Greenlanders ( kl, Kalaallit / Tunumiit / Inughuit; da, Grønlændere) are people identified with

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland ...

or the

indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

, the Greenlandic Inuit (''Grønlansk Inuit'';

Kalaallit Kalaallit make up the largest group of the Greenlandic Inuit and are concentrated in Kitaa. It is also a contemporary term in the Greenlandic language for the indigenous people living in Greenland (Greenlandic ''Kalaallit Nunaat'').Hessel, 8 Th ...

, Inughuit, and Tunumiit). This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Greenlanders, many of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''Greenlandic''. However, the term can in different contexts be delimited more precisely in different ways: as the inhabitants of Greenland, as nationals of Greenland or more broadly as persons who feel a cultural affiliation in a broad sense to Greenland. More controversial is a more recent use of the word in the sense persons of Greenlandic origin, i.e. persons whose parents were born in Greenland. The indigenous people of Greenland, or the Greenlandic

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territorie ...

, have ''indigenous status'' in the

Kingdom of Denmark The Danish Realm ( da, Danmarks Rige; fo, Danmarkar Ríki; kl, Danmarkip Naalagaaffik), officially the Kingdom of Denmark (; ; ), is a sovereign state located in Northern Europe and Northern North America. It consists of metropolitan Denma ...

. Nationals of Greenland are citizens of Denmark and are

overseas countries and territories The special territories of members of the European Economic Area (EEA) are the 32 special territories of EU member states and EFTA member states which, for historical, geographical, or political reasons, enjoy special status within or outsid ...

(OCT) nationals; this also means that Greenlanders are EU citizens, due to Greenland's associated relationship to the European Union. The Greenlandic Inuit are the indigenous and most populous ethnic group in Greenland. Most speak

Kalaallisut Kalaallisut may refer to: * Greenlandic language * West Greenlandic West Greenlandic ( da, vestgrønlandsk), also known as Kalaallisut, is the primary language of Greenland and constitutes the Greenlandic language, spoken by the vast majority of ...

(West Greenlandic), and consider themselves ethnically Inuit. Approximately 89 percent of Greenland's population of 57,695 is Greenlandic Inuit, or 51,349 people . Ethnographically, they consist of three major groups: * the

of west Greenland, who speak

* the Tunumiit of Tunu (east Greenland), who speak Tunumiit oraasiat ("East Greenlandic") * the Inughuit of north Greenland, who speak

Inuktun Inuktun ( en, Polar Inuit, kl, avanersuarmiutut, da, nordgrønlandsk, polarinuitisk, thulesproget) is the language of approximately 1,000 indigenous Inughuit (Polar Inuit), inhabiting the world's northernmost settlements in Qaanaaq and the su ...

("Polar Inuit") Historically, ''Kalaallit'' referred specifically to the people of Western Greenland. Northern Greenlanders call themselves Avanersuarmiut or Inughuit, and Eastern Greenlanders call themselves Tunumiit, respectively. Today, most Greenlanders are bilingual speakers of Kalaallisut and Danish and most trace their lineage to the first Inuit, the Thule culture, that came to Greenland around 1300 AD. The vast majority of ethnic Greenlanders reside in Greenland or elsewhere in the

Realm of Denmark The Danish Realm ( da, Danmarks Rige; fo, Danmarkar Ríki; kl, Danmarkip Naalagaaffik), officially the Kingdom of Denmark (; ; ), is a sovereign state located in Northern Europe and Northern North America. It consists of metropolitan Denmar ...

, primarily

Denmark proper ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , established ...

(approximately 20,000 Greenlanders reside in Denmark proper). A small minority reside in other countries, mostly elsewhere in the

Nordic countries The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; lit. 'the North') are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sw ...

and

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

. There are, though, a large number of Greenlanders and Greenlandic families who today are multi-ethnic, mostly due to marriages between Greenlanders and

Danes Danes ( da, danskere, ) are a North Germanic ethnic group and nationality native to Denmark and a modern nation identified with the country of Denmark. This connection may be ancestral, legal, historical, or cultural. Danes generally regard t ...

as well as other Europeans. Some individuals of Danish heritage who were born or grew up in Greenland may also self-identify as Greenlandic or as ‘Greenland Danes’.

