13 ghost towns in Greenland

Explore 13 ghost towns in Greenland – find out why they’ve been abandoned and how you can experience them yourself.

Ghost Towns

The term is both scary end exciting, and it’s easy to let your mind wander. What stories do these places hide – are there really haunted houses – and why were they abandoned in the first place?

There are many abandoned places in Greenland, and there are, obviously, several reasons for the abandonment:

  • The hunting grounds moved
  • The natural minerals were used up
  • Forced displacement for military purposes
  • The need for a workforce elsewhere

Greenlanders were originally nomadic people who followed the food. This is also why we would often live in one place in summer and another in winter.

There are also several abandoned mining places in Greenland where the surrounding towns were closed as the minerals dried out, the most notable example being Qullissat.

In the same vein, the people of the old Uummannaq/Dundas settlement were forcibly moved to Qaanaaq when the Danes allowed the Americans to build a base at the site, today’s Thule Air Base/Pituffik.

Finally, the need for a workforce has also meant closing many settlements, especially as fish factories were built in nearby towns.

Abandoned places usually mean some kind of loss, but they also represent wild beauty. It is fascinating how nature takes over a place and turns artificial structures into something else.

Let’s take a look at some of the abandoned places in Greenland. We focus mainly on places you, as a visitor, can experience in one way or another, either by boat or on a hiking or kayaking trip.

Sermermiut

Sermermiut is one of Greenland’s most famous abandoned places due to its proximity to Ilulissat icefjord and its long Inuit history. Going back 4,500 years, the early Dorset and Thule Inuit cultures took residence by Sermermiut. Hunting has always been good in this area due to its location next to the icefjord, which has varied animal and marine life.

Sermermiut was first excavated in 1952 and then in 1983, where evidence of many different cultures was found. It is now part of a UNESCO World Heritage area, and you can access it via a wooden walkway. At the end of the walkway, you get to Nakkaavik, which means “the place where you fall.” The name comes from a time when the elderly threw themselves off a cliff during famines. Nakkaavik was featured in Season 4 of the popular TV series “Borgen.

How to get to Sermermiut

It’s a short walk from Ilulissat. While here, you should also visit the Ilulissat Icefjord Centre

Qullissat

Qullissat is, to this day, a major trauma for the Greenlandic psyche. This was one of the largest towns in Greenland, with 1,400 inhabitants.

The town started as a coal mine in 1924 and operated until 1972. When the coal ran out, the authorities closed the school, shops, and everything else, so the people were forced to move away and were spread out all over the coast. Distributing more than a thousand people to various towns within a 2,000-kilometer range caused much heartache and social problems.

Notable inhabitants were Greenland’s former premier, Kuupik Kleist, and Aka Høegh, one of Greenland’s most recognized and beloved artists.

How to get to Qullissat

Qullissat can be reached from Qeqertarsuaq and Ilulissat by chartered boat. Sometimes, Hurtigruten’s cruise ships also make a stop here.
Find charter boat here

Ataa

Ataa lies on an island about 60 kilometers north of Ilulissat. It is a relatively small place which, today, houses accommodation for a tour operator and the local municipality. Among tourist operators, Ataa is kind of famous for “the loo with the best view in the world.” The small outhouse has an amazing south-facing view. In Ataa, a beautifully located graveyard was made just before people left, so there is only one grave in the cemetery.

World of Greenland, one of the local tour operators, is planning to erect a tent camp in Ataa, opening in 2024.

How to get to Ataa

By boat from Ilulissat

Assaqutaq

Assaqutaq is yet another settlement abandoned as people chose or were forced to move to the larger towns to find work. Today, you will experience the old church, the former fish factory, and several private houses. The cemetery is also well worth a visit.

Today, this picturesque settlement is used as a summer camp for the local primary schools. In summer, Assaqutaq really comes to life as people from nearby Sisimiut go to fish ammassat (capelin). At this time, there are also good chances of spotting humpback whales as they love the ammassat as much as we do.

How to get to Assaqutaq
Hotel Sisimiut & Tours offers a magnificent boat tour here, and they also have a combined boat and hiking tour where you get to cross to the mainland via a hanging bridge.

Visit tour provider
Hotel Sisimiut & Tours

Qoornoq

Qoornoq is an abandoned settlement in the Nuuk Fjord. It has become quite a popular place for the descendants of the inhabitants of the former settlement, and others, to go to in the summer.

Qoornoq was also one of those settlements that was closed because a workforce was needed elsewhere. In the case of Qoornoq, the inhabitants moved to the newly built apartment blocks in Nuuk, and many of them got to work in the new fish processing plant.

Qoornoq is located on a small island in the huge fjord system and is easily accessible on day tours from Nuuk. One of the more interesting features is the remains of a small railway used in the 1950s to transport fish to the small harbor.

How to get to Qoornoq

Kangerluarsoruseq (Færingehavn or Nordáfar)

Kangerluarsoruseq or Færingehavn (or Nordáfar) is an abandoned settlement about 50 kilometers south of Nuuk. It was a settlement originally built by Faroese fishermen and was used until the early 1990s. The place is an oil depository today but the last person to live there left in 2009.

