Akulliit (Qasigiannguit)

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Akulliit (the middle ones)
Akugdlît
Commune Qeqertalik municipality
District Qasigiannguit
Geographical location 68 ° 39 ′ 29 ″  N , 51 ° 14 ′ 59 ″  W Coordinates: 68 ° 39 ′ 29 ″  N , 51 ° 14 ′ 59 ″  W
Akulliit (Greenland)
Akulliit
Residents 0
(1963)
founding 1856
Time zone UTC-3

Akulliit [ akuˈɬːiːtˢʰ ] (according to the old spelling Akugdlît ) is a deserted Greenlandic settlement in the district of Qasigiannguit in the municipality of Qeqertalik .

location

Akulliit is located in the west of an island of the same name in the southeast of Disko Bay . Qasigiannguit is 18 km north and Ikamiut is 24 km west .

history

Akulliit as a place to live

It can be assumed that Akulliit was inhabited before the colonial era, which ruins testify. The residents had traded with Dutch whalers. Niels Egede described the residents of the Sydostbugten as cold-hearted and ungrateful. By 1780 most of the residents were still unbaptized. A little later one winter there was a strong storm and all the men who were hunting on the ice were swept across the smooth ice until they fell into the water on the edge of the ice and drowned. Only one man could hold on to his ice hole and survived. Shortly thereafter, an epidemic broke out in 1785/86, which killed all but two of the residents. The two made their way to Qasigiannguit, but one fell to his death on the way, so that only one woman of Akulliit's residents survived. According to the church records, 14 residents had died, but only a small number of the residents were baptized at this point and the pagans were therefore not counted.

In 1797 the colonial administrator began a yarn trial in Akulliit, but because no Greenlanders wanted to move to the place, the place had to be given up again in 1805. At that time Akulliit only had six residents.

Akulliit as Udsted

Only shortly after 1850 did some people move to Akulliit again. In 1856 the place received the status of an Udsted . Nicolai Jens Andreas Lange was the first Udsteds administrator of Akulliit for almost twenty years and the following boom can be attributed to him. In addition, the Thorning, Samuelsen and Møller families are among the most important in Akulliit. The commercial buildings were originally placed a little out of the way. The place grew rapidly due to immigration. Because space was limited, many settled a little further away. A half-timbered chapel with a peat wall facade was built here in 1870.

When Fridtjof Nansen crossed the Greenland ice sheet in 1888 , residents of Akulliit searched the border with the ice sheet over a length of 180 km from June to the end of September. Nansen had changed his route and arrived in Nuuk 500 km south .

In 1904 a new school chapel was built. Because most of the population now lived on the other side of the bay, the Udsted was relocated in 1908.

Akulliit was a separate community in the colonial district of Christianshaab from 1911 . It belonged to the 4th district electoral council of North Greenland and had no associated housing. The place was part of the parish of Ilulissat and belonged to the upper catechetical district of Qasigiannguit.

In 1915, 93 people lived in Akulliit. 25 of them were hunters and two were fishermen. There were 13 houses, one apartment for the Udsteds administrator, which was built in 1908 as a half-timbered building with wood paneling and roof shingles and had two rooms, a kitchen and an attic, a provisions store with a shop, a cooperage and a bacon house. All public buildings were half-timbered buildings that were originally located elsewhere on the island. The school chapel from 1904 was also a timber-clad half-timbered building with roof shingles. There was a cross above the south gable and in the chapel there was a harmonium and an altar panel, which was designed and donated by Fräulein Roed from Copenhagen.

In 1930 Akulliit had 80 inhabitants. Later a fish house or two were built and a school in 1952, turning the old school chapel into a church. In 1950 Akulliit was incorporated into the new municipality of Qasigiannguit . In the same year Akulliit already had 141 inhabitants. In 1952, 20 fishermen caught 49 tons of cod. By 1960 the population had decreased to 114 residents and in 1962 Akulliit was abandoned.

Sons and daughters

Individual evidence

  1. Map with all official place names confirmed by Oqaasileriffik , provided by Asiaq
  2. a b c d e f Hother Ostermann : Beskrivelse af Distrikterne i Nordgrønland: Christianshaab District. De grandson Bopladser. Udstedet Akugdlît . In: Georg Carl Amdrup , Louis Bobé , Adolf Severin Jensen , Hans Peder Steensby (eds.): Grønland i tohundredeaaret for Hans Egedes landing (=  Meddelelser om Grønland . Volume 60-61 ). tape 1 . C. A. Reitzel Boghandel, Copenhagen 1921, p. 142 ff . ( Digitized in the Internet Archive ).
  3. a b Jens Christian Madsen: Udsteder and bopladser i Grønland 1901–2000 . Atuagkat, 2009, ISBN 978-87-90133-76-4 , pp. 135 f .