The history of Greenland is a history of life under extreme Arctic conditions: currently, an ice sheet covers about eighty percent of the island, restricting human activity largely to the coasts. The first humans are thought to have arrived in Greenland around 2500 BC. Their descendants most likely died out and were replaced and succeeded by several other human groups migrating from continental North America since then. There has been no evidence discovered that Greenland was known to Norsemen until the 9th century AD, when Norse Icelandic explorers settled on its southwestern coast. The ancestors of the Greenlandic Inuit who live there today appear to have migrated there later, around the year 1200, across the Nares Strait from northern Canada.
While Inuit survived in the icy world of the Little Ice Age, the early Norse settlements, known as the Eastern Settlement, along the southwestern coast disappeared, leaving Inuit as the only inhabitants of the island for several centuries. During this time, Denmark–Norway, apparently believing the Norse settlements had survived, continued to claim sovereignty over the island despite the lack of any contact between the Norsemen (specifically Icelanders) installed in Greenland and their Scandinavian brethren. In 1721, aspiring to become a colonial power, Denmark-Norway sent a missionary expedition to Greenland with the stated aim of reinstating Christianity among descendants of the Norse Greenlanders who may have converted back to paganism. When the missionaries found no descendants of the Norse Greenlanders, they baptised the Inuit they found living there instead. Denmark-Norway then developed trading colonies along the coast and imposed a trade monopoly and other colonial privileges on the area.
During World War II, when Nazi Germany invaded Denmark, Greenlanders became socially and economically less connected to Denmark. After the war, Denmark resumed control of Greenland and in 1953, converted its status from colony to overseas amt (county). Although Greenland is still a part of the Danish Realm, it has enjoyed home rule since 1979. In 1985, the island decided to leave the European Economic Community (EEC), which it had joined as a part of Denmark in 1973.
Early Paleo-Inuit cultures
The prehistory of Greenland is a story of repeated waves of Paleo-Eskimo immigration from the islands, known as the Arctic Archipelago, north of the North American mainland. (The population of those islands are thought to have descended, in turn, from inhabitants of Siberia who migrated into North America through Beringia thousands of years ago.) Because of Greenland's remoteness and climate, survival there was difficult. Over the course of centuries, one culture succeeded another as groups died out and were replaced by new immigrants. Archaeology can give only approximate dates for the cultures that flourished before the Norse exploration of Greenland in the 10th century.
The earliest known cultures in Greenland are the Saqqaq culture (2500–800 BC) and the Independence I culture in northern Greenland (2400–1300 BC). The practitioners of these two cultures are thought to have descended from separate groups that came to Greenland from North America, nearby Nunavut. Around 800 BC, the so-called Independence II culture arose in the region where the Independence I culture had previously existed. It was originally thought that Independence II was succeeded by the early Dorset culture (700 BC–AD 1), but some Independence II artefacts date from as recently as the 1st century BC. Recent studies suggest that, in Greenland at least, the Dorset culture may be better understood as a continuation of Independence II culture; the two cultures have therefore been designated "Greenlandic Dorset". Artefacts associated with early Dorset culture in Greenland have been found as far north as Inglefield Land on the west coast and the Dove Bay area on the east coast.
After the Early Dorset culture disappeared by around AD 1, Greenland was apparently uninhabited until Late Dorset people settled on the Greenlandic side of the Nares Strait around 700 AD. The late Dorset culture in the north of Greenland lasted until about 1300. Meanwhile, the Norse arrived and settled in the southern part of the island in 980.
Norse settlement
Europeans probably became aware of Greenland's existence in the late 9th century, after Gunnbjörn Ulfsson, while sailing from Norway to Iceland, was blown off course by a storm and sighted some islands off Greenland. During the 980s explorers led by Erik the Red set out from Iceland and reached the southwest coast of Greenland. Erik named the island "Greenland" (Grœnland in Old Norse, Grænland in modern Icelandic, Grønland in modern Danish and Norwegian). Both the Book of Icelanders (Íslendingabók, a medieval account of Icelandic history from the 12th century onward) and the Saga of Erik the Red (Eiríks saga rauða, a medieval account of his life and of the Norse settlement of Greenland) state that Erik said that "it would encourage people to go there that the land had a good name".
According to the sagas, the Icelanders had exiled Erik the Red for three years for committing murder, 982. He sailed to Greenland, where he explored the coastline and claimed certain regions as his own. He then returned to Iceland to persuade people to join him in establishing a settlement on Greenland. The Icelandic sagas say that 25 ships left Iceland with Erik the Red in 985, and that only 14 of them arrived safely in Greenland. Radiocarbon dating of remains at the first settlement at Brattahlíð (Brattahlid) (now Qassiarsuk) have approximately confirmed this timeline, yielding a date of about 1000. According to the sagas, in the year 1000 Erik's son, Leif Erikson, left the settlement to explore the regions around Vinland, which historians generally assume to have been located in present-day Newfoundland.
The Norse established settlements along Greenland's south-western fjords. It is possible that the bottom lands of the southern fjords at that time were covered by high grown shrub and surrounded by hills covered with grass and brush (as the Qinngua Valley currently is), but this hasn't been determined yet. If the presumption is true then the Norse probably cleared the landscape by felling trees to use as building material and fuel, and by allowing their sheep and goats to graze there in both summer and winter. Any resultant soil erosion could have become an important factor in the demise of the colonies, as the land was stripped of its natural cover.
The Norse settled in three separate locations in south-western Greenland: the larger Eastern Settlement, the smaller Western Settlement, and the still smaller Middle Settlement (often considered part of the Eastern one). Estimates put the combined population of the settlements at their height between 2,000 and 10,000, with recent estimatesN. Lynnerup, in trending toward the lower figure. Archaeologists have identified the ruins of approximately 620 farms: 500 in the Eastern Settlement, 95 in the Western Settlement, and 20 in the Middle Settlement.
The economy of the Norse Greenlanders depended on a combination of pastoral farming with hunting and some fishing. Farmers kept cattle, sheep and goats - shipped into the island - for their milk, cheese and butter, while most of the consumed meat came from hunted caribou and seals. Both individual farmers and groups of farmers organised summer trips to the more northerly Disko Bay area, where they hunted walruses, narwhals and polar bears for their skins, hides, ivory, and tusks. Besides their use in making garments and shoes, these resources also functioned as a form of currency, as well as providing the most important export commodities.
The Greenland settlements carried on a trade with Europe in ivory from walrus ivory, as well as exporting rope, sheep, seals, wool and cattle hides (according to one 13th-century account). The Greenlandic Norsemen depended on Icelandic and Norwegian Norsemen for iron tools, wood (especially for boat building, although they may also have obtained wood from coastal Labrador - Markland), supplemental foodstuffs, and religious and social contacts. For a time, trade ships from Iceland and Norway travelled to Greenland every year and would sometimes overwinter in Greenland. Beginning in the late-13th century, laws required all ships from Greenland to sail directly to Norway. The climate became increasingly colder in the 14th and 15th centuries, during the period of colder weather known as the Little Ice Age.
In 1126 the Roman Catholic Church founded a diocese at Garðar (now Igaliku), with the Garðar Cathedral founded there. It was subject to the Roman Catholic Norwegian archdiocese of Nidaros (now Trondheim); at least five churches in Norse Greenland are known from archaeological remains. In 1261 the population accepted the over lordship of the King of Norway, although it continued to have its own law.
A union between Norway and Sweden, including Greenland and Iceland existed between 1319 and 1355 through Magnus IV of Sweden (In Norway crowned Magnus VII after claims of birthright) and between 1362 and 1364 through Haakon VI, the son "Håkan Magnusson". During this period Greenland runs were made at intervals.
After initially thriving, the Norse settlements in Greenland declined in the 14th century. In 1355 Magnus IV of Sweden (In Norway Magnus VII) sent a ship (or ships) to Greenland to inspect its Western and Eastern Settlements. Sailors found settlements entirely Norse and Christian. The Greenland carrier (Groenlands Knorr) made the Greenland run at intervals till 1369, when she sank and was apparently not replaced.Gwyn Jones, "The Vikings", Folio Society, London 1997, p.292. The Western Settlement was probably abandoned before 1400.
In 1378 there was no longer a bishop at Garðar in the Eastern Settlement. A single source suggests that in 1379, "Skrælingjar" (Inuit) attacked the Eastern Settlement, killed 18 men and captured two boys. However, the authenticity and accuracy of this source is doubted by some historians, and both Jared Diamond and Jens Melgaard caution that it may actually describe an attack that occurred between Norse and Sámi people in Northern Europe, or an attack on the Icelandic coast by European pirates, assuming such an attack really did occur. A church document describes a 1418 attack that has been attributed to Inuit by modern scholars, but historian Jack Forbes has said that this supposed attack actually refers to a Russian-Karelian attack on Norse settlers in northern Norway, which was known locally as "Greenland" and has been mistaken by modern scholars for Greenland located in North America. Archaeological evidence has failed to find any violence by Inuit against Norse settlers.
In 1380 the Norwegian kingdom entered into a personal union with the Kingdom of Denmark. From 1402–1404 the Black Death hit Iceland for the first time and killed approximately half the population there - but there is no evidence that it reached Greenland. The last written record of the Norse Greenlanders documents a marriage in 1408 at Hvalsey Church, whose ruins are the best-preserved of the Norse buildings of that period.