Greenland's Building Culture and History
Kalaallit Nunaat's Building Culture and History
Kalaallit Nunaat's building culture and history can be broadly divided into the original Inuit building tradition, the Norse building tradition, and the European-influenced building tradition resulting from the country's colonization. This page provides a brief overview of the typical buildings that characterized the country after colonization. These are primarily the building types relevant to the preservation and conservation of Kalaallit Nunaat's built heritage.
Building History up to approx. 1950
Before colonization, people lived scattered and mainly in turf houses, which they built from turf, stone, and driftwood. With colonization came new building styles associated with the establishment of trading posts on the west coast. A trading post generally followed the same building pattern and approach, consisting of Trade buildings, residential houses called våningshuse (dwellings), warehouses, the provision house (shop), workshops, blubber houses, etc. The Mission established buildings such as a church, a school, and a residence for the missionary. The buildings thus had different functions but included four basic types: turf-walled houses, stone houses, log houses, and board-clad half-timbered houses. Several variants exist within these building types.
Turf-Walled Houses (Tørvemurshuse)
At the beginning of colonization, the most common house types were turf-walled houses, which could serve as either a single-family house or the community house (fælleshuset)—a larger house where several families could live together. Both types shared the characteristic of being built into a slope with walls of mixed stone and turf. The roof consisted of a rafter structure made of driftwood, supported by a longitudinal ridge, upon which people placed old umiaq skins, covered by turf and stones for insulation.
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), and people covered the skylights with sealskin.
However, the house type gradually changed with colonization. From the mid-1800s, glass windows replaced the skylights, and both the entrance passage and the walls changed in appearance, featuring 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-Kalaallit Nunaat house.
Today, people use the Danish-Kalaallit Nunaat turf-walled house in only a few places, and it is gradually disappearing completely as a building style.
Stone Houses (Stenhuse)
The traditional Kalaallit Nunaat stone house resembles the turf-walled houses in several ways. In North Kalaallit Nunaat, you can see stone houses, which are an improved Danish-Kalaallit Nunaat house where a pure stone wall replaces the turf wall.
Drawings and descriptions from the late 1700s and early 1800s indicate that stone buildings existed with turf pointing and flat roofs, which the Trade used for workshops, breweries, blubber houses, etc. This house variant is no longer visible in the built environment but most likely resembled the North Kalaallit Nunaat house very much.
19th Century
The development of the stone house took place in South Kalaallit Nunaat. In the 1830s, a new, local stone building technique emerged in South Kalaallit Nunaat—kassemursteknikken (box-wall technique)—which people used for workshops and warehouses, and to some extent for residential buildings and churches. All walls now consisted of bricked stone walls with a pitched roof anchored to the stone walls using wooden wall anchors.
20th Century
From the late 1920s, the stone building technique became 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, builders also constructed three large and one smaller warehouse in Julianehåb. Kalaallit Nunaat's largest stone building stands today in Uummannaq, Northwest Kalaallit Nunaat, and was erected in 1934–35.
In recent times, people have not properly maintained the stone houses, and since the 1950s, approximately 76 of the roughly 126 public stone buildings erected between 1830 and 1940 have been torn down.
Log Houses (Stokværkshusene)
Log houses originally came from Norway ("laftehus") and served as residential houses for the Trade's people at the beginning of colonization. This house type offered a distinct advantage: builders could easily disassemble it, sail it to Kalaallit Nunaat, and quickly re-erect it. This type of house was often mass-produced, sturdy, and relatively insulated.
The house consists of massive hewn timber logs laid horizontally on top of each other. This construction method made the walls completely tight and insulated. From the mid-1750s, people built the log houses in Copenhagen and shipped them to Kalaallit Nunaat.
Over time, people have well maintained the log houses—or rather the timber material—because Pomeranian wood is a very costly and durable material. Consequently, only 5–6 houses have actually been lost, primarily due to fire. In the period 1734–1847, builders erected approximately 50 log houses in Kalaallit Nunaat. Of the approximately 44 houses that still exist, however, only about 14 stand in their original location. Builders either rebuilt the others in the same form as before, or reused the wood in a completely altered house version. The production of log houses ceased after 1847.
Log churches also exist, including Zion Church in Ilulissat, built 1779–1783, and the Blue Church in Sisimiut from 1773, which people no longer use as a church. Log houses also constituted Kalaallit Nunaat's first high-rise buildings, as builders erected a total of five two-story buildings, the two largest of which served as the country's first seminaries in Nuuk and Ilulissat. Today, the two buildings function as the bishop's residence in Nuuk and the local museum in Ilulissat, respectively. Builders erected the others in Maniitsoq, Sisimiut, and Qeqertarsuaq, with the latter no longer existing.
Half-Timberd Houses (Bindingsværkshuse)
From the 1880s, the board-clad half-timbered house replaced and supplemented the log houses, featuring a triple layer of boards in the construction. The half-timbered house has undergone few changes and has been used in Kalaallit Nunaat for over 100 years for warehouses, workshops, shops, and a few churches.
The Kalaallit Nunaat half-timbered house is constructed of thick square timber, set up as a self-supporting framework and clad externally with vertical boards. Usually, builders simply nailed boards onto the half-timbering, but 5–6 half-timbered houses exist with bricked panels (or tavl).
We have preserved many half-timbered warehouses, workshops, churches, residential houses, and hospitals from the 1800s and 1900s. Only one half-timbered house from the 1700s remains: the Black Warehouse in Ilulissat, which the local museum now uses.
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, Kalaallit Nunaat's Technical Organization (GTO) took responsibility for all construction activity in the country. A great need existed for more and better housing, which led to 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 builders constructed Sana (Dronning Ingrid's Hospital) in Nuuk.
You can read more about Kalaallit Nunaat building customs and architecture before colonization in Trap Grønland (2022), written by Inge Bisgaard, here.
You can read research articles on construction and architecture in Greenland in Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur, No. 10 (2025), here.