Kujataa Greenland: Norse and Inuit Farming at the Edge of the Ice Cap

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Kujataa Greenland: A Subarctic Farming Landscape Bridging Two Cultures

Kujataa Greenland, located in the southernmost tip of the world's largest island, is a remarkable testament to human resilience and adaptability. This subarctic farming landscape, inscribed onto the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2017, stands as a unique fusion of Norse and Inuit cultures, each bringing their distinct practices to create a harmonious coexistence in one of the harshest environments on Earth.

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UNESCO Description of the World Heritage Site

Kujataa is a subarctic farming landscape located in the southern region of Greenland. It bears witness to the cultural histories of the Norse farmer-hunters who started arriving from Iceland in the 10th century and of the Inuit hunters and Inuit farming communities that developed from the end of the 18th century. Despite their differences, the two cultures, European Norse and Inuit, created a cultural landscape based on farming, grazing and marine mammal hunting. The landscape represents the earliest introduction of farming to the Arctic, and the Norse expansion of settlement beyond Europe.

UNESCO Justification of the World Heritage Site

Criterion (v): Kujataa is an outstanding example of human settlement. Although marginal for farming, the relatively mild climate of southern Greenland has allowed the development of settlements based on farming and hunting during two major historical periods: the Norse Greenlandic farming settlement from the 10th to the 15th centuries, and Inuit-European farming from the 1780s to the present. Norse Greenlandic and Inuit farming settlement have resulted in distinctive and vulnerable cultural landscape based on land use practices within a specific ecological niche that could support farming and pastoralism when complemented with the hunting of marine mammals. The specific climatic conditions that allowed two different cultural traditions to develop land use, settlement and subsistence within this extreme setting have allowed the Inuit farming landscape to reveal and visualize the earlier Norse settlements in an exceptional way.

Encyclopedia Record: Kujataa

Kujataa is a sub-arctic farming landscape in the southern region of Greenland. It is the first known example of agriculture in the Arctic, and the oldest evidence of the Old Norse culture spreading outside Europe. The unique juxtaposition of farming and hunting for marine mammals that occurred in the region from the 10th through 15th centuries and from the 18th century to today headlined the region's inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2017.

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