Greenland - history
Icelandic accounts from the Middle Ages tell of Icelandic colonization of
Greenland in the late 900's, and archaeological studies in the southwestern
Greenland areas near the towns of Nanortalik, Qaqortoq, Narsaq, Ivittuut,
Paamiut and Nuuk confirm Nordic settlements in these areas from the late Viking
age.
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The Norse period
The first actual scientific studies of the Norse culture in Greenland were
carried out by Captain Daniel Bruun in the period 1894-1903 for the Commission
for the Management of the Geological and Geographical Studies in Greenland. In
1921 the work was transferred to the National Museum in Copenhagen, and in the
period up to 1940 the large farms Brattahlíð, Garðar and Herjolfsnæs in
Østerbygden and Sandnæs and Anavik in Vesterbygden were examined under the
leadership of Poul Nørlund and from 1930 by Aage Roussell. In the early 1960's,
the small so-called Tjodhilde's church was excavated on Brattahlið under the
leadership of Jørgen Meldgård and Knud J. Krogh. In 1982, the responsibility for
the antiquarian work in Greenland passed to the then Greenland National Museum,
today the Greenland National Museum & Archive.
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AbbreviationFinder: Check three-letter abbreviation for each country in the world,
such as GRL which represents the official name of Greenland.
According to written sources, the Icelandic farmer Erik the Red settled with
his family in 985 on Brattahlið in Østerbygden. Other colonists settled in the
surrounding fjords, while a few sailed on to the more northern Vesterbygd near
Nuuk. Around 1300, according to written sources, there must have been 120 farms
in Østerbygden and 90 in Vesterbygden. Based on demographic analyzes, the
population is estimated at 2000-3000 people, when the settlement was at its
highest.
approximately In 1124, the Norwegian king Sigurd 1. Jorsalfar appointed the first
bishop of the Greenlanders, and the manor Garðar became the episcopal see until
1378, when the last resident bishop of Greenland died. Written sources from the
1300's. enumerates 12 churches in the northern settlements; the same sources also
mention two monasteries. Archaeologically, 16 farms have been registered in
Østerbygden, to which a church has been attached. In Vesterbygden, three farms
with associated churches have been registered.
The Norse Greenlanders are believed to have joined King Håkon 4. Håkonsson's
Norwegian rule in 1261, and they then became taxable to the Norwegian
king. Probably the king, in turn, had to promise to maintain the voyage to
Greenland and thus secure trade for the northerners.
During the late Middle Ages, contacts between the northern settlements in
Greenland and Scandinavia waned. The last preserved written signs of life from
the Norse settlements are letters, which were written on the episcopal see in
Skálholt in Iceland in connection with a wedding that allegedly took place in
1408 in Hvalsey Church in Østerbygden. Archaeological finds in Østerbygden
indicate that life here ebbed out during the 1400's. Vesterbygden is believed to
have been depopulated as early as the middle of the 1300's.
In contrast to the Inuit settlement, which was located near the coast, the
northern settlements are found in the inner parts of the large southwestern
Greenland fjord complexes, where the climatic conditions have allowed animal
husbandry to a certain extent. The farms were scattered individually in the
terrain and reflect the northerners' dependence on grazing areas for horses,
cows and especially sheep and goats, which were the dominant livestock. The
northerners were also dependent on fishing and hunting, especially reindeer and
seals. However, the people of Nordbo were not self-sufficient. According to the
Norwegian medieval publication Kongespejlet, iron and timber were
imported for house building; moreover, the ideological and cultural influence
from Scandinavia was important for the northerners' self-understanding.
The archaeological excavations reveal strong cultural roots to
Scandinavia. The tools were Scandinavian in shape, but made from local
ingredients, and the large find of medieval costumes in the cemetery at
Herjolfsnæs clearly shows that the European clothing mothers were followed. The
oldest houses and churches were probably built of wood and surrounded by
protective walls of peat; later dominated construction of the country's own
resources, stone and peat. The church architecture followed the development in
the rest of the North Atlantic area, while the Greenlandic courtyard in some
localities found its own design. The farm consisted of a varying number of
residential, financial and tool houses, which could either be spread over a
larger area, as is known in Scandinavia, or they could be built so close
together that from the outside they appeared as a large, unified house block.
The Nordics' most important exports were skins, walrus skin ropes and not
least walrus teeth. They caught walruses on fishing trips north along the west
coast of Greenland. The ruin of a small stone house on the Nuussuaq peninsula in
Disko Bay is attributed to the northerners and is believed to have been a
storage house for the catch. Finds of Norse artifacts in settlements from the
Inuit Thule culture on both sides of Smith Sound, in North Greenland and on
Ellesmere Island testify that the northerners' fishing trips led them north of
Melville Bay.
