| Summary: | In the wake of European whaling and the presence of Danish colonists and missionaries, the Greenlandic Inuit were facing not only foreign people but also a new material culture in the form of European commodities between 1690 and 1900. Trade was the main motivation for these cultural encounters, but the nature and duration of local encounters affected Inuit use and reception of foreign things. This cultural exchange cannot be reduced to the simple dichotomy of Inuit and Europeans. Many groups were involved on both sides, and foreign commodities were accompanied by Europeans in some areas, whereas Inuit groups acted as middlemen in others. This chapter discusses the applicability of the Cross-Cultural Interaction Model to complex Contact and Colonial encounters based on the cultural biographies of glass beads, barrel hoops, and iron objects transformed into ulos (women’s knives) in the Historic Thule Culture.
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