We continue northwards. We experience deserted, unspoilt landscapes, drop anchor in peaceful fjords, catch cod, and discover long-abandoned fishing settlements – Greenland has us spellbound!

After nine days, we finally reach Nuuk – where we are welcomed by our Danish friend Claus Hassing, who has been living in Greenland for years on behalf of the company Würth. He throws us a wonderful welcome with fish and rum.

Our journey so far and now Nuuk: the contrast could hardly be greater. Whereas we’ve previously visited quite small settlements with just a few people, most of whom make a living as fishermen and hunters, we now find ourselves in a major city, even though Nuuk has ‘only’ just under 20,000 inhabitants. Huge, sprawling blocks of flats with grey façades housing many people, instead of the small, colourful houses. Here, no children greet us in the streets, and there are no sledges dotting the landscape. Instead, branches of Danish retail chains line the streets, and traffic rumbles through the city.

Nuuk does, however, offer one highlight: the Greenlandic National Museum. And we delve a little into the history of this icy island. Due to the extreme conditions, many areas remained uninhabited for millennia. When people came here and settled in individual regions, this did not happen as a continuous process, but rather in waves: after successful years, even a slight worsening of the extreme conditions could often spell the end of a settlement.

The first settlers arrived as long as 4,400 years ago

The museum showcases various phases of this early settlement of Greenland: the earliest was probably the ‘Arctic Small Tool Tradition’. It began as long as 4,400 years ago. People came to Greenland from North-East Asia and Siberia and were able to craft extremely efficient harpoons and spears from stone blades, bone and driftwood. They used these to hunt musk oxen, seals and caribou. They also possessed remarkable seafaring skills and were even able to cross short stretches of open sea without a compass or sonar! The museum displays reconstructed everyday objects and hunting weapons from this period – we can only marvel at how hard these people had to fight for their survival back then.

In a second wave, hunters from the Arctic region of Canada crossed Ellesmere Island and settled in Greenland. On the one hand, there was the Independence I culture, which settled in northern Greenland, particularly in Peary Land, between approximately 2,400 and 1,800 BC. These were highly specialised hunters who lived in small, mobile family groups in tents and hunted primarily musk oxen and seals. The other group consisted of people from the Saqqaq culture, who lived in the somewhat milder western and south-western parts of the island. They chose to live in larger communities and to build winter dwellings out of stone and peat.
How did they survive here – without boats or dogs?

Finally, the Dorset culture remains a great mystery – hunters who survived successfully in the Arctic for centuries and about whom we know very little. In fact, the only thing that is clear is what they did not have: no traces of boats or kayaks have been found among this group. Nor is there any evidence of dogs or transport sledges. How did these people get around in Greenland? How were they able to go hunting without a kayak? Weapons such as bows and arrows, or drilling tools, were also probably unknown to the Dorset people. It is truly a mystery. What they did master, however, was hunting seals and walruses on the winter sea ice. They invented the igloo as a shelter and dwelling on the ice, and developed lamps that provided them with a little light in the Arctic night using seal blubber.

The Thule Inuit prevail

However, the massive cooling of the Arctic from the 14th century onwards – with drastically altered ice conditions – and the arrival of the technologically far superior Thule Inuit, with their kayaks, bows and dog sleds, ultimately led to the hunters of the Dorset culture being displaced. Nevertheless, the Dorset live on in the legends of today’s Inuit. In the ancient sagas, they are called the Tuniit – a people of shy giants, very strong, but also easily frightened.

And finally: the Vikings. No history of Greenland is complete without a mention of Erik the Red. Legend has it that Erik was banished from Iceland for three years for manslaughter. He used this time to search for the large, icy island to the west that fishermen had told him about. He set sail with 25 ships, 24 of which eventually reached the island. Erik chose the name Greenland (= ‘green land’) for his discovery – a clever marketing ploy on his part, which he used to attract more Icelanders around the year 986 AD. Yet even for these hardy ‘Graenlendingar’, life on the Arctic island was anything but easy, and so they abandoned the settlement after around 400 years.

For us, however, the achievement of these very first settlers of Greenland is almost beyond comprehension. We can only imagine the hardships survival must have entailed back then and just how perfectly these people had adapted to the extreme conditions of the Arctic. Otherwise, they would probably not have survived a single winter.

Uli Weih