It is uncertain to what extent the northerners otherwise visited the North
American continent. The Icelandic sagas tell of voyages to Vinland, Helluland
and Markland around the year 1000, and at L'Anse-aux-Meadows on the northern tip
of Newfoundland there are located ruins of peat-built houses, which are
attributed to northerners and are attributed to the time around 1000. The place
is interpreted as a base camp for the northerners' further reconnaissances along
the North American east coast.
The reasons for the depopulation of the northern settlements have not yet
been fully clarified. Explanations based solely on individual events such as
attacks by Inuit or European pirates have been given, although of course it
cannot be ruled out that clashes between Inuit and Norsemen may have taken
place. New anthropological studies of the skeletal material from the Norse
cemeteries have counteracted old theories of disease and degeneration. It is
widely believed that depopulation should be seen as the result of an unfortunate
interplay of several factors. Climate studies have shown that the Norse
settlement in Greenland took place at the end of a longer warm period. Changing
climatic conditions combined with over-consumption of the vulnerable vegetation
resources may have significantly reduced the conditions for livestock. But the
whole explanation can not be, as the northerners' economy was a mixed economy,
in which fishing and fishing also played an important role. Changed political
conditions in Scandinavia and changed trade patterns in Europe seem to have
isolated the remote settlements, and this has had a negative effect on both the
economic and cultural system in Greenland. With an already low population,
possible emigration and no immigration, depopulation of the settlements has been
inevitable.
Greenland - prehistory
The earliest traces of people in Greenland go back more than 4000 years. They
are descended from Arctic hunter-gatherers who from the Bering Sea region via
Alaska and Arctic Canada reached the country as an eastern offshoot of the
common Arctic cultural complex, the Denbigh culture. The dwellers'
dwelling was built around a centrally located fireplace, which lay between two
parallel rows of edged stones, which divided the surrounding, circular structure
into two halves. This form of housing was used both summer and winter in the
earliest cultural periods in the eastern Arctic.
In Greenland, the Denbigh culture is referred to as Independence I (approximately
2400-2000 BC) and the Saqqaq culture (2400-800 BC). The first is
widespread in the northernmost part of the country, where finds of lance
fragments and animal bones suggest that musk ox was the most important
resource. The reindeer hunters and seal hunters of the Saqqaq culture have lived
in the southern half of the country, where well-preserved deposits on
settlements in Disko Bay have provided a nuanced picture of the culture's
specialized technology. Bones from the oldest people in Greenland come from
here.
The picture that can be drawn of the subsequent cultures is far from so
nuanced. From Peary Land, the Independence II culture is described with
roots in the Canadian Dorset culture; it is dated to 600-450 BC. In West
Greenland, the earliest phase of the Dorset culture dates from
approximately 600 BC to the birth of Christ and again from approximately 700 AD Greenland
has not yet succeeded in proving this culture in the intervening period.
The end of the Paleo-Eskimo period took place at the same time as a general
increase in the average temperature in the Arctic. In the late Dorset culture,
artistic forms of expression and changes in the form of housing emerged, which
seem to point to changes in society that are difficult to explain solely on the
basis of internal conditions and climate change. Norse objects have been found
in the dwellings of the Dorset culture, and certain typological forms in the
subsequent neo-Eskimo culture, the Thule culture, seem to have their
origin in the Dorset culture; it has thus been generally accepted that a
cultural encounter between the three cultures probably took place in Greenland.
Shortly before 1200, the Thule culture can be detected in northwestern
Greenland and on Ellesmere Island as an Inuit whaling culture with cultural
connections to Alaska and the Bering Sea region. Antiquities of Norse origin
found in the ruins of the house are explained as a result of a cultural
contact. Carbon 14 dating of oak and woolen cloth from these ruins are all
within 1200-1400, which could indicate that a trade with the Norsemen took place
during this period. A colder climate resulted in an Inuit winter settlement in
the southernmost part of the country, which took place in the 1400's. at the same
time as a widespread trade in objects from the abandoned Norse farms.
I 1600-1700-t. increased the population in the southern part of the country,
where Dutch whalers appeared, followed from 1721 by Danish-Norwegian
colonists. During this period, a new immigration took place from Canada into the
deserted northwestern Greenland at Thule.
Greenland - history (1500-1979)
Greenland - history (1500-1979), I 1400-t. the settlement of the Norsemen
ceased, while the Neo-Eskimo immigration (Thule culture) spread along both
coasts. In order to assert Denmark's sovereignty in the area, the Danish kings
from time to time sent expeditions to reconnect with the area. After the
Reformation, the purpose of the expeditions was also to bring the right
Christianity to the country, and in 1605 and 1607 the Danes reached the West
Coast and got in touch with the Inuit. As a result of first the English's and
after 1600 increasingly the Dutch's interest in Greenland, Christian IV in 1636
gave a Copenhagen company the exclusive right to sail and trade.
