The 19th century saw increased interest in the region on the part of polar explorers and scientists like William Scoresby and Knud Rasmussen. Subscribe today for all the latest news on the polar regions including stories, insipiration and exclusive deals. Learn how Macaroni, Adélie, Chinstrap, Emperor and Magellanic penguins earned their names. For example, Seaver surmises that the Greenland colony was healthier than commonly thought and that the Greenlanders didn't simply starve to death. It is one of the northernmost towns in the world. The Thule people arrived in Greenland in the 10th century. Jared Diamond, author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, suggests that five factors contributed to the demise of the Greenland colony: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, loss of contact, and failure to adapt. He called the site "Thule" after classical ulti… The Frozen Echo by Kirsten Seaver contests some of the more generally-accepted claims about the demise of the Greenland colony. In 1818, Sir John Ross's expedition made first contact with nomadic Inuktun in the area. He then returned to Iceland to bring people to settle on Greenland. Others have suspected that the name was in part a promotional effort to lure people into settling there by making it sound more attractive. This date has been approximately confirmed by radiocarbon dating of some remains at the first settlement at Brattahlid (now Qassiarsuk), which yielded a date of about 1000. These frictions only grew when on January 21, 1968 there was a nuclear accident – a B-52 Stratofortress carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed near the base, leaking large amounts of plutonium over the ice. At the same time, the colonial element of the earlier trade-oriented Danish civilization on Greenland grew. //
At any rate around 985 Erik led the first Viking settlers to Greenland. In 1126 Greenland gained a bishop and in 1261 Greenland became part of Norway. It is probable that the Eastern Settlement was defunct by the late 15th century although no exact date has been established.

www.quarkexpeditions.com, Greenland's Thule and Vikings: More Than Ancient History, Close Encounters in the Kingdom of the Ice Bear, What to Expect on Your Extreme Camping Trip in Antarctica, Greenland is also the birthplace of the kayak.
The history of Greenland, the world's largest island, is the history of life under extreme Arctic conditions: an ice-cap covers about 84 percent of the island, largely restricting human activity to the coasts. According to legend, it was also in the year 1000 that Eric's son, Leif Ericson, left the settlement to discover Vinland (generally assumed to be located in Newfoundland.). An intriguing factor was the lack of fish remains among their garbage. After initially thriving, the Scandinavian settlements declined in the 14th century. The prehistory of Greenland is a story of repeated waves of Palaeo-Eskimo immigration from the islands north of the North American mainland. After Denmark, including Greenland, joined the union in 1973 (despite the Greenlanders having voted 70.3% no in the referendum), many inhabitants thought that representation in Copenhagen was not enough, and local parties began pleading for self-government. In 2020 the population of Greenland was 56,000. In southwest Greenland, you can visit Brattahlíð, the famed viking’s 10th century estate. Get Polar history presenter and Expedition Guide David Burton's Top Ten books about Polar Explorers. The Vikings made two settlements in Greenland, a Western and an Eastern settlement. [CDATA[ In 1126, a diocese was founded at Garðar (now Igaliku). In the 10th century the Earth was relatively warm.

However, since none of the lost Viking Greenlanders were found, Denmark-Norway instead proceeded to baptize the local Inuit Greenlanders and develop trading colonies along the coast as part of its aspirations as a colonial power. Qaanaaq, formerly and still popularly known as Thule or New Thule, is the main town in the northern part of the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. The chieftains would trade with the foreign ships and then disperse the goods by trading with the surrounding farmers. Modern technology has made Greenland more accessible, not least due to the breakthrough of aviation. Thule Air Base, or Thule Air Base/Pituffik Airport (IATA: THU, ICAO: BGTL), is the United States Air Force's northernmost base, located 1,207 km (750 mi) north of the Arctic Circle and 1,524 km (947 mi) from the North Pole on the northwest coast of the island of Greenland. The Inuit survived and developed a society to fit the increasingly forbidding climate (see Little Ice Age) and were the only people to inhabit the island for several hundred years. The U.S. government built weather and radio stations in the area beginning in 1941, to help in the war effort against the Germans. Guest post by Thea Bechshoft, staff scientist at Polar Bears International.

The east coast offers its fascinating history and some of the most vivid aurora borealis (Northern Lights) on the planet, while the west coast is a fantastic location for hiking, trekking, and viewing wildlife. Self-governing Greenland has portrayed itself as an Inuit nation. Norse ruins still stand and are open to visitors in South Greenland and at Nuuk, and we know famed explorer Erik the Red spent three years exiled on the landmass he called The Green Land. Aside from its military purpose, the base is … We’ve been the leading provider of polar adventure travel for over 25 years, and with a diverse fleet of specially-equipped small expedition vessels and icebreakers, we offer travelers unparalleled access to the most remote places on earth. However the queen of Denmark is still the head of state of Greenland. Late in the 10th century, two main settlements were established, each with a population of 2,500 to 5,000 people: Eystribyggð in the east and Vestribyggð in the west. Archeological digs near Ilulissat have turned up signs of hunting and fishing activity on Greenland’s coast from as long as 4,500 years ago. The oxygen isotopes from the ice caps suggested that the Medieval Warm Period had caused a relatively milder climate in Greenland, which lasted roughly between 800 and 1200. After leaving the EU, Greenland has signed a special treaty with the Union, as well as entering several smaller organizations, not least with Iceland and the Faroe Islands, and with the Inuit populations of Canada and Russia. However Greenland has great potential for tourism. The lack of personal belongings at these sites suggests that the Vikings simply packed up their belongings and left. The first inhabitants of Greenland were the Inuit.

Around 1200, another Arctic culture – the Thule – arrived from the west, having emerged 200 years earlier in Alaska. Greenland came to be seen as a Danish dependency rather than a Norwegian one. Then in 1380 Norway was joined to Denmark and Greenland came under Danish rule. You’ll begin to understand how this place largely covered by the Greenland ice sheet, with its seemingly hostile environment, earned the Inuit name Kalaallit Nunaat, or “The Land of the People.”. Discover how penguins, whales and seals have adapted in order to survive in the cold and windy Antarctic.
In 1378, there was no longer a bishop at Garðar. At the turn of the 19th century, the northern part of Greenland was still close to unpopulated; only scattered shelters attributed to hunting parties were found there. See Greenland’s ice-choked fjords, stunning mountain tundra, and picture-perfect vistas for yourself: Meet a marine mammal that swims and walks on all fours: the polar bear! After Norway regained full independence in 1905, it refused to accept Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland, which was a former Norwegian possession severed from Norway proper in 1814. Quark Expeditions undertook an exploratory journey to the remote Russian archipelago of Severnaya Zemlya, the last territorial discovery on the planet. The date of establishment of the colony is said in the Norse sagas to have been 985 when 25 ships left with Erik the Red (only 14 arrived safely in Greenland). International relations, a field earlier handled by Denmark, are now left largely, but not entirely, to the discretion of the home rule government. The Icelandic Annals are one of the few existing sources that confirm contact between the Norse and the Inuit. Islands off Greenland were sighted by Gunnbjörn Ulfsson when he was blown off course while sailing from Norway to Iceland, probably in the early 10th century. Its supplies were guaranteed by the United States and Canada.