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THE NORSE SETTLEMENT
The first European to explore Greenland was Eric Thorvaldsson aka Eric the Red. Eric was born in Norway and brought to Iceland as child after Thorvald was exiled for committing manslaughter. Eric followed the family tradition and was himself found guilty of a similar crime in 982. An Icelandic court sentenced Thorvaldsson to three years exile and outlawry.
Eric served out his sentence searching for the western land previously sighted by his friend Gunnbjorn Ulfsson. He came upon the Greenland shore after a four day voyage across the Denmark Strait. The next few years were spent exploring the coast between Cape Farewell and Disko Bay.
Eric dubbed his discovery, "Greenland". He hoped the name would make it attractive to settlers. It was an unnecessary measure for Iceland’s supply of arable land had been exhausted by overpopulation for at least a generation. Thorvaldsson embarked on a return voyage to Greenland at the head of a 25 ship flotilla in 985. Only 14 completed the journey. The rest turned back or vanished in storms. Eric settled on a farmstead at Brattahlid just west of Cape Farewell. The rest of the pioneers continued northward along the western shore. They established settlements at Osterbygden near present day Julianehab and Vesterbygden near Godthaab. Norse Greenland thrived for four centuries. The colony was home to about 5000 people who lived in 300 settlements at its peak.
The Norse settlements disappeared at the beginning of the 15th Century. The reasons for this remain something of a mystery. The Sagas speak of fierce battles with the Skraelingjar. The word is a bit imprecise. The Skraelingjar might have been Inuit migrating from the north, Indians from Labrador or even English pirates. There is some evidence to indicate a peaceful assimilation of the last surviving Norsemen with the Inuit. Short periods of foul weather not uncommon in the arctic could have resulted in widespread famine. The plague that struck Norway in 1380 killed half the population. Imports vital to the survival of the colony may have become difficult to obtain. In any case, contact between Norse Greenland and the mother country became increasingly less frequent. The last communication from the Greenlanders was a letter received in 1408. It described a wedding held two years before.
DANISH COLONIZATION
Denmark gained control of Norway and its colonies under the Kalmar Union of 1380. The Danes never entirely forgot that they were also rulers of Greenland but three centuries would pass before a serious effort was mounted to re-establish contact with the lost colony.
Reported contacts between whalers and a native Greenlandic population prompted the dispatch of an expedition to recover the Greenlanders for Christianity and to reassert Danish authority over them. Hans Egede, a Norwegian churchman, was chosen to lead the party. The Lutheran Reformation had taken hold in Scandinavia after contact with Greenland had ceased so the choice of a cleric to lead the expedition while unusual was not without purpose. Egede arrived in Greenland on July 3, 1721 only to discovered that the Norse inhabitants were long gone. Egede and his wife, Gertrud Rask, stayed on. They achieved a certain measure of success in gaining acceptance for Christianity and Scandinavian culture among the Inuit.
Greenland was closed to most foreign ships and The Royal Greenland Trading Company was granted a monopoly on trade with the island in 1774. The monopoly served a twofold purpose. It reserved a rather lucrative trade in furs and whale products to the Danes but was also meant to protect the Inuit from exploitation and diseases from which they had no immunity. The trade monopoly and restricted entry policies continued until after the Second World War.
THE WHOLE ISLAND?
Danish colonial administration covered a mere 46,470 of Greenland’s 827,000 square miles prior to 1921. So who owned the rest? Sovereignty could be established by occupation or by virtue of prior exploration under the international laws of the day. Danish claims to the whole of Greenland could be reasonably challenged. The British could point to the discoveries of Hudson, Frobisher or Franklin; the Americans to those of Henson and Peary. Norwegians and Icelanders would not easily part with "Erik the Red’s land", not even the barren ice cap first crossed by Fridjtof Nansen.
