During the Little Ice Age, a period marked by freezing temperatures and extreme climatic conditions, two cultures coexisted in Greenland: the Inuit and the Norse. Although both groups faced the same environmental challenges, their fates could not have been more different. The Inuit thrived and adapted, while the Norse disappeared from the island. A recent […]
Greenland
Posted inGeography, Modern Era
The 4 Times the United States Tried to Acquire Greenland from Denmark
In the summer of 2019, the temperature rose a few degrees in Greenland, but it wasn’t solely due to climate change; rather, it was because of U.S. President Donald Trump’s idea to buy the region. This idea was revealed by the Wall Street Journal, reporting that the U.S. government claimed it could offer Greenlanders more […]
Posted inMiddle Ages
Vikings and North American Natives met and traded ivory in remote parts of Greenland
A recent study led by Lund University in Sweden has shed new light on the ancient trade routes between Viking Norse settlers and Arctic Indigenous peoples. By examining ancient walrus DNA, the researchers have reconstructed the trade networks of the Viking Age, discovering that the Norse and Arctic Indigenous peoples likely interacted and exchanged walrus […]
Posted inScience
Microorganisms discovered living hundreds of meters deep in Greenland 75 million years ago
A recent international study, led by Associate Professor Henrik Drake from Linnaeus University, has uncovered groundbreaking evidence that microorganisms lived deep beneath Greenland’s rocky surface 75 million years ago. This research offers new insights into the history of the “deep biosphere”, a hidden world of life existing far beneath the Earth’s surface. The deep biosphere […]
Posted inModern Era
Peter Freuchen, the Explorer who Survived by Making a Knife from his Own Frozen Feces
The history of explorations features a roster of people who, evidently, are out of the ordinary. They have very special, peculiar personalities, often difficult to categorize and always with a common denominator of bomb-proof determination. A good example of this was Peter Freuchen, who is not very well known because his field of action was […]
Posted inGeography
Gunnbjørn, a Nunatak, is the Highest Peak in the Arctic Circle, Greenland and Denmark
Until the year 1930, it was believed that the highest point in Greenland was Mount Forel, located in the Schweizerland range southeast of the island. The mountain and the range were named by the Swiss explorer Alfred de Quervain in 1912. That year, Quervain’s expedition crossed the Greenland ice cap from Godhavn in the west, […]
Posted inScience
Giant Predatory Worm Fossils More Than 500 Million Years Old Discovered in Northern Greenland
Scientists have uncovered fossils of a new group of predatory animals from the Early Cambrian Sirius Passet locality in northern Greenland. Dating back over 518 million years, these large worms were potentially some of the first animal carnivores to inhabit the water column, revealing a dynasty of hunters previously unknown to science. The new fossil […]
Posted inGeography
The spectacular Northeast Greenland National Park covers almost half of the island and is larger than 165 countries
Established in 1974, it’s a vast protected area located in the northeast of the island, spanning approximately 972,000 square kilometers—about the size of France and Spain combined—making it the world’s largest national park. It occupies nearly half of the island, which has a total area of 2,166,086 square kilometers, surpassing the size of 165 countries […]
Posted inMiddle Ages
Brattahlíð, Erik the Red’s farm in Greenland
When vikings arrived in Greenland in 985 they found a land almost completely covered by snow and ice. Except for a few clearings of vegetation, mainly at the southern end, where they built their settlements. One of these was the Qinngua Valley, where the only remaining Greenlandic natural forest stands, while all the other forests […]
