Kingittorsuaq Island (old spelling: ''Kingigtorssuaq'') is a small, uninhabited

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

in the Avannaata municipality in northwestern

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland i ...

. It is a small island in the southern part of the

Upernavik Archipelago Upernavik Archipelago is a vast coastal archipelago in the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland, off the shores of northeastern Baffin Bay. The archipelago extends from the northwestern coast of Sigguup Nunaa peninsula in the south at ...

, located on the southwestern shores of Upernavik Icefjord, near the mouth of the latter where it opens into Baffin Bay.''Upernavik'', Saga Map, Tage Schjøtt, 1992 The name of the island means "''a large protruding rock''" in the Greenlandic language.

History

The Kingittorsuaq runestone (old spelling: ''Kingigtorssuaq runestone'') dating from the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

was found in 1824 on the highest point of the island, in a group of three cairns forming an

equilateral triangle In geometry, an equilateral triangle is a triangle in which all three sides have the same length. In the familiar Euclidean geometry, an equilateral triangle is also equiangular; that is, all three internal angles are also congruent to each oth ...

. The stone is now located at the

National Museum of Denmark The National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet) in Copenhagen is Denmark's largest museum of cultural history, comprising the histories of Danish and foreign cultures, alike. The museum's main building is located a short distance from Strøget ...

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

References

{{Upernavik Archipelago Uninhabited islands of Greenland Islands of the Upernavik Archipelago