We’re back in Qaqortoq, the town where we first made landfall in Greenland. Summer has arrived here yesterday, and the sun is hot and strong. I’m sitting by the side of a clear rivulet that gurgles through the town into the harbour basin and is supplied from the large freshwater lake behind the town which also serves as the reservoir. Feet dangling in the water, I’m marvelling at all the things we’ve done, heard, observed, and been part of since we first arrived. We closed a first loop.
The heart of the town is the protected harbour and an adjacent small square with a picturesque fountain in the centre and a bridge across the stream. Every evening kids, teenagers, and adults alike gather here to fish, casting their fishing rods and reeling them in. This square plays a major role in many events in the town, as we saw last time we were here.
Around the harbour, the town rises in the rounded hills surrounding it. Its southwards facing slopes in particular are densely dotted with wooden houses, painted every vivid colour of the rainbow one could imagine — purple, blue, green, turquoise, yellow, orange, red, carmine. They give the place a very cheerful aspect that matches its outgoing, friendly and welcoming people.
In the winter months, those pigments must create a fabulous contrast to the white of the snow and the ice, and the dark of the night. The more time we spend here, the more I notice how my curiosity rises to be here during the time of frost, snow, and darkness. Spring and summer are the time of light and the ice.
Although blossoms had been out when we were here a month ago, particularly purple lupine and some shy yellow buttercups, now they are truly abundant and lavish. The whole place is a riot of colours and liveliness.
The riverbanks are ablaze with buttercups and the grass has grown to hip-height and radiates in tints of lush green. Carrying heavy heads that harbour the ripening seeds of next year’s meadows, the stalks are bent in graceful arches. The arctic poppies grow in backlit bushels of delicate creamy-white, flaming orange and deep yellow, blossoms bobbing and twisting in the slight breeze. Their unopened buds hang downwards, green and purple promises of boisterous hues to spring forth. The lupines with opulent blossoms of violet, navy, and white grow in dense tufts. They have a certain geometry to them that reminds me of an organic checker board.
We go for a swim in the lake the stream originates in. Now, the water is aswarm with the local kids in wetsuits, jumping off cliffs, floating with air mattresses, snorkelling with goggles. When we were first here, we hiked around the lake and dove in for a moment or two, the water being chilly then. Now, we can go for a real swim, and enjoy stretching out and floating in the water. The lake’s temperature having risen to what feels like 15°C or more, it feels balmy to me after swimming in the sea peppered with ice.
A kid calls us and we crawl over to chat with him. He tells us how he learned swimming in the sea in Turkey, how salty the water was there and that he made friends with the hotel owner. It being school holidays now, he says, all the kids are just in the water all the time, spending four hours or more enjoying the wet. Not having the benefit of the wetsuit, we do get a little chilly after a while and say goodbye to our lovely little friend who swims towards the cliff jumpers to join them.
Earlier we met the friendly taxi driver again who had showed us around the first time we were here. On the rainy national day, he picked us up at the market place after we had watched the butchering of a seal, to bring us to the sports hall, where everyone was gathering for the live music and the throat singers. On the way there himself, he offered to give us a ride. Rather than go straight there, he showed us around.
Clearly proud of his charming town, he pointed out useful places like the bank and the supermarkets, and took us up the hills to the best views. One of them being right next to his house on Qaqortoq’s “Blueberry Hill”, so-called for the abundant blueberries in summer. A sweeping view over the harbour and the fjord towards the sea awaits us when we stop there for a short break.
We planned to spend our time in his area, the south-west Greenland, part of the commune Kujalleq. So we chatted about the area and life in Qaqortoq with him. Born and raised in Qaqortoq, he is in love with and is proud of the region. However, for most of his professional career, he worked in Nuuk for the government. With two high-pressure jobs, he found himself burned-out some years ago. This was a turning point, and he decided to return to his hometown and to put himself and his family first. To live, not just to work and exist. Once back, he started his own business ‘in his own time and without deadlines.’
When he asks us now how we like the south-west after having spent a month here, I admit having fallen in love. ‘It’s the best place, isn’t it,’ he beams, and I have to agree. He tells us how on coming back from Nuuk, he, too, fell again for the beauty of the area. There is no one single aspect or simple list that one can compile that makes it. A superficial glance, looking for the extravagance of the tropics, might miss it altogether. There is an intense beauty to Kujalleq that reveals itself with time. It gently unfurls and allows for gradual and intimate discovery that asks for time and dedication, and gives abundance in return.
Angie