Greenland

Greenland is the largest island in the world, a vast frozen territory in the Arctic, geographically part of North America but tied to Europe by history: it is a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark that runs most of its own affairs. It has only about 56,000 people, which makes it one of the least populated places on earth, because most of its surface is covered by an ice sheet. Most people are Inuit, with a Danish minority. Around the capital, Nuuk, and in small coastal villages, Greenlanders live from the sea and from hunting.

Greenland is dominated by its vast ice sheet, a cap of ice several kilometres thick covering about four-fifths of the island: the second-largest mass of ice on the planet, after Antarctica. Only an ice-free coastal strip is habitable: deep fjords, mountains and tundra, where villages are linked only by boat or plane. Giant glaciers break off huge icebergs into the sea. There are polar bears, seals, whales and musk oxen, the northern lights and the midnight sun. The polar climate brings long winter nights and short, bright summers.

Greenland was settled by successive waves of Arctic peoples from North America. Around the year 1000, Vikings from Iceland, led by Erik the Red, founded settlements that lasted a few centuries before vanishing, for reasons still debated. Soon after, the direct ancestors of today's Greenlanders arrived from the west: the Inuit of the Thule culture, hunters remarkably well adapted to the Arctic. In the 18th century Denmark colonised the island and converted it to Christianity. In the 20th century Greenland ceased to be a colony and gained wide self-government in stages. Possible independence and its large natural resources are now at the centre of debates about its future.

Greenland's language is Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), an Inuit language spoken by most of the population and defended as the heart of its identity, alongside Danish. Greenlanders are Christian by tradition, mostly Lutheran, since the Danish missions of the 18th century, and the church matters a great deal in community life. The memory and some traditions of the old Inuit shamanic beliefs survive, centred on the spirits of nature, the sea and the animals.

Greenlandic culture is that of the Inuit people, shaped by thousands of years of life in the Arctic, between hunting, the sea and the ice. There is the kayak, invented by Arctic peoples, and the dog sled; carvings of bone, ivory and stone, such as the tupilak; the coloured beadwork of festive dress, songs and traditional drums. Seal and whale hunting and fishing remain central to life and food: seal, fish, whale, musk ox and mattak (whale skin).