Greenland has been settled by multiple waves of people over roughly 4,500 years. The first arrivals were Paleo-Eskimo hunters who crossed from the Canadian Arctic around 2400 BC, followed centuries later by the Dorset culture, the Norse Vikings, and finally the Thule people, who are the direct ancestors of today’s Greenlandic Inuit. No single group has an unbroken claim to the island. Some thrived for centuries and vanished; others adapted and endured.
The First Settlers: Paleo-Eskimo Cultures
The earliest known people in Greenland belonged to two related Paleo-Eskimo groups: the Independence I culture in the far north and the Saqqaq culture on the west coast. Both appeared around 2400 BC, and their ancestors had crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia roughly 5,500 years ago in a migration completely separate from the one that produced modern Native Americans and Inuit. Genome sequencing of a 4,000-year-old Saqqaq man, recovered from permafrost-preserved hair, confirmed his closest living relatives are northeast Asian peoples like the Chukchi and Koryaks of Siberia, not today’s Greenlandic Inuit.
The Independence I people lived in one of the harshest environments on Earth: Peary Land, at Greenland’s northern tip. They survived in small family groups of four to six people per tent dwelling, with several families forming bands of 20 to 30. Muskox was their primary prey, supplemented by ringed seal, Arctic char, migratory birds, and polar bear. They moved seasonally, spending spring and summer near the coast and retreating to inland lakes in fall and winter. By around 2000 BC, some had migrated south along the east coast, and the culture faded from Peary Land by roughly 1800 BC.
The Saqqaq culture, concentrated around Disko Bay in West Greenland, lasted considerably longer, from about 2400 to 1400 BC. Harp seal was their staple food. The Saqqaq represent the longest-lasting Paleo-Eskimo presence in Greenland, persisting for a full millennium before disappearing for reasons that remain unclear.
The Dorset Culture
Around 800 BC, a new wave of Arctic peoples arrived: the Dorset culture. They appeared first in the Canadian High Arctic and northwestern Greenland, eventually spreading to northern and southwestern parts of the island. The Dorset were skilled ice-edge hunters, thriving in cold conditions by targeting marine mammals at the boundary between open water and sea ice.
Their fortunes were tied directly to climate. When a prolonged warming trend began around 600 AD, it degraded the sea-ice conditions their hunting economy depended on. The Dorset disappeared from many of their southern territories, though they held on longer in Greenland’s High Arctic. By the time the Thule people arrived centuries later, the Dorset were gone or nearly so. They left no known descendants.
Norse Vikings: Erik the Red’s Colony
The most famous settlement of Greenland began in 985 AD, when Erik the Red led a fleet of about 25 ships from Iceland. Storms sank or turned back nearly half of them, and only around 14 ships made it to the southwest coast. The initial colony numbered roughly 300 to 400 people, who established farms in a region they called the Eastern Settlement.
Erik had been banished from Iceland for three years after killing a neighbor, and he spent his exile exploring Greenland’s coast. He deliberately named it “Greenland” to attract settlers, a marketing tactic that worked. The colony eventually grew to include a Western Settlement farther up the coast, and at its peak the total Norse population reached about 5,000. They raised cattle, sheep, and goats on the relatively mild southwestern fjords, and they exported walrus ivory to Europe, where it commanded high prices.
The Norse lasted roughly 500 years before vanishing entirely. A 2023 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified a previously underappreciated factor: sea-level rise of about 3 meters driven by the advancing Southern Greenland Ice Sheet, which inundated some 204 square kilometers of low-lying coastal land. This flooded the very pastures the Norse depended on for livestock. At the same time, the Medieval Warm Period gave way to the Little Ice Age, shortening growing seasons. European demand for walrus ivory collapsed in the early 1400s as cheaper elephant ivory became available, cutting off a critical trade lifeline. Archaeological evidence shows the Norse gradually shifted from a land-based diet of livestock to a marine diet heavy in seal, a sign of increasing desperation. By the mid-1400s, the settlements were empty.
The Thule Migration: Ancestors of Modern Inuit
The Thule people, ancestors of today’s Greenlandic Inuit, originated in the Bering Strait region of Alaska and began spreading east across the Arctic around 1000 AD. They reached Greenland within a few centuries, overlapping with the declining Norse settlements in the west and south.
What set the Thule apart from earlier Arctic peoples was their technology. They perfected the dog sled for overland travel and built large skin-covered boats called umiaks that could carry entire families and their belongings. They also used kayaks for hunting and developed advanced tools including slate knives and toggling harpoons designed for taking large marine mammals like bowhead whales. This combination of efficient transport and versatile hunting let them exploit both coastal and inland resources across enormous distances.
Unlike the Paleo-Eskimos and the Norse, the Thule adapted successfully to Greenland’s shifting climate. Their descendants, the Kalaallit and other Greenlandic Inuit groups, have maintained a continuous presence on the island for roughly a thousand years, making them Greenland’s longest-surviving inhabitants.
Danish-Norwegian Colonization
In 1721, a Danish-Norwegian clergyman named Hans Egede sailed to Greenland with two goals: find the descendants of the medieval Norse settlers and convert them to Lutheranism. He found no trace of the Norse. The only people living in Greenland were Inuit.
Egede stayed anyway, founding a settlement at Godthåb, now Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. His mission marked the beginning of Danish colonial rule, which would last in various forms until Greenland gained self-governance in 2009. The colony Egede established became the foundation for modern European-style administration on the island, layering a new chapter of settlement onto a history already thousands of years deep.