ABSTRACT
Modern people tend to see religion as a private matter, and this makes it a minor problem that people living in the same society have different religions. Religion was at this time mainly understood as rituals which strengthened social cohesion between members of each clan, but religious rituals performed at the Gardar Thing also strengthened social ties between all Greenlanders. In Greenland only church and religion were fully relevant. The Christian religion also taught that God and his saints could intervene in the real world on their own initiative and change the natural course of events. The first Christian church building mentioned in the written sources is the so-called "Tjodhild's church", named after Eirik Raudi's wife. Education of priests took place in Greenland at local churches with experienced priests as teachers. The original of the list of Greenlandic churches to be discussed here had the heading "So many churches are there on Greenland".
