Greenlandic Culture
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Throughout his life, Greenland's most famous ethnographer and explorer, Knud Rasmussen, praised Greenland's original Inuit residents for their strength, daring, and intelligence. In fact, Rasmussen won international fame by copying the Inuit peoples' ingenious hunting and survival skills on his many trips mapping and exploring the arctic north. In his 1908 book on the people and cultures of the arctic called "The People of the Polar North," Rasmussen wrote, "On this mighty stretch of coast of more than 10,000 kilometers, where they bridged points as far apart as the East [sic] of Greenland and Alaska, the Aleutic Isles and Siberia, they have understood, as no other hunting people, the art of self-preservation, and in the midst of a merciless fight for existence they have created a culture which compels the greatest admiration of all white men." Contemporary Greenlandic society evolved after more than two centuries of Danish colonialism and more than 4,500 years of Inuit colonization of the ice-bound island. Despite a very strong European influence, mostly from Denmark, Greenlanders share a common cultural affinity with the Inuit residents in Alaska, Siberia, and Canada who Rasmussen knew so well. Modern-day Greenlanders are extremely proud of that legacy. (See the Greenland map , courtesy of the University of Texas library system.) | |
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