Greenland History

Greenland is the world's largest island (1,660 miles long, with a maximum width of 650 miles, an area of 840,000 square miles, inhabitable ice-free regions cover only an area of 132,000 square miles). This icy, inhospitable island was named Greenland to make it sound more attractive to early settlers.

History
Greenland became a possession of Denmark in 1380 when the Norwegian kingdom came under the Danish Crown. The first Norse settlements eventually failed when the colony was neglected by Norway in the 1300s and 1400s. The last account is from a wedding in the year 1406 between an Icelander and a colonist in the “Eastern settlement.” The couple then moved to Iceland. There was no trace of the Norsemen when Greenland was rediscovered in 1578 by British explorers, Martin Frobisher and John Davis while searching for a passage through the Northwest to Asia.

Since the middle of the 1600s, Europeans, especially Dutch and Scandinavians, visited Greenland while on whale-hunting expeditions. Modern colonization by Europeans was begun in 1721 by a Norwegian priest. With the assistance of the Danish King, he equipped an expedition to Greenland to find surviving Viking colonists and establish a Lutheran mission and trading station. Finding no Viking descendants, he turned his missionary work to the local Inuits. In 1733 the mission efforts were joined by missionaries of the “Brethren” church who helped in sharing the gospel with the Eskimo people. The mission was successful, converting most of the Eskimo people to Christianity.

The people of Greenland did not fare well under Danish rule. After losing Norway in 1814, Denmark experienced a severe economic depression and was unable to devote many resources to developing Greenland until substantial deposits of cryolite, an aluminum ore, were discovered there. Mining operations began in 1864 under Danish government control. Eskimo fishing and sealing industries were also managed by the government.

In 1921, Denmark’s sovereignty over the entire Island was recognized internationally. In 1940, a few Germans landed in Greenland and set up bases for monitoring weather and relaying radio reports of allied ship movements. U.S. forces captured these bases in 1941 and for the rest of the second world war Denmark, occupied by Germany, turned Greenland over to the protection of the United States.

In 1953 Denmark adopted a new constitution that made Greenland a county within Denmark rather than a colony. Greenland was granted two seats in the Danish legislature. As Danish citizens, civil rights accorded to the Danes were granted to the Greenlandic population

But by the 1970s, many Greenlanders had come to resent Danish control and demanded more local control of the government. The people of the island voted for home rule in 1979. Home Rule was officially introduced on 1 May 1979. Greenland is now an integral part of Denmark, having attained a full internal self-government in January 1981. 

Timeline
1721 -A joint mercantile and clerical expedition led by Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede was sent to Greenland. This expedition is part of the Dano-Norwegian colonization of the Americas 1940 - Greenland's connection to Denmark was severed early in World War II, after Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany

Population Statistics
During the Viking colonization efforts the Norse population reached a peak in the 1200s of about 3,500. It is likely that there were also about 1,000 Inuits at that time. But in the 1500s and 1600s the island was almost completely uninhabited. Colonization started again in the early 1700s. Norwegian missionaries found that the Inuits had begun to return to Greenland again as well. The first census in 1805 revealed a population of 5,000. In the 1900s there was a population explosion among the native Greenlanders. Since 1953 Greenland modernized with financial aid from Denmark. Life expectancy rose, the population doubled due to both immigration and an increased birthrate. From a base of 12,000 inhabitants in 1901 the population grew to 21,000 by 1945 and 40,000 by 1965; the 1970 population was 57,400 and in 1999 it stood at 59,827. The religious affiliation is about 95% Protestant (most are members of the Lutheran Church of Greenland), and 5% Animist. Peoples of various cultures have migrated to Greenland throughout the ages. The ancestors of the present day Inuit Greenlanders have inhabited the country for about 4,000 to 5,000 years. Today's Greenlander is a rich mix of the land's aboriginal (Inuit) people and its migrants, and those - many of whom were whalers - who have frequented Greenland. The Inuits, Greenland's indigenous people, share a common language and culture with the Inuit in Canada and Alaska. Eighty percent of Greenland's 55,000 residents are Inuit; the rest are primarily Danes. The population is distributed among 120 localities, 65 of which have less than 100 residents each. Nuuk, the capital and largest town, has a population of 13,000. Presently, 90% of the population is concentrated along the southwest coast.

Gad, Finn. The History of Greenland. Translated from the Danish by Ernst Dupont. Montreal: McGill-Queen University Press, 1971.