Greenland: Tasiusaq

One of the nicest possible hikes around Qassiarsuk is the way to Tasiusaq, about 7 kilometres away.

The walk started on the road of the Qassiarsuk Church, just before Brattahlíð ruins.

There are two places in Greenland called Tasiusaq.
One is a quite large settlement in the northern Upernavik Archipelago with about 250 inhabitants.

The second one is the small settlement we visited outside Qassiarsuk.

We got up quite early and again it was a beautiful sunny day. It can get really warm in Greenland, believe it or not, I got my face sunburnt!

The path is easy and doesn’t go up that much, but there were a couple of hard slopes.

There were many sheeps along the way, on the grass and near the rivers.

Normally these animals don’t like to be approached, but at some point we met four sheep in the middle of the road, and they didn’t go away until we were really close!

We followed the road for most of the time. Sometimes, there was a walking path on the side, but we didn’t really need to take it: we only saw one car in almost three hours!


There was one memorable moment: we got to a high point on the path from where we could see Qassiarsuk, our departure point, and Tasiusaq, our destination.

This first vision of Tasiusaq was outstanding and we knew that we did the right thing when we chose to go there!
There were many icebergs floating on the fjord, just like clouds in the sky.

We finally arrived to the small village of Tasiusaq.

According to the Lonely Planet Guide there were only 10 inhabitants in Tasiusaq.
Well, I guess this has not changed since the book was printed.
There are only 3 houses and one large sheep farm in Tasiusaq. One of the three houses is a youth hostel.

Three houses and one hostel... I think this is incredible!

Then the landscape is spoiled by some old abandoned stuff: a car, machinery and gears used for farming.

It looks like these devices had been there for a long time.
In this part of the world, it’s certainly difficult to get rid of these kinds of objects when they’re no longer useful.

We finally got to Sermilik Fjord, with dozens of icebergs floating on it.
Some of them were on the shores... Seeing icebergs on the beach was an unexpected and incredible sight.

We just stayed there for a few hours, enjoying this beautiful landscape, before hiking back to Qassiarsuk.

We also spent some time playing with the icebergs... I almost fell down in the water when I tried to jump from one iceberg to another!

We also did some training and later a competition on iceberg lauch! It's a funny sport, but my fingers almost got frozen!

On the next day, we got close to icebergs again: we sailed to Qooroq Ice fjord.
Click here to read about our trip to Qooroq Ice fjord.

Greenland Links:

Greenland on Trip Advisor
Greenland Official Tourism board
Lonely Planet Greenland guides
Compare flights to Greenland

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