Definition

There are several ways to define what a Greenlander is, and the meaning has also changed over time, just as today it can have both an ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' meaning. The word Greenlander is used in several different meanings: # The

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction usi ...

in Greenland, i.e. all with permanent legal residence in Greenland. At the beginning of 2020, there were 56,081 inhabitants in Greenland.Grønlands Statistik, Grønlands befolkning 2020. Hentet 2. oktober 2020.
/ref> # Nationals with connections to Greenland as

nation A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by th ...

(also called persons specially connected to Greenland). At the beginning of 2020, there were 50,189 people born in Greenland. However, there are no official statistics on how many Greenlanders live outside Greenland and abroad. # More unofficially, a Greenlander is often perceived as a person who has a cultural (not least linguistic) affiliation with Greenland and even has an identity of being a Greenlander. As for Danish citizens and by persons with a special connection to Greenland, there are no official statistics for how many persons of Greenlandic origin reside abroad.

Regions

The Inuit are descended from the

Thule people The Thule (, , ) or proto-Inuit were the ancestors of all modern Inuit. They developed in coastal Alaska by the year 1000 and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people o ...

, who settled Greenland in between AD 1200 and 1400. As 84 percent of Greenland's land mass is covered by the

Greenland ice sheet The Greenland ice sheet ( da, Grønlands indlandsis, kl, Sermersuaq) is a vast body of ice covering , roughly near 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is sometimes referred to as an ice cap, or under the term ''inland ice'', or its Danish equi ...

, Inuit live in three regions: Polar, Eastern, and Western. In the 1850s, additional Canadian Inuit joined the Polar Inuit communities.Hessel 11 The Eastern Inuit, or Tunumiit, live in the area with the mildest climate, a territory called Tunu or

Tasiilaq Tasiilaq, formerly Ammassalik and Angmagssalik, is a town in the Sermersooq municipality in southeastern Greenland. With 1,985 inhabitants as of 2020, it is the most populous community on the eastern coast, and the seventh-largest town in Gree ...

. Hunters can hunt marine mammals from

kayak A kayak is a small, narrow watercraft which is typically propelled by means of a double-bladed paddle. The word kayak originates from the Greenlandic word '' qajaq'' (). The traditional kayak has a covered deck and one or more cockpits, each s ...

s throughout the year.

Language

is the official language of Greenland. It is the western variety of the Greenlandic language, which is one of the

Inuit languages The Inuit languages are a closely related group of indigenous American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and adjacent subarctic, reaching farthest south in Labrador. The related Yupik languages (spoken in weste ...

within the Inuit–Yupik–Unangan family. Kalaallisut is taught in schools and used widely in Greenlandic media.

History

The first people arrived in Greenland from the Canadian island of Ellesmere, around 2500 to 2000 BCE, from where they colonized north Greenland as the

Independence I Independence I was a culture of Paleo-Eskimos who lived in northern Greenland and the Canadian Arctic between 2400 and 1900 BC. There has been much debate among scholars on when Independence I culture disappeared, and, therefore, there is a margi ...

culture and south Greenland as the

Saqqaq culture The Saqqaq culture (named after the Saqqaq settlement, the site of many archaeological finds) was a Paleo-Eskimo culture in southern Greenland. Up to this day, no other people seem to have lived in Greenland continually for as long as the Saqqaq ...

