Greenland, Inuit History Overview: Resilience and Strength

For many Americans, Greenland has probably existed in the public imagination in one of two ways: that giant island on the world map or the huge ice sheet that was oxymoronically named as a marketing ploy by a Norse Viking.

As Greenland has percolated in American politics and discourse since President Donald Trump claimed the United States “needs” it, a spotlight of international attention has shone on the Arctic island. But what hasn’t been included in the discourse is Greenland’s history.

The history is long, complicated and intertwined with Danish history and colonization. According to archaeologist Dr. Genevieve LeMoine, the first trace of the native Inuit people in Greenland dates all the way back to around four and a half thousand years ago.

The island was colonized in the early part of the last millennium, LeMoine said. Erik the Red (who famously named Greenland, Greenland) was exiled from Iceland and found the island, encouraging more Norse settlers to join him. They later died out for unknown reasons, and when Hans Egede, a Lutheran Minister from the union of Denmark and Norway, sought to reconnect with them and maintain their Christian faith, he instead met the Greenlandic Inuit people.

Egede’s contact with the Inuit people in 1721 is often marked as the beginning of colonization of Greenland, but the history before contact with the Europeans is rich.

Even now, Egede’s presence is still felt. Situated atop a hill, he looks over the ocean, Bible in hand. He watches over the coast, where Danish flags fly high.

Inuit pre-history and pre-colonization

According to LeMoine, pre-history is history that is not written down, but also said it is “a loaded term.”

“What archaeologists would call prehistory there is fairly recent, even 150 years old, it would technically still be prehistory or 200 years old, but that leaves out oral history,” she said. “It’s a very Western perception of what history is.”

Archaeologists studying the pre-history period of Inuit culture and life in Greenland call them the Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt) which describes the type of tools they used, specifically sharp blades made from stone or bone.

About four and a half thousand years ago, they arrived there from the Bering Strait region, from Siberia to the strait, to Alaska to Canada and all the way across the Arctic. The ASTt people have existed even before people arrived in Greenland.

The ASTt people lived in Greenland for thousands of years and moved throughout the island, although exactly why, where and how is unknown. Another group moves into the area who are primarily maritime hunters with much more advanced technology. These are the ancestors of the modern Inuit people, sharing the same DNA and language.

They likely came out of the same base but through different waves of migration, LeMoine said.

“The Inuit that came into Greenland in 1200 was a particular kind of culture where they had dog sleds, they had boats, they were hunting whales and they were moving quite fast. They were, one could say, top of the pups as Arctic peoples,” Dr. Frank Sejersen of the University of Copenhagen said.

Sejersen is an associate professor in the Greenlandic and Arctic studies department. He has also studied and worked with environmental, human rights and political issues in the Arctic for over 30 years.

Both LeMoine and Sejersen said that the land, sea and animals became important aspects of Inuit culture and it still is practiced and believed today.

“The most fundamental part of their belief system is that everything, particularly all animals, they have spirits,” LeMoine said. “They are a hunting culture, they live by killing animals, but that that is all part of a kind of a social interaction between the hunters and the animals. The animals are giving themselves to the hunters. They’re offering themselves to the hunters to be hunted.”

Sejersen used seal hunting as an example. A seal would be killed by a hunter, but they believed it was the same seal to be hunted every time—a relationship that was passed down from grandparents. The seal would seek out the same people and family, too.

It was a mutual respect between the animals and humans. With a seal, LeMoine said, the hunter would often give it a drink of water, honoring that because it was in salt water, it was likely thirsty.

LeMoine also explained that although the hunter would kill the animal, his wife would often oversee the butchering and the sharing of the meat. “The hunter would have no success without the wife carrying out these very respectful actions towards the animals, because if that’s not happening, then animals are not going to give themselves to the country,” she said.

This belief is still present in Greenland, even if people are hunting with guns instead of harpoons.

Early Inuit communities struggled with climate change, too. It would be marked by a stormy year, for example. Adaptability and mobility were key elements of their survival during hard times, Sejersen said.

“You also had many periods of hunger and death. But the oral history had a testimony of resilience, of a strong community where you were sharing the resources,” he said.

Early colonization and Danish involvement

Lutheran minister Egede’s arrival marks the beginning of colonization in Greenland. After gaining permission from the Denmark-Norway kingdom, he travelled to Greenland in pursuit of reconnecting with the Norse settlements, but only found the local Kalaallit people.

He studied their language and later began to convert them to Christianity. At the same time, European whaling was taking off and Greenland was a big benefit to the industry.

After the Denmark-Norway union broke apart in 1814, Denmark kept Greenland. They wanted to ensure that the Arctic island would be profitable and wanted the Inuit people to focus on seal hunting, but this conflicted with the mission’s religious objectives.

“It’s a very complex cultural encounter that we are seeing. On the one hand, the Danes considered the Inuit to be very childish,” Sejersen said. “The mission was trying to make them change their worldview. The trade wanted to push them into hunting seals primarily. That created a tension between the trade and the mission where the trade wanted the hunters to be out on the land, spread out or in different communities. But the mission wanted the population to be centered around the church.”

