This church - or small chapel, we should really say - is Greenland's gift to the world, consecrated in the summer of year 2000, exactly 1000 years after the first foundations were laid.
It is called Tjodhilde's Church, after the Viking woman who was the first convert to the Christian faith in the New World. It is a faithful replica of the original structure, which was to signal the advent in the Middle Ages of a full fledged Nordic diocese in Greenland, with its own cathedral, churches and monasteries. The entire Nordic population of Greenland disappeared after almost five centuries, under circumstances that have never been fully understood. With them vanished also a diocese, which throughout the Middle Ages had been the ultimate frontier of Christianity to the North and to the West, reaching far into the Arctic, as well as to present-day Canada.
Under the auspices of the millennium celebrations a few years ago, the premier of Greenland, a Lutheran pastor himself, took an initiative, the intention of which was to make an international ecumenical pilgrimage center out of Tjodhilde’s church in Qassiarsuk.
At the time when Tjodhilde’s Church was built, none of the divisions existed from which we all suffer in present-day Christendom. Thus, morally, it belongs to everybody. More specifically, Tjodhilde’s Church belongs to all Christian communities in America, as it stands out as the first visible effect of the very first Christian mission to the North American continent. As we know, in the year 1000, King Olav Tryg-vasson of Norway sent Leif Eiriksson to Greenland expressly in order to christianize his family, and it was on his way to accomplish that mission that he lost his way at sea and wound up on the coastline of what we call Labrador. The first Christian missionary to the North American continent was also the first European to set his eyes on a North American coastline proper.
The present-day reconstruction of the little church built by Leif Eriksson’s mother Tjodhilde merits - and has now been given - an ecumenical framework, and every Christian community on the North American continent has an equal right of access to this little chapel, which is modelled after the first church structure that was built by the very first baptized persons in North America.
The sites are conveniently close to the Narsarsuaq international airport, making them a step-ping stone between North America and Northern Europe, located midway between the large urban centres of both continents.
To safeguard the physically vulnerable sod and wooden structures of the reconstructed Tjodhilde's Church, and to secure what has already proven to be a valuable meeting place, the Tjodhilde Committee has established the GARDAR FOUNDATION. In a wider perspective, the vision is to strengthen cross-Arctic and cross-cultural contacts between neighbouring Christian communities in the North, with Tjodhilde's Church assuming the role of an in-ter-confessional pilgrimage centre.
As many people will know, caring for the earth is now a global concern in the far North, be it North America or the Nordic countries, Siberia or Alaska. Urban development is no longer foreign to the Arctic and Sub-Arctic. Unwanted industrial side-effects on nature, formerly totally unknown in those quarters, now exist and are aggravated by long-distance particle pollution from the great industries to the south. The old hunting life-style is eroded and under pressure from many quarters, as is indeed ancient hunting ethics everywhere.
At that seminar, these grave concerns - so deeply felt by many - were faced from a Christian viewpoint. Time has come to bridge what national, cultural and confessional divides there might be. We feel the need to go to the roots of our existence as peoples of the North, and open a debate on what actually to do.
Contributors this time around were the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the World Wide Fund of Nature, the Saami from northern Norway and the World Watch Institute.
This is the first time an ecumenical gathering has taken place in Greenland, and believers of different traditions have met to explore common ground not just in matters of professed faith, but also in contemporary dilemmas and the important matter of remaining faithful to the wisdom handed down to us from former generations.
Recently, in addition to Tjodhilde’s Church, the Gardar Foundation board has taken over the responsibility for the maintenance and tourist utilization of another prominent piece of Viking architecture, namely the so-called Eric the Red’s Longhouse which has been reconstrucrted alongside Tjodhilde’s Church. A new planning stage has been entered upon, in which some of the more urgent problems of physical access, collaboration on the part of local interest groups and the mapping out of pilgrim routes for both hikers and boat people will be given the attention they need.