In the summer of the year 1000, Vikings built the first Christian church in the New World. This took place in South Greenland, shortly after the first Europeans set foot on the North American continent almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Archaeologists located the site of this first church in the 1960s, and in l999 a reconstruction was built by a group of Icelandic specialists in Viking architecture.

This church - a small chapel, we should really say - is Greenland's gift to the world, conse-crated 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.