But even before Danish colonization and development in Greenland, the island was connected to the global world. Sejersen said they’ve “always been connected to world dynamics.”

“They had traded with Dutch whalers and Scottish whalers for hundreds of years before that, so they were quite competent in handling strangers,” he said. “They found that the goods that the Danes came with was pretty awful compared to the Dutch.”

As Greenland began to develop and grow, including building up the major settlement into what is now Nuuk, the population became increasingly educated and involved in art and creating a more modern Inuit culture despite Danish colonization and intervention.

Modernization and urbanization in Greenland

Despite Greenland’s increasing urbanization, it was not a political entity of its own. Sejersen said that the Danes often viewed the Inuit as children, almost incapable of making decisions for their community. It wasn’t until 1857 that the Danes established parsissaets, local councils in their local language to settle conflicts and minor spending decisions.

Still, these councils were practically hand selected by Denmark and were not reflective of a broader and more ordinary Inuit population, but the more powerful and important local figures.

Municipalities were established in 1908 with elected municipal councils to oversee local affairs.

In 1953, the Constitution of Denmark ended Greenland’s status as a colony. It became fully integrated it into the Danish state. Later, in 1979, the Greenlandic home rule referendum passed, giving the island greater autonomy from Denmark. They established their own parliament and greater sovereignty in areas like education, health, fishing and the environment.

By 2009, Greenland had full self-government, but they became “second best” to Denmark in foreign policy and affairs.

The U.S. has some history in Greenland due to a longstanding and close relationship with Denmark. There is a long history of interest in obtaining the island, according to Florida State University history professor Dr. Ron Doel.

“In 1867, just two years after the end of the Civil War, the U.S. had just purchased the territory of Alaska, and the Secretary of State at the time, [William] Seward, thought Greenland might be another good acquisition for fishing for an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, looking at this as part of the larger North American continent arena,” Doel said. “But that didn’t work out. The U.S. did recognize the geographic significance of Greenland being between the North American and the Eurasian continent.”

There was not an established military presence in Greenland until World War II, when Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany. An agreement allowed the U.S. to operate on behalf of Denmark during the conflict, he said.

During World War II, the U.S. mined cryolite at Ivittut in southwest Greenland to produce aluminum to build fighter planes. The site is one of the few in the world to have naturally occurring cryolite.

The U.S. now has the Pituffik Space Base, formerly called the Thule Air Space, in Greenland. It is currently the largest U.S. overseas military base by area. It is over 163,000 acres. The U.S. is allowed a military presence on the island under the 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement with Denmark.

Greenland now and its potential future

Danish colonization has had varying impacts on Greenlandic culture, but history and spirituality continues to be passed down through generations, LeMoine said.

“Some of it was preserved because there were people in those communities who recognized that the stories and things like that were worth saving,” she said. “You did get some of that stuff written down. Stories get passed on from generation to generation. Traditional stories don’t necessarily get lost just because you converted to Christianity, but some elements of it get lost.”

Even though Greenland now makes many of its own democratic decisions under the Self-Government Act, it is still left out of foreign policy and affairs, remaining “second best” to Denmark, Sejersen said.

About 56% of Greenlanders would vote for independence in a referendum, according to a January 2025 poll by Danish polling group Verian. The same poll revealed that an overwhelming 85% of Greenlanders do not want to become part of the U.S.

These experts all shared some level of concern with an American presence in Greenland. Sejersen said he is worried it may “undermine democracy” or that the environment will not be protected and human rights will not be obeyed.

Even the Danes are fearful of American intervention in Greenland, Doel said.

“In the early part of this year, when some troops were dispatched to Greenland as a kind of show of unity among the NATO countries, opposing the invasion, that the Danes quietly sent body bags in case of conflict,” he said. “They’re treating it seriously enough to have those kinds of contingencies in place. Even the volatility and the history in the second Trump administration, I think leaders around the globe are taking pronouncements seriously when they’re made.”

Trump’s desire for Greenland has also damaged the allyship between the U.S. and Denmark, Sejersen said. He said that the “Danish self-perception” is that they consider the U.S their best and most important ally, and added that in Denmark, people are calling this their “biggest foreign conflict since the Second World War.”

Whether sweeping changes will take place in Greenland due to an American takeover is up to diplomatic conversations and debate between the three countries. LeMoine and Sejersen both expressed hope that through this, people can better understand both Greenland and the people who call it home.

“There’s such a deep ignorance about Greenland outside of, really, Greenland and maybe Denmark. It would be great just if people would… they need to understand how modern Greenland is. And how Greenlandic, it still is, as well,” LeMoine said. “I think people need to understand that Greenland has gone through transformations, but it’s still Greenland.”

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This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into Greenland’s people, history, and culture. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available on Edge of the Arctic: Greenland, the Land of the People.

This work was made possible through the support of MPC Endowment Ltd., the philanthropic affiliate of the Milwaukee Press Club, and a private donor.