The United States relinquished its claim in January 1917 in conjunction with its purchase of the Danish West Indies (U.S. Virgin Islands). The Wilson administration was preparing to enter World War I and wanted to establish a base on the islands to protect the Panama Canal and Caribbean shipping from U-boat attacks. The sale was a matter of heated debate in Denmark. American concessions on the Greenland issue were meant to smooth things over with opponents of the sale. Great Britain and Sweden concurred with the American decision not to oppose the extension of Danish sovereignty to the whole of Greenland but Norway was not swayed.
Norwegian whalers harvested 3,000,000 kroner worth of leviathans from the waters off northeastern Greenland in 1920. The Danish Foreign Ministry responded with a note formally notifying Oslo that it considered the whole of Greenland including its coastal waters to be a part of Denmark’s colonial empire on July 2, 1921. The Norwegians knew they stood little chance of supplanting Danish sovereignty over the island but Oslo continued to press its claims in hopes of wresting fishing rights and a relaxation of the trade monopoly. The dispute dragged on for a dozen years. Norway issued declarations annexing lengthy sectors of Greenland’s northeastern shore and sent small parties of hunters to occupy them. The Danes built towns in the disputed areas and enticed Inuit from overpopulated regions to settle in them with offers of free housing and supplies. The contending parties agreed to submit their dispute to the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague for adjudication in 1930. The Icelandic parliament authorized its government to intervene in the case on behalf of that country’s claims to Greenland. A rather unusual action coming at a time when Denmark was still responsible for the conduct of Icelandic foreign policy. The Norwegians expanded their claims while the Court was in the midst of its deliberations. The Court ruled in favor or Denmark on April 5, 1933. The decision was accepted by all the parties.
ALONE
Advances in the aeronautical and meteorological sciences in the years just after World War I made certain that Greenland would play an important part in the strategic planning of any future war fought on both sides of the Atlantic.
Greenland was the factory that manufactured northern Europe’s weather. The skies over Greenland were a fairly reliable forecaster of those to be encountered by aviators engaged in the prosecution of an air war over the continent.
Greenland’s position astride the shortest air routes between the continents could put the ports of either within range of bombardment by whichever side could build airfields there.
Greenland possessed the world’s only commercially exploitable deposits of cryolite, a mineral used in the process by which aluminum is extracted from bauxite and vital to the production of aircraft.
The fate of Greenland became a concern not only for the Allies but also for the United States in the aftermath of the German occupation of Denmark on April 9, 1940. The need to counter any claims Germany might make in regards to Greenland as a result of its having established a protectorate over Denmark while still maintaining American neutrality put the Roosevelt administration in a tricky position. The dilemma was swiftly resolved. Hendrik Kauffman, the Danish Minister to Washington, was called in for consultation the following day. The Minister accepted the American assertion that Greenland was a part of the North American continent and subject to the Monroe Doctrine. Roosevelt now had a pretext for intervening without declaring war. The President proclaimed Greenland’s freedom from German control a vital American interest. The first U.S. Consul General to Greenland, James K. Penfield, was appointed a few weeks later.
Greenland was in a precarious position, cutoff from its mother country and sole trading partner by an Allied blockade and an Axis occupation. The local administrative councilors met in Godhavn on May 3rd. They voted to assume executive and legislative powers that the Danish Government was no longer able to exercise and passed a resolution calling on the United States to protect Greenland’s interests. Representatives of the American Red Cross were sent to investigate the island’s food supply. Eske Brun, the Governor of Northern Greenland, went to New York and negotiated a trade agreement under which the United States agreed to accept $1,000,000 worth of Greenland products in exchange for American supplies.
THE AMERICAN PROTECTORATE
The United States came under increasing pressure the British and Canadians to take an active role in the defense of Greenland. Sightings of aircraft over the northeast coast and the capture of a ship carrying meteorological instruments provided clear evidence of German intentions towards Greenland.
