Qilakitsoq — the mummies

OVERVIEW

Qilakitsoq is an abandoned settlement and an important archaeological site on the northern coast of the Nuussuaq peninsula near Uummannaq in western Greenland. It was named Killekitok by Danish colonists after the founding of the Uummannaq colony in 1763, and was described in 1789 as a place occupied only occasionally in winter — the pattern of the Thule culture. The last description of a permanent settlement there was written in 1811, and it was abandoned shortly after.

HISTORY

There are several grave sites at Qilakitsoq, and human remains can still be found under piles of stones. On 9 October 1972 two hunters from Uummannaq, Hans and Jokum Grønvold, out after rock ptarmigan, found a grave containing mummified bodies. They covered it again and told the authorities at once. Scientific investigation did not begin until 1978. Eight bodies were recovered — six women and two children, including a boy of about four and a baby of about six months — naturally mummified by the dry, cold air under the rock overhang, still in their sealskin and bird-skin clothing, with tattoos visible on the women's faces.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

This is not a haunting. It is on the map because it is the best-preserved record anywhere of who the Thule Inuit were, what they wore, what they ate and how they buried their dead, five hundred years ago — and because the circumstances are genuinely strange: the six-month-old child appears to have been buried alive with his mother, a practice the ethnographic record describes for a child whose mother had died. The mummies were taken to Copenhagen and returned to Greenland in 1982 as part of the repatriation of Greenlandic cultural property. The four best preserved are on display at the Greenland National Museum in Nuuk and are among the most visited things in the country.

VISITING

The site itself is remote, unmarked and reached only by boat from Uummannaq; there is nothing built there and remains are still in the ground. The mummies are in the Greenland National Museum, Kalaallit Nunaata Katersugaasivia, in Nuuk — go there instead.