Qaqortoq is South Greenlands biggest town with just over 3.500 inhabitants. Located on a peninsula it's colourful houses spread up from the waterfront of both the ocean and a lake and up to the top of the hills. It's all built on bedrock as there is little flat land and little soil.
Thousands of kilometers from the nearest city it is about as remote as you can imagine. There are few shops, though they are surprisingly many considering the size of the town, and the longest road leading out of town ends after about two kilometers. That is about as far as you can get by car. How can anyone live in such a place you might wonder.
Sure, some were born here and don't know anything else. Here is all their network, their friends, their family, their way of living. But I have been meeting so many people in the last days here that had no connection to the place prior to their arrival. They just fell in love with it and there was no turning back.
Kids playing down by the harbour.
One of the first things you notice, beside the colourful houses, is how full of live the town is. Only few people own a car but there are 16 taxis in town, yeah, a bit like New York, just not as many. Except here you also see children all over the place, running, hiding, playing - not like in New York. With only one TV channel (unless you have a satellite), and a very expensive internet connection the kids aren't waisting all their time in front of the TV or the computer. It reminds me of the life I lived when I was a kid growing up in a remote fishing village in the Westfjords in Iceland. We may have been only three kids in my class, but we didn't mind playing with kids a little bit older or younger, and we were never, ever bored. There was always something to do, playing down by the sea, up in the hills, running around in freedom turning the simplest things into the greatest adventures and enjoying the company of each other.
I met an Icelandic family that moved to Qaqortoq in January - with their 18 year old daughter. As you can imagine, she wasn't all too happy about moving to such place and arrived with an attitude. That had completely changed within two days as the Greenlandic kids welcomed her with open arms and before she knew it she had become a part of a great group of new friends. Now she is back in Iceland for some studies and can't wait to get back.
Boats parked outside the houses. Not cars. A bit like Venice ;)
Altough it may appear as you couldn't be more stuck as in this place there are people that experience this as the biggest freedom you could ever dream off. A place where kids can play freely, a place located in the middle of magnificent unspoiled nature, a place where you only have to sail for two minutes and you're in a place where it looks like no man has ever been before, a place so full of life and wild animals with seals, whales, reindeer, birds, hares, moskus, foxes running around, rivers filled with salmon and trout, sea filled with fish and with boats as common as cars are in most places you just grab your boat and go out to hunt or fish what ever delicasy you'd like for dinner.
And if you do need to get away, there's an international airport just a few minutes helicopter ride away (with daily helicopter rides over there) with connections to Iceland and Denmark where from you can reach any other place in the world.
Just think about it. What is it that really matters in your life? What is it that you really need to have around you to be happy? What is it that your weekends are all about?
This might not be as crazy as it sounds. So, what do you think, could you ever live in such a place?
Hjörtur
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