Greenland


Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark and is the largest of the kingdom's three constituent parts by land area, the others being Denmark proper and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenland are citizens of Denmark. They are thus citizens of the European Union, although Greenland is not part of the EU. It is the world's largest island and lies between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. It shares a small border with Canada on Hans Island. The capital and largest city is Nuuk. Kaffeklubben Island off the northern coast is the world's northernmost undisputed point of landCape Morris Jesup on the main island was thought to be so until the 1960s. Economically, Greenland is heavily reliant on aid from Denmark, which has averaged annually in the period 2019–2023, amounting to more than 20% of the territory's gross domestic product.
Though a part of the continent of North America, Greenland was politically and culturally associated with the European kingdom of Norway from 986 until the early 15th century. From the 18th century, following the union of Denmark and Norway and the establishment of the Nuuk settlement, Greenland gradually became associated with Denmark. Greenland has been inhabited at intervals over at least the last 4,500 years by circumpolar peoples whose forebears migrated there from what is now Canada. Norsemen from Norway settled the uninhabited southern part of Greenland beginning in the 10th century, and their descendants lived in Greenland for 400 years until disappearing in the late 15th century, and Inuit arrived in the 13th century. From the late 15th century, the Portuguese attempted to find the northern route to Asia, which ultimately led to the earliest cartographic depiction of the coastline. In the 17th century, Dano-Norwegian explorers reached Greenland again, finding their earlier settlement extinct and reestablishing a permanent Scandinavian presence.
When Denmark and Norway separated in 1814, Greenland was transferred from the Norwegian to the Danish crown. The 1953 Constitution of Denmark ended Greenland's status as a colony, integrating it fully into the Danish state. In the 1979 Greenlandic home rule referendum, Denmark granted home rule to Greenland. In the 2008 Greenlandic self-government referendum, Greenlanders voted for the Self-Government Act which transferred more power from the Danish government to the local Naalakkersuisut. Under this structure, Greenland gradually assumed responsibility for governmental services and areas of competence. The Danish government retains control of citizenship, monetary policy, security policies, and foreign affairs. With the melting of the ice due to global warming, its abundance of mineral wealth, and its strategic position between Eurasia, North America, and the Arctic zone, Greenland holds strategic importance for the Kingdom of Denmark, NATO, and the European Union. Since 2025, the United States has pursued threats to annex Greenland, triggering the Greenland crisis.
Most residents of Greenland are Inuit. The population is concentrated mainly on the southwest coast, strongly influenced by climatic and geographical factors, and the rest of the island is sparsely populated. With a population of 56,583, Greenland is the least densely populated country in the world. Greenland is socially progressive, like metropolitan Denmark; education and healthcare are free, and LGBTQ rights in Greenland are some of the most extensive in the world. Sixty-seven percent of its electricity production comes from renewable energy, mostly from hydropower.

Etymology

The early Norse settlers named the island Greenland. In the Icelandic sagas, the Norwegian Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland with his father, Thorvald, who had committed manslaughter. With his extended family and his thralls, he set out in ships to explore an icy land known to lie to the northwest. After finding a habitable area and settling there, he named it , supposedly in the hope that the pleasant name would attract settlers. The Saga of Erik the Red states: "In the summer, Erik left to settle in the country he had found, which he called Greenland, as he said people would be attracted there if it had a favourable name." The name of the territory in the Greenlandic language is Kalaallit Nunaat,, the Kalaallit being the principal group of Greenlandic Inuit who inhabit the territory's western region. The Greenlandic Inuit term Nunaat does not include waters and ice.
It has been discussed if there was a Medieval Warm Period in Greenland.

History

Early Palaeo-Inuit cultures

In prehistoric times, Greenland was home to several successive Palaeo-Inuit cultures known primarily through archaeological finds. The earliest entry of the Palaeo-Inuit into Greenland is thought to have occurred about 2500 BC. From about 2500 BC to 800 BC, southern and western Greenland was inhabited by the Saqqaq culture. Most finds of remains from that period have been around Disko Bay, including the site of Saqqaq, for which the culture is named.
From 2400 BC to 1300 BC, the Independence I culture existed in northern Greenland. It was a part of the Arctic small-tool tradition. Towns including Deltaterrasserne appeared. About 800 BC the Saqqaq culture disappeared, and the Early Dorset culture emerged in western Greenland and the Independence II culture in northern Greenland. It is unknown whether the Dorset people ever encountered the later Thule people. The people of the Dorset culture lived mainly by hunting seals and reindeer.

