Altafjord

At the head of Herjolfsfjord, near Greenland’s southern tip, a narrow strip of pasture faced the open Labrador Sea. Herjólfr Bardsson established the homestead in the late tenth century. Most Norse settlers chose sheltered inner fjords for farming; his exposed site instead placed a reception point for ships from Iceland and Europe.

Herjolfsnes became the principal harbour of the Norse colony. The Greenlanders’ saga connects it with Bjarni Herjólfsson, who was driven off course while seeking his father and sighted the North American coast. A church was raised after Greenland’s conversion to Christianity; its thirteenth-century replacement was the third-largest church in Norse Greenland.

The settlement remained active during the fourteenth century. Ivar Bardarson, a Norwegian priest and representative of church and crown, called Herjolfsnes the colony’s major port, known to sailors as Sand. The Skálholt map later placed it near Cape Farewell, making it the only Greenland settlement shown on that late medieval world map. Maritime traffic declined as ice and storms made the old Iceland route more dangerous.

Herjolfsnes existed alongside Thule Inuit activity in nearby fjords. Seal hunting, fishing, and trade in walrus and narwhal ivory helped sustain the Greenland Norse as farming became precarious. The last certain written reference to Norse Greenland dates from the early fifteenth century, though a remnant population may have lasted for decades. Whale and seal fishers later used the region.