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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 BCE.
The sources on the settlement of Greenland are sparse. The main sources are the Íslendingabók by the scholar Ari Thorgilsson, the Landnámabók (the land seizure book) by an unknown author, but probably with Ari's involvement, [2] the anonymous Grænlendinga saga (Saga of the Greenlanders) and the also anonymous Saga of Erik the Red.
Summer in the Greenland coast circa the year 1000 by Carl Rasmussen (1874). It has been a common mistake for popular history to occasionally credit Erik as being the first European to discover Greenland, however, the Icelandic sagas suggest that earlier Norsemen discovered and attempted to settle it before him. [ 15 ]
A literal interpretation of these medieval prose narratives about the Vikings and the Scandinavian past is doubtful, but many specific elements remain worthy of consideration, such as the great quantity of skaldic poetry attributed to court poets of the 10th and 11th centuries, the exposed family trees, the self-images, and the ethical values ...
Greenland [e] is an autonomous territory [f] in the Kingdom of Denmark. [15] [16] It is the largest of three constituent parts of the kingdom, the other two being metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands; the citizens of all territories are full citizens of Denmark. Greenland is one of the Overseas Countries and Territories of the European ...
Brattahlíð still has some of the best farmland in Greenland, owing to its location at the inner end of Eriksfjord, which protects it from the cold foggy weather and arctic waters of the outer coast. It has a youth hostel and a small store. More extensive facilities exist in Narsarsuaq across the fjord.
While the diet of the first settlers consisted of 80% agricultural products and 20% marine food, from the 14th century the Greenland Norsemen had 50–80% of their diet from the sea. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] In the Greenlandic Inuit oral tradition , there is a legend about why the Norse population of Hvalsey died out and why their houses and churches are in ...
c. 1350: The Norse Western Settlement in Greenland was abandoned. 1354: King Magnus of Sweden and Norway authorised Paul Knutson to lead an expedition to Greenland which may never have taken place. c.1450–1480s: [2] The Norse Eastern Settlement in Greenland was abandoned during the opening stages of the Little Ice Age [broken anchor].