The Danish Minister to Washington, Hendrik Kauffman marked the first anniversary of the German occupation of Denmark by signing an agreement with Secretary of State Cordell Hull which placed Greenland under the protective custody of the United States for the duration of the war. The Danish diplomat acted independently of the German controlled government in Copenhagen. The United States reiterated its recognition of Danish sovereignty and agreed to assist Greenland in maintaining its existing status and to respect existing laws pertaining to the native population and internal administration. To further these ends, the Americans were granted the right to maintain and operate landing fields, seaplane bases, radio and meteorological stations; to install fortifications and to take any measures need to insure their efficient operation, including the improvement of harbors, roads and communications. President Roosevelt announced the agreement the following day and stated that, "we propose to make sure that when the German invasion of Denmark has ended, Greenland will remain a Danish colony."
The United States Coast Guard’s Greenland Patrol was formed under the command of Edward H. "Iceberg" Smith in June, 1941 to defend Greenland, to support the Army in establishing bases for use in ferrying aircraft to the British Isles and to prevent the Germans from conducting operations in northeast Greenland. The Coast Guard’s cutter and amphibious aircraft patrols coordinated their efforts with those of the Greenland Sledge Patrol, a small force of Danes and Greenlanders equipped with dogsleds, who scouted the inland terrain for signs of German landing parties. U.S. Army Air Corps bombers were available to strike at suspected enemy bases when they were too big for the Sledge Patrol to tackle or too remote for the Coast Guard to land troops. The Patrol thwarted a half dozen serious attempts to establish German weather stations over the course of the war
Greenland played an important role in the shipment of American aircraft to the European Theater. American military engineers began constructing, "the great aircraft carrier of the arctic" in September 1941 under the direction of Colonel Bernt Balchen. The first landingfield, code named "Bluie West", was built at Narsarssuak in southern Greenland. Other Bluies were built at Sondre Stromfjord and Gronnedal.
Greenland’s climate posed as much of, if not a greater, to the American troops stationed there as a the possibility of German attack. The experience of military engineers sent to build a loran station near the Inuit village of Fredericksdaal was not entirely atypical. The construction battalion arrived on site in November 1942 and set up camp in canvas tents. It soon became apparent that the tents were not up to their assigned task and lumber was shipped in from Boston. An impressive collection of wooden structures was assembled over the next two months. On New Year’s Eve 1942, a howling gale descended on the base. Winds reaching 165 mph carried off practically ever stick of timber. The commander of the operation later reported that when last seen the buildings "where headed somewhere in the direction of Boston, Mass.". The problem was ultimately solved by placing Nissen huts in 6 foot deep trenches and burying them under sand.
AFTERMATH
American troops remained in Greenland after the war. German troops remained in control of Denmark until May 5, 1945 when they were surrendered along with those in Holland and Northwestern Germany to General Montgomery’s 21st Army Group. The Danes requested a revision to the terms of the Hull - Kauffman Agreement in May 1947 by which time the Americans were beginning to realize Greenland’s value as a base of operations for pursuing the Cold War. Negotiations drug on until 1951 when a new agreement governing the presence of American forces in Greenland was signed.
Few of the Allied troops who served in or passed through Greenland during World War II had any contact with the local population. Iceberg Smith was an old Arctic hand who had witnessed the devastating effects of tuberculosis and measles on the Inuit populations of Alaska and the Canadian Arctic and believe that minimizing fraternization was in the best interest of the indigenous people.
The Danish Government established a commission to study Greenland’s future in 1948. The Commission’s findings resulted in a liberalization of trade and tourism regulations after 1950. Greenland was made an integral part of the Kingdom of Denmark and allocated two elected representatives in the lower house of the Danish parliament in 1953. Greenland was granted Home Rule in 1979.
Note on names: Greenland like many other post-colonial countries has instituted a policy of replacing European place names with Greenlandic ones. The English and/or Danish place names in use during the contemporary period have been used in this article. A list of Greenlandic place names and their English and/or Danish equivalents is available on the Greenland National Tourist Board’s Greenland Guide Website (see links).
by Richard Doody
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