Qeqertat
The local economy relies heavily on traditional Inuit hunting for narwhal, seals, and walrus. Qeqertat is also known as a good place for halibut fishing, with the largest and most abundant Greenland halibut found in the fjord nearby.
The town has no independent water supply. Instead, the townsfolk must get their water from nearby rivers and lakes, or, in winter, collect sea ice to melt.
Population
The population of Qeqertat has been stable in the last two decades. After registering a decline in the '90s, the population grew to 30 in 2010, before declining again to 23 in 2019.
A 70-year-old resident of the village, interviewed by Gretel Ehrlich in her 2021 book Unsolaced, said that the village had a much larger population when she was a child. A 1984 National Geographic article stated that the population of the town had recently fallen from 50 to about 20. The town in 1984 consisted of 11 houses, a store, a school and a chapel.
References
- ^ Silis, Ivars (April 1984). "Hunting the Greenland Narwhal". National Geographic. Vol. 165, no. 4. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
- ^ MacMillan, Donald Baxter (1943). Eskimo Place Names And Aid To Conversation. The Hydrographic Office, U.S. Navy. p. 54. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
- ^ Koch, N.E. (2023). Greenland. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 294. ISBN 978-1-5381-8125-6. Retrieved 2024-06-20.
- ^ Statistics Greenland Archived July 21, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Ehrlich, Gretel (2021). Unsolaced: Along the Way to All That Is. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-91179-7. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
Further reading
- Fredskild, Bent. The Holocene Vegetational Development of Tugtuligssuaq and Qeqertat, Northwest Greenland. Meddelelser om Grønland, 14. Copenhagen: Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland, 1985. ISBN 87-17-05400-1