Since the first visits by Europeans to the ruin of the Hvalsey Fjord Church after the beginning of the DanishNorwegian colonization of Greenland in 1721 there are numerous descriptions of a crack in the east gable of the church and a corresponding tilt damage of the eastern part of the south wall. As a new investigation of the church showed that the south wall was not stable, a restoration project was carried out in 1999, where the leaning wall was partly straightened and stabilized with concrete cast underneath the foundation stones. An archaeological excavation along the south wall prior to the restoration documented that the eastern part of the wall partly rests on older graves, indicating that the stone church must have had a predecessor of which no traces have been found. The presence of these graves beneath some of the foundation stones is assumed to be the main cause for the damage to the wall.