Three expeditions 1652-54 were also sent out; their yields were meager, and
in 1670-71 there were clashes with the Dutch, who displaced the sent Danish
ships. Ships were again sent from Bergen in 1673-76, and in 1697 Christian gave
the 5th privilege to Copenhagen and Bergen on the Greenland voyage, with the
result that ships departed annually and that the privilege was extended in 1700
and in 1707.
1721-1908
In 1721, the Norwegian priest Hans Egede went to Greenland, supported by a
new company of Bergen merchants (see Bergenskompagniet) and Frederik IV, who
paid Egede as a missionary. In 1726, Bergenskompagniet gave up, and the king's
coffers took over the support, but when the financial results failed, Christian
VI ordered in 1731 that the company in Greenland be closed. However, with
reference to the many baptized Greenlanders, Hans Egede succeeded in getting the
work continued: 1734-50 under Jacob Severin's monopoly and 1750-72 under the
General Trade Company.
During the 1700's. Colonial sites were established on the West Coast from
Julianehåb (Qaqortoq) in the south to Upernavik in the north, and in 1776
the Royal Greenland Trade gained a monopoly, which came into force until 1950.
During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, navigation in Greenland was
severely curtailed, but the Kiel Peace in 1814 allowed Greenland to belong to
Denmark, and from the 1820's about 50 issuers were established to bring the
exchange of goods closer to the Greenlanders.
The Greenlanders did not get the right to vote in the Riksdag in 1849, but
from 1857 they got elected assemblies, Board of Trustees, to administer local
affairs. The system change in Denmark in 1901 was followed by a reform period in
Greenland until 1912 on the initiative of reform-minded missionaries in
Greenland, who in Denmark were especially supported by the Radical Left. The
Church Act of 1905 meant the cessation of Greenland as a mission field and the
establishment of a provincial path. With the Act on the Government of the
Colonies in Greenland in 1908 (see the Government of Greenland), two county
councils were established with seats in resp. Godthåb and Godhavn
(Qeqertarsuaq), who were given the right to comment and make proposals to the
authorities in Denmark.
1908-40
The Greenland Act of 1908 and its revision in 1912, which brought together
all overall management in the hands of a single director, created calm about the
Greenlandic conditions in Denmark.
In Greenland, the most pressing problems were of a business economic
nature. The Greenlandic population was in the 1800's. grown from just under 6,000
to just over 11,000 residents on an unchanged business basis. At the turn of
the century, the catch of seals did not seem to be able to increase, and
therefore in 1906 sheep breeding was introduced in the southernmost part of
Greenland. In addition, commercial fishing for halibut was launched from 1908,
while the many experimental fisheries for cod only began to yield results from
1917.
This development was the biggest upheaval in the lives of South Greenlanders
in particular since the arrival of Hans Egede, and the National Councils eagerly
worked on the new development, but had only a few funds to make available. From
the Danish side, the aim was a balanced budget, which meant that the investments
had in principle to be borne by current income. As a result, the expansion
proceeded relatively calmly and did not create actual conflicts between the
Greenlanders or between them and the Danes.
Danish sovereignty over Greenland was administered cautiously; thus, access
bans were only issued at the colonial settlements and their hinterland. Thereby,
the entire West Coast between Cape Farewell and Melville Bay was covered by the
monopoly before 1800, and when the trading post at Ammassalik on the East Coast
was established in 1894, it and its hinterland were also subject to the
monopoly. The station in Thule was privately built in 1910, when the government
did not want to challenge Canada; it was taken over by the state in 1937. In
connection with the sale of the West Indies to the United States in 1917,
Denmark was recognized for its claim to extend its sovereignty to the whole of
Greenland. A number of other countries also welcomed the demand and agreed that
in 1921 Denmark included the whole of Greenland under its rule. Norway alone did
not. Norwegian sealers had fishing interests on the East Coast, which they did
not want to be cut off from. This led to an intense Danish sovereignty claim,
and the conflict culminated in 1931 with a Norwegian "occupation" of territories
in East Greenland and a subsequent trial in 1933 at the International Court of
Justice in The Hague, which affirmed Denmark's sovereignty in East Greenland
(seeEast Greenland case). An attack on the established policy was when Faroese
fishermen in 1927, despite the opposition of the Landsråden, were allowed to use
a few places and eventually also to fish all the way to the coast on a third of
the coast with open water.
The political development proceeded without the formation of parties. The
members of the county councils raised local issues in particular, but gradually
also more general issues, so that the county councils became a full expression
of the political position in Greenland. The Act on the Government of Greenland
was therefore revised in 1925 without major changes.
