194 DANIEL BRUUN. 
rock runs a short way close behind the ruin, from the top of which 
the plain continues inland; often having considerable stony parts. The 
plain is very luxuriant, being almost only overgrown with heather and 
willow thickets. By the church ruin is a churchyard and sites of different 
houses, belonging to a farm, which most likely is the one where the Land- 
nama man lived. 
The Landnamabök says: 
“A man named Thorkel Farserk cousin to Eric the Red on both 
mothers’ side. He went to Greenland with Eric and took Hvalseyjar- 
fjürdr in possession, as well as the greatest part of the tract of land between 
öriesfiord and Einarsfiord, and he established himself in Hvalseyfiord. 
The inhabitants of Hvalseyfiord descend from him. He was exceedingly 
strong. Once Eric the Red visited him. As he wished to entertain his 
cousin well, but having no suitable boat at hand, he had to swim out to 
Hvalsey so as to fetch a full-grown wether and bring it back to his farm 
on his back; it is a little more than half a week. Thorkil was buried in 
a cairn on the homefield at Hvalseyfiord, and has continually reappeared 
[i. e. haunted] the dwellings there.” 
Какоток church is the only one amongst all the Greenland churches 
which shows architectural interest. It is, according to Clemmensen, 
16 m long and 8m broad outside, the thickness of the walls being about 
1,50m. In the west end of the south side is a door, and a choir door 
further to the west; above these there are four windows. There is a 
window in the west end of the north side. In the east gable there is a 
choir window with a flat-arched projection over it. All the rest of the 
doors and windows have straight stays. The church is erected of unsplit 
granit stones of unequal size, which are bricklaid in clay and furrowed 
in lime and mortar, inside as well as outside; this is not to be found in 
any other church in Greenland. Doors and windows are inserted in the 
walls, only one having a round arch. According to an Eskimoe legend 
the fiord was called “Kaxortok” (i. e. the white) because the church in 
olden days was so shining white that it could be seen from a great distance. 
It was perhaps whitewashed. The Eskimoe legend also says, that the 
‘stones used to build the church, came from the Ujarartarfik-islands 
near Lichtenau-fiord. Clemmensen visited this place and found that 
excellent building granite stones had been broken off a headland by the 
sea, but his opinion is however, that it is hardly likely that stones were 
fetched from so far, to build Kaxortor church; the stones of which, 
also, to a certain degree proved to be of a different sort. Limespar could 
be got nearer at hand. The church had, just like old Irish churches, a 
nave and a choir in one, and no round choir is seen. It is, says Clemmen- 
sen, nearly related to the eldest Irish and the earliest Norwegian churches 
(of irish influnce) on the Orkney and Shetland islands. In which case 
there is nothing to hinder us from assuming that it can have been erected 