Norse settlement

From 986, the west coast was settled by Icelanders and Norwegians, through a contingent of 14 boats led by Erik the Red. They formed three settlementsthe Eastern Settlement, the Western Settlement, and the Middle Settlementon fjords near the southwestern tip of the island. They shared the island with the late Dorset culture inhabitants, who occupied the northern and western parts, and later with those of the Thule culture who entered from the north. Norse Greenlanders submitted to Norwegian rule in 1261 under the Kingdom of Norway. The Kingdom of Norway entered a personal union with Denmark in 1380, and from 1397 was a part of the Kalmar Union.
Norse settlements such as Brattahlíð thrived for centuries before disappearing in the 15th century, perhaps at the onset of the Little Ice Age. Except for some runic inscriptions, the only contemporary records or historiography that survive from the Norse settlements are of their contact with Iceland or Norway. Medieval Norwegian sagas and historical works mention Greenland's economy, the bishops of Gardar, and the collection of tithes. A chapter in the Konungs skuggsjá describes Norse Greenland's exports, imports, and grain cultivation.
File:Dorset, Norse, and Thule cultures 900-1500.svg|thumb|upright=1.5|Estimated extent of Arctic cultures in Greenland from 900 AD to 1500 AD. Coloured areas on each map indicate the extent and migration patterns over time of the Dorset, Thule, and Norse cultures.|alt=
Icelandic saga accounts of life in Greenland were composed in the 13th century and later but are not primary sources for the history of early Norse Greenland. Those accounts are closer to primary for more contemporaneous accounts of late Norse Greenland. Modern understanding therefore mostly depends on the physical data from archaeological sites. Interpretation of ice-core and clam-shell data suggests that between AD 800 and 1300 the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland had a relatively mild climate, several degrees Celsius warmer than usual in the North Atlantic with trees and herbaceous plants growing and livestock being farmed. Barley was grown as a crop up to the 70th parallel. The ice cores show that Greenland has had dramatic temperature shifts many times in the past 100,000 years. Similarly the Icelandic Book of Settlements records famines during the winters, in which "the old and helpless were killed and thrown over cliffs".
These Norse settlements vanished during the 14th and early 15th centuries. The demise of the Western Settlement coincides with a decrease in summer and winter temperatures. A study of North Atlantic seasonal temperature variability during the Little Ice Age showed a significant decrease in maximum summer temperatures beginning about the turn of the 14th centuryas much as lower than modern summer temperatures. The study also found that the lowest winter temperatures of the last 2,000 years occurred in the late 14th century and early 15th century. The Eastern Settlement was probably abandoned in the early to mid-15th century, during this cold period.
File:Hvalsey Church.jpg|thumbnail|right|The last written records of the Norse Greenlanders are from a 1408 marriage at Hvalsey Church, which is now the best-preserved Norse ruin.
Theories drawn from archaeological excavations at Herjolfsnes in the 1920s suggest that the condition of human bones from this period indicates that the Norse population was malnourished, possibly because of soil erosion resulting from the Norsemen's destruction of natural vegetation in the course of farming, turf-cutting, and wood-cutting. Malnutrition may also have resulted from widespread deaths from pandemic plague; the decline in temperatures during the Little Ice Age; and armed conflicts with the Skrælings. The Icelandic Annals record that in 1379, the Skrælings killed 18 Norse Greenlanders. Recent archaeological studies somewhat challenge the general assumption that the Norse colonization had a dramatic negative environmental effect on the vegetation. Data support traces of a possible Norse soil amendment strategy. More recent evidence suggests that the Norse, who never numbered more than about 2,500, gradually abandoned the Greenland settlements over the 15th century as walrus ivory, the most valuable export from Greenland, decreased in price because of competition with other sources of higher-quality ivory, and that there was actually little evidence of starvation or difficulties.
Other explanations of the disappearance of the Norse settlements have been proposed:
  1. Lack of support from the homeland.
  2. Ship-borne marauders, rather than Skrælings, could have plundered and displaced the Greenlanders.
  3. They were "the victims of hidebound thinking and of a hierarchical society dominated by the Church and the biggest land owners. In their reluctance to see themselves as anything but Europeans, the Greenlanders failed to adopt the kind of apparel that the Inuit employed as protection against the cold and damp or to borrow any of the Eskimo hunting gear."
  4. That portion of the Greenlander population willing to adopt Inuit ways and means intermarried with and assimilated into the Inuit community. Much of the population of Greenland is of mixed Inuit and European ancestry. It was impossible in 1938 when Vilhjalmur Stefansson wrote his book to distinguish between intermarriage before the European loss of contact and after the contact was restored.
  5. The structure of Norse society created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole.