History of Human Occupation of Greenland

Abstract

Greenland represents the most northern human habitation in the world. The climate is high arctic, arctic and in most southern region subarctic. The first human migrations happened c. 4,500years ago into the Thule region from Ellesmere Island, Canada. This group of people is archeologically defined as Palaeo-Eskimos and has a cultural origin in Alaska and Siberia. During the following 3 millennia, different Palaeo-Eskimo cultures inhabited different regions of Greenland. These are defined as: Independence I, Saqqaq, Pre-Dorset, Greenlandic Dorset and Late Dorset cultures. The Palaeo-Eskimo cultures were small scale hunter-gatherers with an extreme specialization in the Arctic world. Within the first half of the 1st millennium AD, two other cultural and ethnic groups arrived in Greenland. These are the Inuit of the Thule Culture, coming into the Thule region, having an origin in Alaska and Siberia, and the Norse people coming into South and Southwest Greenland from Iceland, having a Scandinavian origin. Around c. 1500 AD the only group of people sustaining and thriving in Greenland were the Thule Culture Inuit, while Late Dorset and Norse people had disappeared. The Thule Culture was a hunter-gatherer society that was extremely well adapted to arctic conditions. They had a thriving culture throughout Greenland during the 13th–19th century. During the 16th–18th centuries, increasing contact between Thule Culture Inuit and European whalers/explores were made in West Greenland. This resulted in Inuit migrations towards Disco Bay where much trade was made. With the cooling of the Little Ice Age during the 18th–19th century, the most northern regions of Greenland (Northeast Greenland) are abandoned, while the Thule region was repeatedly re-colonized by Inuit from Canada. In 1721 the European colonization of West Greenland begin with the arrival of the priest Hans Egede, and during the following decades Danish colonial trade stations with churches and Danish inhabitants emerged along the West coast of Greenland, attracting permanent Inuit settlements and forming a market and service economy. Today Greenland is a modern self-ruled nation state with a population of Thule Culture origin, as well as of European origin. The prehistory of Greenland is described in this chapter separately for the Thule region, Northeast Greenland and for West, South and East Greenland, because these different regions of Greenland are naturally, topographically and culturally different, and because they have different histories of human occupation.