GREENLAND. - It is the largest island (2,175 sq. km.) on earth. The name (Grönland = "green land") was given to it by the Norsemen, who were the first to settle there in the 10th century. Only a little more than 300,000 sq. km. along the coasts are free from the immense and mighty sheet of ice that covers it entirely and masks its relief.
On the less inhospitable and cold western coast live 20,013 inhabitants; barely 1,371 on the eastern one, all of them natives (Eskimos), except for 569 Europeans. Of the tiny inhabited centers none reaches 1,000 inhabitants; the capital Godthab (western coast) has 744. The prevailing occupations are fishing, hunting (whales, seals, bears) and breeding (reindeer, sheep, arctic foxes). At Ivigtut cryolite is mined, at Arsuk coal. Greenland is a Danish colony, over which the North American occupation has continued since May 1940.
Bibliography3 works
Giuseppe Caraci
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Discovered around the year 1000 by Erik the Red. A few years later Christianity was introduced there from Norway and the bishopric of G. was established (1124) with its seat at Gardar, in the vicinity of present-day Julianhaab. At first dependent on the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, then on that of Lund, the diocese was subjected in the middle of the 12th century to the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Nidaros (Drontheim). In the 13th century Gardar counted 16 churches and 2 convents; in 1926 the ruins of the cathedral of St. Nicholas, erected in 1150 by Bishop Arnald, were excavated. In 1261 the king of Norway Haakon Haakonsson proclaimed his sovereignty over G., but after the great plague of 1348, which raged throughout all Europe, communications between G. and Norway became ever more infrequent. At the same time the Scandinavian colonists were left drained by continuous struggles with the pagan Eskimos, who destroyed almost all the churches; nor was repopulation any longer possible.
Of G., an inhospitable land, no one wished to hear anything more, nor did the bishops appointed by the popes intend to reside there. Around 1520 the energetic archbishop of Nidaros, Erik Valkendorf, wished to send an expedition to G. to reconquer it for civilization and for the Church, but, having fallen into disfavor with King Christian II, his plan could not be carried out. Only in 1721 did this arctic land re-enter the civil community through the efforts of the Norwegian Protestant pastor Hans Egede, who led an expedition to the coasts of western G. In 1776 Christian VII of Denmark declared trade with G. a State monopoly. After the Treaty of Kiel (1814), which brought about the separation of Norway from Denmark, G. remained subject to Danish sovereignty, but, at the end of the First World War, there was a dispute between Copenhagen and Oslo over sovereignty over eastern G., a disagreement resolved in 1933 by the Permanent Court of International Justice, which attributed sovereignty over it to Denmark.
Bibliography5 works
Silvio Furlani