost all of the buildings, most of them being used as exhibition rooms. The open-air museum includes replicas of peat sheds, summer camp sites, skin boats with covered stands and kayak stands which can be used by the kayak association, as well as a kayaking roll practice ground. In addition, the museum has skin clothing, which is used at cultural events as well as at events for tourists.

Further reading