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 BC. Their descendants apparently died out and were succeeded by several other groups migrating from continental North America. There has been no evidence discovered that Greenland was known to Europeans until the 10th century, when Icelandic Vikings settled on its southwestern coast, which seems to have been uninhabited when they arrived. The ancestors of the Inuit Greenlanders who live there today appear to have migrated there later, around AD 1200, from northwestern Greenland. While the Inuit survived in the icy world of the Little Ice Age, the early Norse settlements along the southwestern coast disappeared, leaving the Inuit as the only inhabitants of the island for several centuries. During this time, Denmark-Norway, apparently believing the Norse settlements had sur
La historia de Groenlandia es una historia de la vida bajo condiciones árticas extremas: actualmente, una capa de hielo cubre alrededor del ochenta por ciento de la isla, restringiendo la actividad humana en gran parte a las costas. Se cree que los primeros humanos llegaron a Groenlandia alrededor de 2500 a.C. Sus descendientes aparentemente murieron y fueron sucedidos por varios otros grupos migrando desde el continente de América del Norte. No ha habido evidencia descubierta de que Groenlandia era conocida a los europeos hasta el siglo 10, cuando los vikingos islandeses se asentaron en su costa suroeste, que parece haber sido deshabitado cuando llegaron. Los antepasados de los inuit groenlandeses que viven allí hoy parecen haber migrado allí más tarde, alrededor de AD 1200, desde el noroeste de Groenlandia. Mientras que los inuit sobrevivieron en el mundo helado de la Pequeña Edad de Hielo, los primeros asentamientos noruegos a lo largo de la costa suroeste desaparecieron, dejando a los inuit como los únicos de