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Comment by fl7305 | Hacker News Reader

> colonial remnant

The whole southern part of Greenland was empty when Denmark landed there a thousand years ago.

Bad weather and the Inuit managed to kill off the Danish settlers after that, before they returned a few hundred years later.

So the Danish were one of the original settlers of Greenland. Not "colonizers".

Or do you call the Inuit "colonizers" too, since they spread to lands outside of the original home?

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That whole post parent is woefully uninformed, talking as if Greenland is actually green or otherwise suitable for sustained guerrilla warfare.

It’s not, towns are solely on the coast and rely on the sea for a reason.

The talk of reasons for might make right is simplistic as well.

Large areas in Greenland is actually green though. Its a wilderness paradise.

Depends what you mean by large areas. Most of it is an kce sheet, the interior is uninhabitable and the habitable sections are hundreds of miles apart.

Depends what I mean with large areas? Ever been to Greenland?

Greenland is about 25% of the US excluding Alaska, the ice sheet covers 80% of that.

This means that the ice free area of Greenland is a bit larger than California. Thats the third largest state in the US. I would say that is a large area.

I’m sure the low shrubs and lichen will provide excellent coverage for the proposed resistance that hide in the wilderness…

I hadn’t realized Greenlanders are 6 inch tall so I’d discounted that possibility due to the essentially zero forest coverage.

I think what I mean by colonial remnant is "administration and control from afar", not "subjugation of indigenous peoples", and it's concerned with what's happening now, rather than what happened 1000 or more years ago and it's no longer particularly relevant. By remnant, I mean that it's administered by Denmark as a byproduct of a colonial gold rush, not because they are the best entity for that job.

USA had its own legislative assemblies too before the declaration of Independence, look what happened.

The vikings landed there, not Denmark, who were Norse, Erik the Red was from Norway (But was considered by then an Icelander exile?). Before Danish control Greenland was a Norwegian colony, this was the colony that died out.

Norse colonisation tended to reflect their origin e.g. the Norwegians colonised the north west of Scotland and Iceland, which were more similar to Norway; Danes went to England and Normandy which were more southerly, flatter and more fertile, much like Denmark; the Swedes with their long Baltic coastline turned their attentions eastward.

Denmark got the North Atlantic islands through the union with Norway, and retained them after Norway became independent.

after the Norwegian colony died out, another attempt was made when Denmark and Norway were in a union.

I know, but that was much later and had a very different dynamic, due to climatic changes etc.

The earlier Norse colonisation of Greenland seemed to consist of farmers and independent settlers, mostly via Iceland. In some areas, they never interacted with Inuit, or rarely.

The later effort seems more focussed on Christian missions to the natives, and commercial whaling and sealing.

The old settlers were mostly from Norway and Iceland, with a few Scottish and Irish slaves thrown in.

Very few Danes. The Danes mostly colonised the north of England, with Norwegians taking Scotland, Ireland and the North Atlantic islands.

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