Roofing in Greenland

Greenland has almost no trees, so for most of its history roofs were made of whatever the land and sea provided: stone, turf, driftwood and whalebone. Norse settlers from Iceland added stone and turf farms in the south from the 10th century, and the colonial period of the 18th and 19th centuries brought imported timber buildings. Since the 1950s, housing has been dominated by serially built timber houses, concrete blocks and prefabricated buildings shipped in from abroad.

Climate and hazards

Roofs face extreme cold, long periods of snow cover, strong winds that drift snow, and a short building season. Almost all materials must be imported by sea. In some areas buildings are raised above permafrost.

Roofing history

Greenland's archaeological record covers about 4,200 years. The UNESCO-listed landscape of Aasivissuit-Nipisat preserves remains of Paleo-Inuit (Saqqaq and Dorset) and Inuit (Thule) cultures, including large communal winter houses.

The Thule people, ancestors of today's Inuit, spread across the Arctic from Alaska to Greenland around 1000 CE. Their winter house was built partly into the ground, typically oval and about 3-9 m (10-30 ft) across, dug up to 1 m (3 ft) deep, with a sloping tunnel entrance that trapped cold air. The roof was its most distinctive feature: in the central and eastern Arctic it was usually framed with whale bones and covered with materials such as sod, stone and baleen. In Greenland, winter houses were built mainly of rock and turf, with driftwood and whale ribs and jaws supporting the roof, and many were dug into a hillside. Windows were made of stretched seal gut. Turf huts were still in use in parts of Greenland in the 1940s.

Norse farmers from Iceland arrived in the 10th century and farmed in the south until the 15th century, in what is now the UNESCO-listed farming landscape of Kujataa. Their buildings had walls of large stones insulated on the outside with turf, with wooden floors and linings; a stable at Igaliku was 70 m (230 ft) long. Hvalsey Church, about 16 by 8 m (52 by 26 ft) with walls about 1.5 m (5 ft) thick, was probably roofed with timber covered with turf. A wedding there in September 1408 is the last written record of the Greenland Norse.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, colonial buildings were log and plank houses built in Scandinavia, dismantled and re-erected in Greenland. The Bethel Church in Sisimiut was made in Denmark and finished in 1775 by a Greenlandic carpenter. Colonial buildings were colour-coded by use, for example red for churches, schools and trade buildings and yellow for hospitals. During the Second World War, numbers were painted on roofs to help US pilots find settlements.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

• Inuit winter house: stone and turf walls with a roof frame of driftwood or whale bone covered with turf.
• Norse farmhouse: stone walls with outer turf insulation and a timber roof under turf.
• Colonial log house: imported Scandinavian timber, assembled locally.

Roofing today

A housing benefit scheme began in 1953, followed by serially built one- and two-family timber houses in all coastal towns, often painted in bright colours. Large concrete blocks were also built: Blok P in Nuuk, completed in 1965-1966, was 231 m (758 ft) long, housed about 1% of Greenland's population and was demolished in 2012. Later housing, such as the Nuussuaq district of Nuuk in the 1980s and newer apartments in Qinngorput, was designed to suit Arctic living better. Typical houses today are timber-framed or prefabricated, with pitched roofs of coated steel sheet or bituminous roofing, while large buildings use membranes. Nuuk Center (2012) is described as the largest building in Greenland.

Industry

Roofing materials are imported, mainly through Denmark.

Notable roofs

• Hvalsey Church, a Norse stone church in the Kujataa World Heritage area.
• Aasivissuit-Nipisat, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape with remains of Inuit winter houses.
• Katuaq cultural centre in Nuuk (1997), by Schmidt, Hammer & Lassen.
• Ilulissat Icefjord Centre (2021), designed by Dorte Mandrup.

Sources and gaps

Information on Greenland's building code, on the share of roofing materials and on domestic roofing manufacturers: published information is limited. The roof described for Hvalsey Church is a scholarly reconstruction rather than a surviving feature.