Brattahlíð
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Brattahlíð (), often anglicised as Brattahlid, was
Erik the Red Erik Thorvaldsson (), known as Erik the Red, was a Norse explorer, described in medieval and Icelandic saga sources as having founded the first European settlement in Greenland. Erik most likely earned the epithet "the Red" due to the color o ...
's estate in the Eastern Settlement
Viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9â ...
colony A colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule, which rules the territory and its indigenous peoples separated from the foreign rulers, the colonizer, and their ''metropole'' (or "mother country"). This separated rule was often orga ...
he established in south-western
Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...
toward the end of the 10th century. The present settlement of Qassiarsuk, approximately southwest from the Narsarsuaq settlement, is now located in its place. The site is located about from the ocean, at the head of the Tunulliarfik Fjord, and hence sheltered from ocean storms. Erik and his descendants lived there until about the mid-15th century. The name ''Brattahlíð'' means "the steep slope". The estate, along with other archeological sites in southwestern Greenland, was inscribed on the
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
World Heritage List World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural heritag ...
in 2017 as Kujataa Greenland: Norse and Inuit Farming at the Edge of the Ice Cap.


Church

At Brattahlíð stood probably the first European
church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...
in the Americas: Þjóðhildarkirkja (Thjodhild's church, actually a small chapel). A recent reconstruction of this chapel now stands at a distance from the actual site, along with a replica of a Norse
longhouse A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from lumber, timber and ...
. At the site of the main church, built after the Norse converted to Christianity, investigators have found melted fragments of bell metal, and foundation stones of it and other buildings remained into the 20th century, as did the remnants of a possible
forge A forge is a type of hearth used for heating metals, or the workplace (smithy) where such a hearth is located. The forge is used by the smith to heat a piece of metal to a temperature at which it becomes easier to shape by forging, or to the ...
. This church (not Thjodhild's chapel) measured by and had two entrances, with what was evidently a
hearth A hearth () is the place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by a horizontal hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos (a low, partial ...
in the middle. Apparently, fire destroyed it. The church, possibly a 14th-century structure, may have stood on the ruins of an earlier church. The
churchyard In Christian countries, a churchyard is a patch of land adjoining or surrounding a church (building), church, which is usually owned by the relevant church or local parish itself. In the Scots language and in both Scottish English and Ulster S ...
has
tombstone A gravestone or tombstone is a marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. A marker set at the head of the grave may be called a headstone. An especially old or elaborate stone slab may be called a funeral stele, stela, or slab. The us ...
s, with a cross cut on one of them. On another stand engraved the
rune Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see '' futhark'' vs ''runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were primarily used to represent a sound value (a ...
s for "Ingibjørg's Grave". Stones mark the church's outline, though people probably placed them there in recent years; visitors can also see the surrounding
graveyard A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite, graveyard, or a green space called a memorial park or memorial garden, is a place where the remains of many death, dead people are burial, buried or otherwise entombed. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek ...
.


Farm

One
farm A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...
building nearby measured by , with stone walls about thick; a
turf Sod is the upper layer of turf that is harvested for transplanting. Turf consists of a variable thickness of a soil medium that supports a community of turfgrasses. In British and Australian English, sod is more commonly known as ''turf'', ...
outer bank provided further insulation. Inside, it had a
flagstone Flagstone (flag) is a generic flat Rock (geology), stone, sometimes cut in regular rectangular or square shape and usually used for Sidewalk, paving slabs or walkways, patios, flooring, fences and roofing. It may be used for memorials, headstone ...
floor. Flat stones — or, in one case, the shoulder-blade of a
whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully Aquatic animal, aquatic placental mammal, placental marine mammals. As an informal and Colloquialism, colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea ...
— formed the stalls. Some of these buildings still stood in 1953, contemporaneous with the Bluie West One airfield at Narsarsuaq, but today they exist mostly as depressions in the ground. Brattahlíð still has some of the best farmland in Greenland, owing to its location at the inner end of Eriksfjord, which protects it from the cold foggy weather and
arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...
waters of the outer coast. It has a youth hostel and a small store. More extensive facilities exist in Narsarsuaq across the fjord.


Assembly

Brattahlíð hosted the first Greenlandic '' Þing'' (parliament), based on the Icelandic
Althing The (; ), anglicised as Althingi or Althing, is the Parliamentary sovereignty, supreme Parliament, national parliament of Iceland. It is the oldest surviving parliament in the world. The Althing was founded in 930 at ('Thing (assembly), thing ...
. In the early 20th century through written sources and archeological evidence, scholars identified two potential ''Þing'' sites at Brattahlíð and at Garðar. Given the sparse nature of the Greenlandic settlement, it is reasonable that the participants of a ''Þing'' would have taken the opportunity for social interaction or trade. The exact causes of the disappearance of the Norse settlements toward the end of the 15th century remain unverified, but probably resulted from a combination of the
Little Ice Age The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of regional cooling, particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region. It was not a true ice age of global extent. The term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939. Mat ...
's cooling temperatures, soil erosion, abandonment by Norway after the
Black Plague The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the list of epidemics, most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. ...
and political turmoils, more convenient ways for Europeans to procure furs and a mercantile eclipsing by the
Hanseatic League The Hanseatic League was a Middle Ages, medieval commercial and defensive network of merchant guilds and market towns in Central Europe, Central and Northern Europe, Northern Europe. Growing from a few Northern Germany, North German towns in the ...
, and competition from the
Inuit Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...
moving southward.


See also

* Qassiarsuk about the present settlement on the location * Garðar, a bishopric seat founded in the 12th century close to Brattahlíð * '' An Old Captivity'' (1940) by Nevil Shute is a fictional account of an early aerial investigation of the old Norse settlement at 'Brattalid' and of Leif Ericson's journey to North America


References

*Diamond, Jared, ''Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed'' (New York: Viking, 2005) *Ingstad, Helge (tr. Naomi Walford), ''Land under the Pole Star'' (New York: St. Martin's, 1966) *Jones, Gwyn, ''The Norse Atlantic Saga'' (Oxford University Press, 1986)


External links


Brattahlid, Norse Greenland
, ''Earth Observatory Picture of the Day'' (June 2, 2005), NASA. {{DEFAULTSORT:Brattahlid Populated places established in the 10th century Norse settlements in Greenland Sagas of Icelanders