Norse settlements in Greenland in the context of "Viking Age"

Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. It shares a small 1.2 km border with Canada on Hans Island. Citizens of Greenland are full citizens of Denmark and of the European Union. Greenland is one of the Overseas Countries and Territories of the European Union and is part of the Council of Europe. It is the world's largest island, and lies between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland's Kaffeklubben Island, off the northern coast, is the world's northernmost undisputed point of land—Cape Morris Jesup on the mainland was thought to be so until the 1960s. The capital and largest city is Nuuk. Economically, Greenland is heavily reliant on aid from Denmark, amounting to nearly half of the territory's total public revenue.

Though a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with the European kingdoms of Norway and Denmark for more than a millennium, beginning in 986. Greenland has been inhabited at intervals over at least the last 4,500 years by circumpolar peoples whose forebears migrated there from what is now Canada. Norsemen from Norway settled the uninhabited southern part of Greenland beginning in the 10th century (having previously settled Iceland), and their descendants lived in Greenland for 400 years until disappearing in the late 15th century. The 13th century saw the arrival of Inuit.

The history of Greenland is a history of life under extreme Arctic conditions: currently, an ice sheet covers about eighty percent of the island, restricting human activity largely to the coasts. The first humans are thought to have arrived in Greenland around 2500 BCE. Their descendants most likely died out and were replaced and succeeded by several other human groups migrating from continental North America since then. There has been no evidence discovered that Greenland was known to Norsemen until the 9th century CE, when Norse Icelandic explorers settled on its southwestern coast. The ancestors of the Greenlandic Inuit who live there today appear to have migrated there later, around the year 1200, across the Nares Strait from northern Canada.

While Inuit survived in the icy world of the Little Ice Age, the early Norse settlements, known as the Eastern Settlement, along the southwestern coast disappeared, leaving Inuit as the only inhabitants of the island for several centuries. During this time, Denmark–Norway, apparently believing the Norse settlements had survived, continued to claim sovereignty over the island despite the lack of any contact between the Norsemen (specifically Icelanders) installed in Greenland and their Scandinavian brethren. In 1721, aspiring to become a colonial power, Denmark-Norway sent a missionary expedition to Greenland with the stated aim of reinstating Christianity among descendants of the Norse Greenlanders who may have converted back to paganism. When the missionaries found no descendants of the Norse Greenlanders, they baptised the Inuit they found living there instead. Denmark-Norway then developed trading colonies along the coast and imposed a trade monopoly and other colonial privileges on the area.

The Viking Age (about 800–1050 CE) was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their homeland of Scandinavia but also to any place significantly settled by Scandinavians during the period. Although few of the Scandinavians of the Viking Age were Vikings in the sense of being engaged in piracy, they are often referred to as Vikings as well as Norsemen.

Voyaging by sea from their homelands in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, the Norse people settled in the British Isles, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Normandy, and the Baltic coast and along the Dnieper and Volga trade routes in eastern Europe, where they were also known as Varangians. They also briefly settled in Newfoundland, becoming the first Europeans to reach North America. The Norse-Gaels, Normans, Rus' people, Faroese, and Icelanders emerged from these Norse colonies. The Vikings founded several kingdoms and earldoms in Europe: the Kingdom of the Isles (Suðreyjar), Orkney (Norðreyjar), York (Jórvík) and the Danelaw (Danalǫg), Dublin (Dyflin), Normandy, and Kievan Rus' (Garðaríki). The Norse homelands were also unified into larger kingdoms during the Viking Age, and the short-lived North Sea Empire included large swathes of Scandinavia and Britain. In 1021, the Vikings achieved the feat of reaching North America—the date of which was not determined until a millennium later.