1940-45
During the occupation of Denmark in 1940, the connection to Greenland was
severed, and the two bailiffs, Eske Brun and Aksel Svane, took over government
power with a view to preserving Greenland as Danish and preventing distress from
arising in the population. The bailiffs sought connection with the neutral
United States to avoid a German, alternatively a British or Canadian preventive
occupation. This led in April 1941 to the conclusion of the Greenland Treaty of
1941with the United States and later the creation of U.S. airfields and military
bases. The war was a period of prosperity for Greenland, and the population
wanted more of its conditions to continue after the war; not least the coastal
route that had been created and the greater decision-making power that had now
been placed in Godthåb. Actual acts of war did not take place on the West Coast,
while a few clashes between German military weather observation personnel and
the 1942 Danish-created sled patrol (see Sirius) on the East Coast took place
far from inhabited places. However, the cargo ship Hans Egede on its
way to the United States was sunk in 1942 by a German submarine.
1945-79
The liberation in 1945 was received as enthusiastically in Greenland as in
Denmark. The county councils sent a delegation to Denmark to discuss greater
political competence for a central government in Greenland. A report by the
Greenland Committee of 1946 (see Greenland Committee) was benevolent, but did
not meet these ideas, and monopoly and isolation were maintained at the request
of the county councils. On the other hand, extensive investments were made in
education and health care and a considerable increase in wages. All in all, the
proposals meant an annual additional transfer from Denmark the size of the
entire previous budget, and the time of the balanced budgets was clearly
abandoned.
Leading Danish officials in Greenland and some Greenlanders criticized the
lack of abolition of monopoly and isolation. They wanted a new development with
access for private Danish business in Greenland, and this pressure, together
with the unresolved question of the continued American bases in Greenland from
November 1947, led the new Social Democratic government to support radical
reforms. During 1948, Prime Minister Hans Hedtoft received support from both the
Danish and Greenlandic sides to abolish monopoly and isolation as well as
introduce Danish private initiative under state control in Greenland.
The Grand Greenland Commission set out in its comprehensive report from 1950,
implemented in eight laws, the guidelines that came to apply to the next human
age. The main idea behind this entire gigantic development program was to
modernize the Greenlandic fishery with Danish private companies as teachers. In
addition, the infrastructure had to be expanded. With the Constitution of the
Kingdom of Denmark of 1953, Greenland was integrated into Denmark, whereby two
members of the Folketing were to be elected in Greenland.
The large investments and expenses for a modern welfare society were borne by
Denmark, while the Greenlandic industries had to manage the private income
generation. While infrastructure, education and healthcare were rapidly expanded
with major improvements as a result, business development lagged behind. A sharp
increase in population made it difficult to adequately expand the cities that
were to be centers for a year-round sea-going fishery by open water, and private
Danish investment did not materialize. The authorities therefore began from the
late 1950's to build fish factories and procure trawlers for the fishing that was
to be the economic basis. The promising cod fishery, however, declined
drastically from the mid-1960's to being only slowly replaced by shrimp fishing
as the main primary occupation.
The major expansion was planned and was carried out by Danish experts as well
as a significant contingent of Danish guest workers in Greenland, which had
grown from a few hundred in 1945 to approximately 3000 or just over 10% of the
population in the late 1960's. The unifying body for construction companies was
from 1950 the Greenland Technical Organization (GTO), a directorate under the
Ministry of Greenland. Against this background, the Greenlandic National Council
in 1959 wanted to place itself stronger in development, and normalization,
understood as stronger equality, also in terms of wages, was the key word. The
government set up the Greenland Committee of 1960, whose report in 1964 formed
the basis for a ten-year plan. The total budget was again doubled, and the main
idea remained: concentration on cities by open water. The homeland criterion of
1958 was replaced in 1964 by abirthplace criterion, which triggered a fierce
critique among the highly educated Greenlanders who began to consider a more
independent status for Greenland. More decisive for this, however, was the
referendum on the Common Market in 1972, in which Greenland had to follow
Denmark into the EC, despite 70% voting against. The National Council then
opposed a home rule scheme which, as in the Faroe Islands, could enable
Greenland to leave the Common Market. At the forefront of this effort was a
small group, elected to the National Council and Parliament in 1971, which in
1977 became the party Siumut. The Home Rule Government was first discussed in a
purely Greenlandic committee 1971-75 and then in a Danish-Greenlandic Home Rule
Commission.1975-79. This process separated a younger wing of Siumut, which from
1977 became the Inuit Ataqatigiit party, which wanted autonomy. In the same
year, the party Atassut was formed, which placed the greatest emphasis on
cohesion with Denmark. Thus, the three largest political parties were formed,
and they all came to play a crucial role in the further development.
In the otherwise harmonious home rule negotiations, the question of
Greenland's underground caused problems. On the Greenlandic side, they wanted
the ownership to be transferred to the home government for national reasons,
while on the Danish side, for the sake of security of supply with oil, they
wanted the state as owner, just like the rest of Denmark. The solution was an
equal government, where both parties had a veto.
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