The chapter focusses on post-1721 developments, analysing the Dano-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede’s struggle to fit the new observations he made in Greenland into the framework of established ideas promoted in the texts he had read prior to his arrival. The transition from reading about Greenland in books to observing the land in situ led to a crisis of representation as the archive of knowledge that had been stored up over the centuries became difficult to reconcile with experience. The most significant error perpetuated in several texts was the idea that the Eastern Settlement was located on the east coast. Rather than dismiss the many expeditions that sought to reach this fabled settlement as irrelevant to the colonial project that eventually developed on the west coast, the chapter proposes that the search for the settlers and their resource-rich lands is significant for understanding Denmark’s political, religious, and commercial ambitions in Greenland. Attention is also paid to the maps Egede drew of Greenland as they are visual records of how traditional perceptions were allowed to coexist with new empirical data.

The chapter discusses the period from the loss of communication with Greenland until the mid-seventeenth century. During this time Greenland existed primarily as a cultural memory negotiated in European texts. The focus is on the most central texts that established what we may call Greenland’s discursive terrain. It is examined how a dualistic perception of Greenland came to dominate European representations. These were the themes of wealth and violence. Central to the account of early colonial Greenland is the mid-fourteenth-century report by the church official Ívar Bárdarson, to which the chapter pays particular attention. There is also a discussion of how Inuit legends negotiated a memory of the European colonists. These legends may appear to provide an Indigenous account of the violent clashes between peoples in Greenland. Yet the Inuit legends were not only solicited and written down by missionaries, they were also disseminated by Europeans in print – in effect co-opting Indigenous tales as part of the West’s repertoire.

George Angohiatok (pronounced ‘ano-HI-tok’) is a keen observer of Arctic landscapes, animals, and peoples. Raised on the land by his parents and grandparents in the western Canadian Arctic, George talks easily about his deep appreciation for the land and his significant concerns for the future of the Arctic and Inuit. George shares his observations of changes to the physical and social environments – changes he calls overwhelming – through richly detailed personal narratives. In the conversations presented in this chapter, George deftly weaves together changes to both settings, and illustrates the importance of considering our two worlds holistically. George’s story and words are transcribed here with minimal interruption from the other authors. Conventional academic reflections on methodology and literature are found within George’s story and afterwards.

The Arctic is a region that has been understood very much through its environment. Issues of nature and environment have been central themes investigated by both anthropologists and geographers. Much canonical work by geographers and anthropologists has focused on investigating environmental and cultural interactions, using concepts such as landscape, site, or place. The academic disciplines of geography and anthropology have therefore contributed to the process of making Arctics. This chapter examines these contentions.

This chapter provides a snapshot of the recent history of Indigenous political movements in the circumpolar north. Over the past six decades or so, Indigenous peoples across the Arctic have pushed forward with political action and initiatives that have aimed to secure national and international recognition of their rights, land claims, the granting of autonomy, and participation in many of the decision-making processes and institutions of governance that affect their lives and homelands.1 Indigenous peoples’ organizations have also become major actors in Arctic environmentalism and international circumpolar affairs.

At first appearance, asking individuals from and connected to Nunavut, an eastern Arctic jurisdiction of Canada, to contribute to a collection of polar history would seem to be a practical and straightforward request, both for the reader and for the contributors themselves. Yet, as is often the case, the reality of things is not as simple as it first appears.

As most readers are probably aware, many scholars and self-identified experts of polar history do not necessarily live in the polar regions. This is the case for Nunavut. While the contributors to this chapter are well-aware of the extensive expertise, knowledge, skills, generosity of spirit, and critical thinking that exists year-round in the communities that populate Nunavut, this knowledge has not yet found a home in the broader discipline of polar history.

Greenland has been peopled from the west by several different groups and only once – in the late tenth century ad – from the east, this time by Norse farmers from northern Europe. Unlike the mobile Arctic hunters, the Norse settlers were sedentary, and the society they established in southwest Greenland was based on the natural vegetation, hunting, and trade with their homelands. For almost 500 years the Norse population in Greenland thrived, and then it vanished for reasons not yet fully understood. Several explanations have been put forward: that the small Norse society failed because of inflexible social and economic strategies,1 or fell victim to a combination of unfortunate circumstances,2 or (as recently argued) suffered from organized and systematic violence by invading Inuit.

When and why did the originally tropical being, Homo sapiens, enter the circumpolar north? What attracted human societies to this part of the Earth characterized by extreme seasonal variability, long periods of darkness, rough and cold weather, barren tundra, high mountains, ice caps, and vast areas of sea ice? Through analyses of ancient material remains such as stone-built structures, artefacts and bones preserved in cultural layers on dwelling sites, Arctic archaeology provides some insights into these basic questions about the expansion of human societies into the circumpolar north and how they managed to thrive there for millennia.

This brief introduction flags up the problems of song recovery from eras before the advent of music publishing and mechanical recording. It pits assumptions of European colonial superiority against the voices and musical practices of America’s Indigenous people, from the Inuits of Alaska to the Aztecs of Mexico.

From the moment Christopher Columbus used the tinkling of a hawk’s bell to excite the interest of the welcoming Taínos during the First Encounter, music became a weapon of both conquest and resistance in the struggle for America. Here we are introduced to the nightmare of the Spanish conquest as reflected in the recovered Aztec songs of the Cantares mexicanos describing the massacres at Tenochtitlan and Cholula in the 1520s. Following the Spanish mission to Christianize America through the imposition of church music against the holdouts of Indigenous song, the European scramble for the “New World” introduces British explorations of Canada and musical encounters with the Inuits – sometimes against a background of violence, and sometimes in a tenuous moment of peace.

This chapter traces the dramatic geological history that created the terrain on which the nation of Canada is built; examines the theories on the origins of humans in the Americas; and summarizes the economic, social, and political practices that by1500 enabled diverse Indigenous inhabitants, made up of twelve major linguistic groups and more than fifty distinct cultures to thrive in the areas of northern North America that became the nation-state of Canada.

Drawing, along with reading and keeping a personal diary, was one of the middle-class values central to work and pleasure that transferred to shipboard life and encouraged social cohesion on expeditions. While naval officers were expected to produce basic topographical drawings as part of their duties, individuals aboard ship, including non-officers, often created drawings for other reasons. Using original empirical research, this chapter analyses a number of sketches and watercolours by expedition members from all ranks, discusses the practicalities of sketching in the Arctic, and shows how layers of new, and often surprising, information begin to emerge when the visual material is interrogated. The contents of pictures reveal an unexpected array of responses to the Arctic environment and its people. The examination of scientific and personal documentary art from the Franklin searches points to a visual matrix of the Arctic that is far more complex than the peaked icebergs and threatened ships that dominated the public eye.

Chapter 5 brings the reader to the far north to examine the importance of self-determination for Inuit in trading disputes on seals and seal products. Michael Fakhri and Madeleine Redfern focus on how the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization used trade law to construct an Indigenous exemption including a European-imposed determination of Indigenous identity for the purpose of trade in a manner that limits Inuit political and economic options and works against their rights. This chapter emphasizes the importance of Indigenous people continuing to assert their sovereign power and claims for self-determination not just through international law but, more specifically, through international trade law.