. The Early

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset. Covering an area of , ...

replaced these early Greenlanders around 700 BCE, and themselves lived on the island until c. 1 CE. These people were unrelated to the Inuit. Save for a Late Dorset recolonisation of northeast Greenland c. 700 CE, the island was then uninhabited until the Norse arrived in the 980s. Between 1000 and 1400, the Thule, ancestors of the Inuit, replaced the Dorset in Arctic Canada, and then moved into Greenland from the north. The Norse disappeared from southern Greenland in the 15th century, and although Scandinavians revisited the island in the 16th and 17th centuries, they did not resettle until 1721. In 1814, the

Treaty of Kiel The Treaty of Kiel ( da, Kieltraktaten) or Peace of Kiel ( Swedish and no, Kielfreden or ') was concluded between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Kingdom of Sweden on one side and the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway on t ...

awarded Greenland to Denmark. The primary method of survival for the Thule was hunting seal, narwhal, and walrus as well as gathering local plant material. Archaeological evidence of animal remains suggests that the Thule were well adjusted to Greenland and in such a way that they could afford to leave potential sources of fat behind. European visitors to Northeast Greenland before the early 19th century reported evidence of extensive Inuit settlement in the region although they encountered no humans. In 1823, Douglas Charles Clavering met a group of twelve Inuit in

Clavering Island Clavering Island ( da, Clavering Ø) is a large island in eastern Greenland off Gael Hamke Bay, to the south of Wollaston Foreland. The Eskimonaes ''(Eskimonæs)'' radio and weather station was on this island. It was staffed by Danish scientists ...

. Later expeditions, starting with the Second German North Polar Expedition in 1869, found the remains of many former settlements, but the population had apparently died out during the intervening years. In 1979, the Greenlanders voted to become autonomous. There is an active independence movement. The population of Greenlandic Inuit has fluctuated over the years. A smallpox outbreak reduced the population from 8,000 to 6,000 in the 18th century. The population doubled in 1900 to 12,000 then steadily rose by around 100 people each year from 1883 to 1919. Tuberculosis caused a drop in the population, but after several decades of steady birth rates and commercial fishing over traditional hunting, the population reached 41,000 in 1980.

Society

Gender role A gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on that person's sex. Gender roles are usually cen ...

s among Greenlandic Inuit are flexible; however, historically men hunted and women prepared the meat and skins. Most marriages are by choice, as opposed to arranged, and monogamy is commonplace. Extended families are important to Inuit society. Greenland Inuit diet consists of a combination of local or traditional dishes and imported foods, with the majority of Inuit, aged 18 to 25 and 60 and older, preferring customary, local foods like whale skin and dried cod over imported foods like sausage or chicken. That study also reveals that those who grew up in villages only consumed local, Inuit cuisine foods 31 times a month and those who lived in Danish areas would consume local, Inuit cuisine 17 times per month. The reasons for the lack of traditional food consumption varies, but 48 percent of respondents claim that they wanted to have variety in their diet, 45 percent of respondents said it was difficult to obtain traditional foods, and 39 percent said that traditional foods were too expensive. The kinds of whale that have been historically hunted and consumed are the minke and fin whales; both are under watch by the

International Whaling Commission The International Whaling Commission (IWC) is a specialised regional fishery management organisation, established under the terms of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) to "provide for the proper conservation ...

(IWC). Greenland Home Rule implemented IWC quotas on aboriginal whale hunting, reducing hunting of minke whales to a maximum of 115 per year and fin whales to 21 per year.

Art

The Greenlandic Inuit have a strong artistic practice based on sewing animal skins (skin-sewing) and making masks. They are also known for an art form of figures called tupilait or "evil spirit objects".

Sperm whale The sperm whale or cachalot (''Physeter macrocephalus'') is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. It is the only living member of the genus ''Physeter'' and one of three extant species in the sperm whale famil ...

ivory (teeth) remains a valued medium for carving. Customary art-making practices thrive in

Ammassalik Island Ammassalik Island ( da, Ammassalik Ø) is an island in the Sermersooq municipality in southeastern Greenland, with an area of .

.Ingo 20 Ammassalik wooden maps are carved maps of the Greenlandic coastline, used in the late 19th century.

Notes

References

External links

Inuit Circumpolar Council: Greenland
, Greenland Guide

{{Greenland topics Inuit groups Indigenous peoples in the Arctic Ethnic groups in Greenland