Full Circle

• Published in: AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment
• Main Author: Finn Lynge
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2008
• Subjects: Greenland; Norway; Baffin; Iceland; inuit; Narsaq
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1579/0044-7447-37.sp14.514

Greenland, and more specifically the present-day south west coastal district, is that exact spot on the world map where humankind completed its conquest of the Earth. As Norsemen coming over the Atlantic from Iceland and Norway encountered first North-American natives in present-day Labrador around year 1000, and about 150 years later the Inuit coming in from Baffin, slowly occupying the Greenland west coast, humankind had finally encircled the globe, unaware of the extraordinary aspect of the situation. The first few encounters in Labrador were violent, but later, cohabitation in South West Greenland had a mainly peaceful character. Present-day Narsaq district is the precise area where archeology gives witness to peaceful cohabitation between Inuit and Norsemen in the first half of the 15th century.