Greenland

The world's largest island, populated by fewer people than a small town, and steadily converting colonial status into something else. Inuit of the Thule culture arrived around 1200, the last of several waves reaching back four thousand years, and their descendants are the Kalaallit who make up most of the population today. Norse settlers under Erik the Red arrived in 986 and farmed the southern fjords for four and a half centuries before vanishing in the fifteenth, for reasons still argued over - cooling climate, soil exhaustion, isolation, or simply leaving. Denmark-Norway recolonised in 1721 and ran the island as a closed trading monopoly into the twentieth century, restricting who could enter. Norway contested ownership and lost at the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1933. The Second World War severed the colony from occupied Denmark and put it under American protection, and the US has kept a base at Thule ever since, having offered to buy the island in 1946. Colonial status formally ended in 1953 when Greenland became a Danish county, a change accompanied by forced relocations and a policy of removing children to Denmark for schooling. Home rule came in 1979 and self-government in 2009, which recognises Greenlanders as a people with the right to independence. It left the European Communities in 1985 over fishing. The ice sheet is losing mass measurably. Nuuk is the capital and holds about a third of the population. The island covers over two million square kilometres, most of it under ice. Kalaallisut is the sole official language. Its northern tip is the closest permanent land to the North Pole.

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