Greenland's Building Culture and History
Greenland's building culture and building history can broadly be divided into the original Inuit building tradition, Norse building tradition, and the European-influenced building tradition, as a result of the colonization of the country. On this page, you can get a brief overview of the different typical buildings that have characterized the country after colonization. These are primarily the building types concerned when it comes to the preservation and conservation of Greenland's built heritage.
Building History up to approx. 1950
Before colonization, people lived scattered and mainly in turf houses, which were built of turf, stone, and driftwood. With colonization, new building styles followed in connection with the establishment of trading posts on the west coast. A trading post largely followed the same building pattern and approach and consisted of the Trade's buildings, residential houses, called våningshuse (dwellings), warehouses, the provision house (shop), workshops, blubber houses, etc. The Mission established buildings such as a church, school, and residence for the missionary. The buildings thus had different functions but included four basic building types: turf-walled houses, stone houses, log houses, and board-clad half-timbered houses. There are several variants within these building types.
Turf-Walled Houses (Tørvemurshuse)
At the beginning of colonization, the most common types of houses were turf-walled houses, which could either be a single-family house or the community house (fælleshuset)—a larger house where several families could live together. Common to the two types is that they were often built into a slope with walls of mixed stone and turf. The roof consisted of a rafter roof of driftwood, supported by a longitudinal ridge, on which old umiaq skins were placed, covered by turf and stones, which had an insulating effect.
The house consisted of a large room with a raised sleeping platform (briks) along the back wall. The entrance was a sunken, tube-shaped passage, also called the husgangen (house passage), as well as some skylights, which were covered with sealskin.
However, the house type gradually changed with colonization, and from the mid-1800s, the skylights were replaced by glass windows, and both the entrance passage and the walls had a changed appearance with more exterior walls of stone or planks and an insulating turf wall on the outside. Finally, the roof also became higher, and the house type was then named a Danish-Greenlandic house.
Today, the Danish-Greenlandic turf-walled house is used only in a few places and is gradually disappearing completely as a building style.
Stone Houses (Stenhuse)
The traditional Greenlandic stone house resembles the turf-walled houses in several ways. In North Greenland, one sees stone houses, which are an improved Danish-Greenlandic house, where the turf wall is replaced by a pure stone wall.
Drawings and descriptions from the late 1700s and early 1800s tell us that there were stone buildings with turf pointing and flat roofs, which the Trade used for workshops, breweries, blubber houses, etc. This house variant can no longer be seen in the built environment but most likely resembled the North Greenlandic house very much.
19th Century
The development of the stone house takes place in South Greenland. In the 1830s, a new and local stone building technique emerged in South Greenland – kassemursteknikken (box-wall technique) – which was used as a workshop and warehouse and to some extent for residential buildings and churches. All walls were now bricked stone walls with a pitched roof anchored to the stone walls, which were equipped with wooden wall anchors.
20th Century
From the late 1920s, the stone building technique became more and more advanced, and people switched to using hewn granite stones. The sheep slaughterhouse in Julianehåb (1928–29) was the first building constructed with this technique. Over the course of a decade, three large and one smaller warehouse were also built in Julianehåb. Greenland's largest stone building is found today in Uummannaq, Northwest Greenland, and was erected in 1934–35.
In recent times, the stone houses have not been well taken care of, and since the 1950s, approximately 76 of the roughly 126 public stone buildings, erected in the period 1830–1940, have been torn down.
Log Houses (Stokværkshusene)
Log houses originally stem from Norway ("laftehus") and were used as residential houses for the Trade's people at the beginning of colonization. There was a marked advantage to this type of house, as it could be easily disassembled, then sailed to Greenland, and quickly re-erected. This type of house was often mass-produced and was sturdy and relatively insulated.
The house consists of massive hewn timber logs, which are laid horizontally on top of each other. In this way, the walls became completely tight and insulated. From the mid-1750s, the log houses were built in Copenhagen and sent to Greenland.
Over time, the log houses—or rather the timber material—have been well looked after, because Pomeranian wood is a very costly and durable material, and only 5–6 houses have actually been lost, primarily due to fire. In the period 1734–1847, approximately 50 log houses were erected in Greenland. Of the approximately 44 houses that still exist, however, only about 14 are located in their original place. The others have either been rebuilt in the same form as before, or the wood has been reused in a completely altered house version. After 1847, the production of log houses ceased.
There are also log churches, including Zion Church in Ilulissat, built 1779–1783, and the Blue Church in Sisimiut from 1773, which is no longer used as a church. Log houses also constituted Greenland's first high-rise buildings, as a total of five two-story buildings were erected, the two largest of which were built in Nuuk and Ilulissat, as the country's first seminaries. Today, the two buildings function as the bishop's residence in Nuuk and the local museum in Ilulissat, respectively. The others were erected in Maniitsoq, Sisimiut, and Qeqertarsuaq, the latter of which no longer exists.
Half-Timberd Houses (Bindingsværkshuse)
From the 1880s, the board-clad half-timbered house replaced and supplemented the log houses with a triple layer of boards in the construction. The half-timbered house has undergone few changes and has been used in Greenland for over 100 years for warehouses, workshops, shops, and a few churches.
The Greenlandic half-timbered house is constructed of thick square timber, set up in a form of self-supporting framework and clad externally with vertical boards. Usually, boards were simply nailed onto the half-timbering, but there are 5–6 half-timbered houses with bricked panels (or tavl).
We have preserved many warehouses, workshops, churches, residential houses, and hospitals of the half-timbered type from the 1800s and 1900s, while only one half-timbered house from the 1700s remains – namely the Black Warehouse in Ilulissat, which is now used by the local museum.
Other examples of prominent half-timbered houses in the country include; Our Saviour's Church (Frelserens Kirke) in Qaqortoq from 1832, the Seminary in Nuuk from 1906, the Doctor's Residence (Lægeboligen) in Upernavik from 1915, the former missionary residence in Ammassalik, and many more.
After World War II – New Building Customs
After 1950, Greenland's Technical Organization (GTO) was responsible for all construction activity in the country. There was a great need for more and better housing, which resulted in new forms of housing, such as the first terraced houses, apartment buildings, and introduced new concepts such as boligstøttehuse (subsidized housing) and typehuse (prefabricated houses). It was also during this time that Sana (Dronning Ingrid's Hospital) was built in Nuuk.
Read more about Greenlandic building customs and architecture before colonization in Trap Grønland (2022), written by Inge Bisgaard, here.
Read research articles on construction and architecture in Greenland in Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur, No. 10 (2025), here.