Conclusion

Summary

The chapters in this book have examined how the memory of the colony ‘at the end of the world’ became an enduring reference point in the Western imagination. I will now summarise the key findings and offer a final synthesis of the central ideas. The Norse colony in Greenland was remembered as a lieu de mémoire – a cultural heritage proudly seen as an extension of Christian Europe, marking an outpost of civilisation and the success of colonisation. Its loss was seen as an amputation. In the centuries after communication was discontinued, Greenland took on an important role in the collective memory of the West and the idea of ‘Greenland’ as a land of wealth and violence was constructed through an array of historiographical, scientific, and popular texts. In this way Greenland was more than a geographical entity; it became a conceptual space.