Uunartoq
Interesting facts
- The springs on Uunartoq are said to be the warmest in all of Greenland, and the missionary Hans Egede was told of them soon after arriving in 1721.
- Gas bubbles rising through the water contain about 2 percent helium.
- In the 14th century the Norwegian priest Ivar Bardarson wrote that the springs were too hot to approach in winter but pleasant for healing baths in summer.
- The geologist Carl Ludwig Giesecke made the first temperature measurement in 1806, finding about 37 °C, and noted that locals washed clothes there rather than bathing.
- There are three natural basins; the largest is about 8 metres across and some 40 centimetres deep.
- In 1934 the archaeologist Therkel Mathiassen found 17th-century graves on the island, including three mummified infants wrapped in sealskin.
- The last settlement on the island, Ippik, was abandoned in the 1950s and served as a sheep station into the 1970s; since then the island has been empty.
- The surviving fragment of the Uunartoq disc has notches spaced eight to a quadrant, implying 32 points like the traditional mariner's compass.
- In 2013 researchers at Eötvös University in Budapest argued that the same disc could also have helped Norse sailors keep track of their latitude.
- The island is about 5.5 km long and covers some 6.5 square kilometres, made of two parts joined by a narrow neck of land.
Why it is worth it
Off the southern tip of Greenland, at the mouth of a fjord the Norse called Siglufjord, lies the uninhabited island of Uunartoq — a name that simply means "the hot one". On a low terrace about ten metres above the sea, natural springs collect in pools at between 34 and 38 °C, warm enough to bathe in while icebergs drift past in the sound. Both the Norse settlers and the Inuit knew the springs well.
The island and the fjord behind it are full of traces of those two peoples. Uunartoq has ruins of Norse and Inuit settlements, and the surrounding area formed the southern end of the Norse district of Vatnahverfi, farmed from the 10th to the 15th century before the Norse Greenlanders vanished. On the western shore of the fjord, across the water from the springs, lie the ruins of a church site generally identified as the Benedictine convent of the Eastern Settlement. There, in 1948, the Danish archaeologist Christen Vebæk found a fragment of a wooden disc only 7 cm across, with notches around its edge and carefully scored lines on its face. Known as the Uunartoq disc, it is widely interpreted as a Norse sun compass for finding true north at sea, and replicas tested on a voyage in a reconstructed Norse ship in 1984 gave readings close to a modern compass.
The nearest community is Alluitsup Paa, a small fishing village founded as the trading station of Sydprøven in 1830, which lies just north-west of the island. Like every settlement in Greenland, it has no road connection to any other town.
Getting there
Uunartoq lies in Kujalleq municipality, just south-east of the village of Alluitsup Paa, which has a heliport (LLU). There are no roads; the springs are reached by boat. The nearest airport is Qaqortoq Airport (JJU), about 50 km away; Nuuk, the capital, lies some 527 km to the north-west.
On these lists
60.50000, -45.33333per Wikidata