Napasoq

Napasoq (the upright one)
Napassoĸ
Napasoq as seen from west northwest
Commune	Qeqqata communia
District	Maniitsoq
Geographical location	65 ° 1 '48 "  N , 52 ° 14' 24"  W Coordinates: 65 ° 1 '48 "  N , 52 ° 14' 24"  W.
Residents	80 (January 1, 2020)
founding	1865
Time zone	UTC-3

Napasoq [ napaˈsɔq ] (according to the old spelling Napassoĸ ) is a Greenlandic settlement in the Maniitsoq district in the Qeqqata communia .

location

Napasoq is located on a smaller island in the middle of an archipelago. The largest of these islands is Nunarsuaq , which lies to the southwest. In the north, the strait runs Ammaqqoq and south Ammaqquarsuk . The nearest inhabited settlements are Atammik in the south , 29 km away, and Maniitsoq in the north , 67 km away.

history

Napasoq as a place to live

Napasoq was first mentioned in 1748. Egill Þórhallsson suggested in the 1770s that a mission lodge should be established in Napasoq as the place was good for fishing but most of the residents had just left to be baptized. At that time there were two residential spaces in the immediate vicinity. On December 11, 1791, a shipwrecked group of seven colonists and Greenlanders set out from Napasoq to hike towards Nuuk . They figured that the hike would not take more than three or four days, so they took little provisions with them. However, since the long Niaqunnguaq fjord was not frozen, they had to walk a long detour and four people died of hunger and exhaustion. Only colonist Hans Olsen and two women survived when they encountered people again on December 26 in Nuugaatsiaq .

Kall's establishment and Illutalik

In 1833, a private fishing station was set up on the small island of Uigorli under the direction of the Frederikshavner merchant Georg Daniel von der Pahlen and Peter Julius Kall, who was most recently colonial administrator in Holsteinsborg. The prerequisite was that both of them were allowed to have a maximum of 80 Greenlanders work for them and they were not allowed to trade with the residents. The two merchants did not keep to the agreement, however, by buying all their property from the population, thereby depriving them of the opportunity to hunt for themselves and putting everyone in their service. The KGH therefore forced them to give up the station in 1842 and bought the buildings from them, whereupon the Udsted Illutalik was built a little further west on the island of Nunaku . The people of Napasoq subsequently suffered great hardship. In the 1850s, Hinrich Johannes Rink reported that the residents lived in miserable caves that could hardly be called houses. In the winter of 1856/57 there was a famine in southern Greenland that claimed 140 lives, most of them in Napasoq. In January 1857 an attempt had been made to send a ship with groceries from Maniitsoq to Napasoq, but it could not break through the ice. The residents started extremely poorly and the connection with nearby places was broken. At the beginning of March the Udsteds administrator tried to drive nine Greenlanders to the colony, but they got into distress and starved to death in a snow cave. The colonial administrator was only able to reach Napasoq in his boat at the end of March, but nine people died on April 1st.

Napasoq as Udsted

In 1865 the Udsted was moved to Napasoq. From 1911 Napasoq was a separate municipality in the colonial district of Sukkertoppen, to which the residential area Ikerasak still belonged. It was part of the 9th Provincial Council constituency of South Greenland.

In 1918, there were 89 people in Napasoq, some of whom had so many European ancestry that they were blonde and blue-eyed. It is said that the twelve houses appeared very clean at that time. There was an apartment for the Udsteds administrator that had been built in 1906. The wooden building measured 43 m² and had three rooms. In 1898 a provisions store with a shop was built and in 1864 a bacon house. Both buildings were made of stone. There was also a powder house in Napasoq. The chapel was 38 m² and had a ceiling height of 2.12 m. It was built of stone, plastered with lime on the outside and clad with wood on the inside. There was an altar and a kneeling bench. Atypically, there was a school building of its own as early as 1918. It was almost 20 m² in size and also made of stone with internal planking. In addition to the Udsteds administrator, a trained catechist and a midwife worked in the village. There were sixteen hunters and five fishermen.

In 1950 Napasoq became part of the new Maniitsoq municipality . In 1970 the population had risen to 240 people. Napasoq has been part of the Qeqqata Communia since 2009 .

economy

The inhabitants of Napasoq live from catching mainly cod , uuaq , striped sea wolf and sea ​​hare and from tourism for adventurers, hikers and anglers. There is a trout camp for this purpose, as well as hunting and fishing huts outside the village. Mineral mining is also planned in the area .

Infrastructure and supply

There is a small port for supply ships of the Royal Arctic Line and fishermen arriving every two weeks and an even smaller dock for private boats. You can be driven to Maniitsoq regularly, which takes one to two hours. Furthermore, the Napasoq heliport in the southeast connects the town with other villages and towns.

Nukissiorfiit is responsible for supplying the place . The drinking water is piped from a lake on the neighboring island of Nunaku through the Umiatsialivik to a waterworks. Electricity is generated by a diesel power plant. The construction of a wind power plant is possible, but has not yet been planned. The sewage disposal takes place by discharge into the sea. Garbage is dumped or incinerated locally, with consideration being given to sending the garbage to Maniitsoq or Sisimiut , where it could be used to generate electricity in an incinerator. TELE Greenland provides the place with a telecommunication connection.

Development

In Napasoq there is a kindergarten for about four children and a primary school where about seven students are educated. There are also four buildings for elderly care.

Sons and daughters

• Martha Biilmann (1921–2008), furrier

Population development

Napasoq is the municipality's smallest village. At the end of the 1970s, 250 people were still living in the village, but between 1984 and 2017 alone the population fell by 70%, making Napasoq one of the places with the greatest population loss in Greenland.

panorama

Napasoq (2017)

literature

• Niels Platou, Jens Heilmann: Napasoq 1865–1990 . Ed .: Komitéen for Napasoq 125 års Jubilæum. Atuakkiorfik, Nuuk 1991, ISBN 87-558-0852-2 .

Web links

Commons : Napasoq  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Map with all official place names confirmed by Oqaasileriffik , provided by Asiaq
2. ↑ ^{a b} Louis bobe : Beskrivelse af Distrikterne i Sydgrønland: Sukkertoppen district. History . 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 2 . C. A. Reitzel Boghandel, Copenhagen 1921, p. 174 f . ( Digitized in the Internet Archive ).
3. ↑ Qeqqata Kommunianut tikilluarit - Velkommen til Qeqqata Kommunia (p. 37)
4. ↑ Ole Bendixen : Beskrivelse af Distrikterne i Sydgrønland: Sukkertoppen District. Bopladser i Sukkertoppen district. Udstedet Napassoĸ . 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 2 . C. A. Reitzel Boghandel, Copenhagen 1921, p. 160 ff . ( Digitized in the Internet Archive ).
5. ↑ Jens Christian Madsen: Udsteder og bopladser i Grønland 1901-2000 . Atuagkat, 2009, ISBN 978-87-90133-76-4 , pp. 90 f .
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Napasoq at qeqqata.odeum.com
7. ↑ Population Napasoq 1977–2020 at bank.stat.gl