Greenland

People have lived in Greenland in successive waves for around 4,500 years; the ancestors of today's Kalaallit, the Thule culture, migrated east from Alaska and reached Greenland around 1300. Norse settlers from Iceland and Norway, led by Erik the Red, founded farms in the southwest from 986; their colony lasted some 400 years before dying out in the late fifteenth century for reasons still debated, including a cooling climate.

Denmark-Norway asserted a claim and, from 1721, the missionary Hans Egede began permanent colonisation. Greenland was a closed Danish trading colony for two centuries. In 1953 it was made a county of Denmark, and a policy of rapid modernisation followed — Greenlanders moved from scattered settlements into concrete apartment blocks in a few towns, a wrenching change now widely seen as having caused lasting harm, alongside episodes such as the forced relocation of the Thule community for a US air base and a coerced birth-control programme in the 1960s and 70s.

Home rule was granted in 1979 and expanded self-government in 2009, giving Greenland control over most domestic affairs and a defined path to independence if its people choose it. Denmark still handles foreign affairs and defence and provides an annual block grant, 4.3 billion kroner in 2024, amounting to about a third of public revenue. The island's strategic position and mineral potential have drawn outside attention: the United States has discussed obtaining Greenland from Denmark since the nineteenth century, and since 2025 President Trump has sought American control of it. Danish and Greenlandic authorities have refused, stating that Greenland is not for sale and asserting Greenland's right to self-determination. At the general election of 11 March 2025 the opposition Democrats won the most seats, and independence, its pace, and its economics remain the central questions in Greenlandic politics.

Greenlandic culture is Inuit at its core — a heritage of hunting seals, whales, narwhal, and caribou; kayak and dog-sled travel; drum dancing and throat singing; and a deep relationship with sea ice and weather. Much of this survives, adapted: subsistence hunting and fishing remain legal, valued, and practised, and country food is central to identity even in the towns.

The population is small and interconnected, church (Lutheran) and family gatherings matter, and there is a strong tradition of kaffemik — an open house with coffee and cake to mark birthdays, confirmations, and other milestones, to which visitors may be warmly invited.

Contemporary Greenland also has a lively arts, music, and political scene grappling with the legacy of colonisation, language, and the shape of a possible independent future, and national symbols — the flag, National Day on the solstice, the language — carry real weight.

About 57,000 people live in Greenland, most on the ice-free southwestern coast, with roughly a third in the capital, Nuuk. Towns range from a few thousand people down to tiny settlements of a few dozen, linked only by air and sea. Winters are dark and long, and several communities lose the sun entirely for weeks.

The economy depends on fishing — prawns and Greenland halibut above all — supplemented by the Danish grant, a growing tourism sector, public-sector employment, and hopes for mining. The cost of living is high, housing in Nuuk is short, and social problems linked to the upheavals of the twentieth century persist alongside a confident modern civic life.

Daily life mixes the very modern — smartphones, supermarkets, a new airport — with the seasonal rhythm of the hunt, the weather, and the light.

Greenlandic food is dominated by "country food": seal, whale (minke and beluga), narwhal skin (mattak, eaten raw and prized), reindeer, musk ox, seabirds, and above all fish — halibut, cod, Arctic char, and dried capelin. Suaasat, a soup of seal, whale, or reindeer with rice or barley, is the national dish.

Imported food is expensive and everyday, so meals often combine the two: a supermarket base with country meat or fish added. Crowberries and other Arctic berries, angelica, and dried fish are gathered in season, and kiviaq — auks fermented whole inside a seal skin — is a northern delicacy.

Coffee is central to social life through the kaffemik. Beer is brewed with glacial water in Nuuk and Ilulissat, and the tap water, much of it meltwater, is exceptionally pure.

Ilulissat, in Disko Bay, is the tourism hub: the UNESCO-listed icefjord, where the fast-moving Sermeq Kujalleq glacier calves the huge icebergs that fill the bay, plus boat trips among them, hikes along the fjord, and whale-watching for humpbacks and fin whales in summer. Nearby Disko Island adds hot springs and walking in its valleys.

Nuuk, the capital, sits at the mouth of the long Nuup Kangerlua fjord system, with the National Museum (home of the Qilakitsoq mummies), a striking new cultural centre, and boat trips to the Sermitsiaq mountain and abandoned Norse farms.

Kangerlussuaq, near the Arctic Circle, offers the only road access to the edge of the inland ice sheet. South Greenland has the green Norse and Inuit farming landscape of Kujataa (also UNESCO-listed) around Qassiarsuk and Igaliku. And remote East Greenland — Tasiilaq, and the vast Scoresby Sund fjord system reached from Ittoqqortoormiit — is the wildest and least-visited region, famed for its scale, its icebergs, and, in the dark months across the whole island, the northern lights.