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Kulusuk spread across the rocky coast, its houses running down to ice-dotted water

Kulusuk

Kulusuk: A Rocky Island Settlement in East Greenland

August 2015

Kulusuk is a small settlement on Kulusuk Island in the Ammassalik region of southeastern Greenland. A permanent settlement was established in 1909, when Danish Lutheran missionaries founded a mission and families from nearby islands settled around it. The community occupies rugged exposed bedrock with sparse, shallow soils; permafrost occurs discontinuously rather than beneath the entire island.

Kulusuk Airport was built by the United States in 1956 to support the DYE-4 Cold War radar station. It later became a civilian gateway to East Greenland. Gravel roads connect the settlement, airport and former radar site, while regional transportation includes aircraft, helicopters and small boats. Within and around Kulusuk, people travel mainly on foot or by boat in summer and by dog sled, snowmobile, skis or snowshoes in winter.

Statistics Greenland recorded 204 residents on January 1, 2026, compared with the 267 cited in the original 2015 story. The photographs document brightly painted and weathered wooden buildings, small boats, sled dogs, a cemetery and sparse tundra vegetation across the rocky landscape.

Green and white building above a rocky shore, snow-streaked mountains behind
Tethered sled dogs strung out along a rocky slope beside a shallow stream
Red, blue and yellow houses scattered over bare rock along the water in Kulusuk
Two weathered wooden huts perched on bare bedrock above a small pond
Slender green aquatic plants rising from still water, their stems mirrored below
Cottongrass tufts above dark tundra grasses, in black and white
Cemetery of plain white crosses on tundra above a fjord, mountains beyond, in black and white
Small open motorboats moored along a wooden pier below snowy peaks
Battered red pickup truck with a cracked windscreen parked on gravel
Red, yellow and grey houses lining a rocky waterfront with boats at the shore
Gravel track climbing past painted and bare wooden houses on the rocky slope
Unpainted wooden houses standing on smooth pink bedrock under grey sky
Blue and pink houses on stilts with wooden dog sleds propped up outside
Polar-bear-shaped sign reading "KIOSK MUGU" on a peeling red wooden wall
Blue utility shed numbered 1311 beside a weathered red house on bare rock
Derelict red hut with empty window openings on a granite outcrop below snowy cliffs
Peeling red clapboard buildings with broken windows on a tundra ridge
Large yellow and teal timber buildings by a gravel road, snow-covered peaks across the fjord
Brightly painted houses and small motorboats along the rocky Kulusuk shoreline
Weather-bleached wooden house on a green tundra slope, blue shed below
Bare-timber house with red window trim standing alone atop a rocky ridge
Grey and painted wooden houses scattered across a rocky slope above a dirt track
Red-painted house numbered 1014 with a wooden porch above the fjord
Wrecked blue timbers on a concrete foundation among intact village houses
Row of painted houses along the shore below fog-shrouded mountains
Painted houses and moored boats at the water's edge beneath a steep grey mountainside
Kulusuk spread across the rocky coast, its houses running down to ice-dotted water

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