Here’s an interesting link from a person who went there by boat from Nuuk.

How to get to Kangerluarsoruseq

By boat from Nuuk
Visit tour operators:
Nuuk Water Taxi

Kangeq

Kangeq is a former island settlement. The island was formerly known as Haabets Ø (The Island of Hope) as the colonialist Hans Egede settled here for seven miserable years from 1721-28. In 1728 Hans upped and relocated to today’s Nuuk.

To Greenlanders, Kangeq is known as the birthplace of Aron from Kangeq, who was a hunter, painter, and historian. He lived from 1822-1869, and his many detailed drawings, woodcuts, and watercolors have shown us how life was lived in old times.

Today, Kangeq draws mainly tourists interested in history, and it also stood in for Nuuk in the Danish film, The Experiment, back in 2010.

How to get to Kangeq

By boat from Nuuk
Visit tour providers
Kang Tourism

Old Narsaq

Old Narsaq is found right on the border of Narsaq, lodged between the town and the heliport. Here you will find several old ruins from an old Greenlandic settlement before Narsaq became a trading colony in 1830. Some of the ruins are later, though, as many people lived in peat houses into the 20th Century.

If you go to the nearby Narsaq Kujalleq and also the area around the fish factory in Narsaq, you will also come across remains of Norse farms.

How to get to Old Narsaq

By boat from Nuuk
It’s an easy walk from Narsaq.

Ivittuut


Like Qullissat, this small town also closed when the mine ran dry. This happened in 1987 after the mine had been operating since 1856. The coveted mineral was cryolite which is used when making aluminum. The mine was very interesting to the Americans during WWII (read our article about “The Good Traitor”). Ivittuut is located close to the now also abandoned Flådestation Grønnedal, or Kangillinnguit in Greenland, the Danish navy’s former Command Central in Greenland (which relocated to Nuuk in 2012). The huge mine of Ivittuut was filled with water to avoid people falling into a very deep hole. The last two families left Ivittuut in 2000.

There are many rare minerals to be found in the Ivittuut area, and close by, you also find Ikka with its unique underwater stalagmites.

Hospital Valley at Narsarsuaq (Bluie West one)

According to legend, a huge hospital was abandoned overnight in Narsarsuaq, leaving plates with food on the tables, as we see in the movies. During and after WWII, the Americans built several large bases in Greenland, and during the war, Bluie West 1, as the base at Narsarsuaq was called, was the largest town in Greenland. In the early 1950s, a huge hospital was also built in the Hospital Valley (a place we now call the Flower Valley). In Narsarsuaq, we still wallow in the ghost stories about this place.
Today, only a stone chimney is left.

How to get to Hostpial Valley

The Flower Valley is about an hour’s walk from Narsarsuaq Airport Terminal

Ikkatteq (Bluie East Two)

Someone with irony dubbed the waste from the American base that polluted the area around Bluie East Two “American Flowers.”
As an airbase, Bluie East Two was never very significant, yet the users of the air base managed to leave behind around 200,000 oil drums that polluted the area for decades. A major clean-up is now taking place. Some historians, and local tour operators, argue that we should leave some of the oil drums as a testament to the area’s history.

How to get to Ikkatteq

The Flower Valley is about an hour’s walk from Narsarsuaq Airport Terminal

By boat from Kulusuk or Tasiilaq
Visit tour operators
Arctic Dream
Tasiilaq Tours
The Red House
Sermilik Adventures

Skjoldungen (Saqqisikuik)

Skjoldungen or Saqqisikuik was a settlement on the east coast of Greenland which is now used as an oil depository, fishing grounds, and also a place where people from Tasiilaq go to get angelica. The surroundings are almost otherworldly beautiful. The area is lush with towering peaks. The area has been inhabited several times, most lately from the 1930s until 1964, when the inhabitants were relocated. This happened mainly due to a political wish to concentrate Greenland’s inhabitants in larger towns.

However, there’s a big “but” to this official story as there, supposedly, have been several sightings of an original, forgotten Inuit tribe in the area.

How to get to Skjoldungen

This is one of the more inaccessible abandoned places named in this article. Sometimes, cruise ships pass by Skjoldungen.

Dundas/Umanak

When Thule Air Base was built in 1952-3, the people of Pituffik and nearby Umanak/Dundas were displaced from their homes (and excellent hunting grounds). A new town of 27 houses, Qaanaaq, was built for the locals, using the American grid system for town planning). Being displaced is a traumatic experience, and it lead to a long legal battle for the people of Dundas.

Pituffik was also the site of the original trading station formed by polar explorers Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen in 1910.

How to get to Dundas/Umanak

It is not possible to visit the old settlement without permission to enter the area of the Thule Air Base

Article by Visit Greenland

Behind Greenland’s largest travel site is the Visit Greenland that is 100% owned by the Government of Greenland, who is responsible for marketing the country’s adventures and opportunities for guests wishing to visit the world’s largest island