Just about 20 km south west from the town of Kangaatsiaq, you will find the small settlement of Iginniarfik. Here live about 70 people, who enjoy being a part of the mainland, meaning they can easy go raindeer-hunting in the summer and take long trips on their dog sleds in the winter. But when the winter darkness arrives, they gather and tell stories and myths from their area. 

Villagers leaving for ever 

One of the scarier stories of Iginniarfik is the one about the female Qivittoq living in a small cave just outside the settlement in the mountains.  

Qivittoq is a Grenlandic word, that could be translated to “mountain walker” or “mountain hermit”. According to legends of the area, the Qivittoqs are villagers that for some reason leave the settlement for ever. 

The Qivittoq leaves the settlements on purpose because of guilt, shame, anger or by force. This is a way of leaving the small societies, that has been known for hundreds of years in the Inuit culture. 

Magical and lonely hermits 

After leaving the settlements, they are viewed as dead by the rest of the society. Furthermore they are told to be having supernatual or magical abilities or even that they slowly turned into animals. This was added to the fact that people left their families and societies behind to live a lonely hermit-life in the mountains.  

The magical abilites were probably added to the very real phenomenon to scare children from wandering off into the mountains on their own – but to this day, several people of modern Greenland claim to have seen a Qivittoq or have had some inexplicable experiences when hunting or walking in the back country of the settlements.  

In Iginniarfik the cave is now abandonned leaving nothing but the fascinating story of the woman living there after leaving her settlement for ever.