The Culture Of Greenland In Glimpses

There is a lot that hides among the rocks. Many secrets. Here I tell about the beginning of my travels. On the coast of East Greenland, I have learned about a rock with petroglyphs, which I have come to investigate and I find more than I could dream of. The rock tells the story of a forgotten whale culture that lived along the Arctic coasts millennia ago and based everything on their whaling. A culture that was completely based on the sea and what it could provide. One discovery follows the other as I wrestle the secrets from the rock and a forgotten ancient culture reveals itself to me and draws me into it. This is the beginning of my travels and the basis of my further search for traces of the forgotten whale culture. This is my translation of some of the writings of the lost explorer Vito de la Vera, who's travels brought him into contact with many lost cultures before he himself was lost.

This book is for anyone who wants a brief introduction to the fascinating cultural traditions of Greenland. Ole G. Jensen, museum leader in Qaqortoq, South Greenland, uses text and pictures to tell of many different aspects of the original culture of Greenland both the spiritual and material. Read about shamans, amulets, tupilaks, drums and masks, dress, dogsleds, kayaks and tools for household and for hunting.

Intended to help students explore ethnic identity—one of the most important issues of the 21st century—this concise, one-stop reference presents rigorously researched content on the national groups and ethnicities of North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Combining up-to-date information with extensive historical and cultural background, the encyclopedia covers approximately 150 groups arranged alphabetically. Each engaging entry offers a short introduction detailing names, population estimates, language, and religion. This is followed by a history of the group through the turn of the 19th century, with background on societal organization and culture and expanded information on language and religious beliefs. The last section of each entry discusses the group in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, including information on its present situation. Readers will also learn about demographic trends and major population centers, parallels with other groups, typical ways of life, and relations with neighbors. Major events and notable challenges are documented, as are key figures who played a significant political or cultural role in the group's history. Each entry also provides a list for further reading and research.

To gain an understanding of the past, it is sometimes useful to test what one has learned by investigating the past. That is what this book is about. It is a continuation of my book, "The Whale Culture of Greenland". Based on the details about the whale culture in Greenland that I learned from rock carvings on a cliff in Eastern Greenland, I and like-minded individuals have built an airship, as it could have been built by a hunter-gatherer culture in the Arctic during the Holocene Maximum, and we will now attempt to fly it around Greenland and propel it with the fuel we can gather from hunting. This is therefore the story of our journey in a hot-air balloon around Greenland and how we managed the long trip north around the island and down along the west coast until we returned to the east coast, facing all the challenges and dangerous situations that arose along the way. It is also the story of what an ancient people could achieve in the distant past and what it tells about their spread in the Arctic and beyond. It is a long and eventful journey that I and my companions undertake, which does not go as expected and certainly does not end as such, but still bears the fruits we desired. The journey is long and tough and constantly tests us, as the Arctic must have tested the whale culture in Greenland's distant past, but we endure it all the way to the abrupt end of the journey, thereby showing that an airborne culture in Greenland could have been possible around the time of the Holocene Maximum.

A deeply intelligent and engrossing narrative that will transform our relationship with water and how we view climate change. The global water crisis is upon us. 1 in 3 people do not have access to safe drinking water; nearly 1 million people die each year as a result. Even in places with adequate freshwater, pollution and poor infrastructure have left residents without basic water security. Luckily, there is a solution to this crisis where we least expect it. Icebergs—frozen mountains of freshwater—are more than a symbol of climate change. In his spellbinding Chasing Icebergs, Matthew Birkhold argues the glistening leviathans of the ocean may very well hold the key to saving the planet. Harvesting icebergs for drinking water is not a new idea. But for the first time in human history, doing so on a massive global scale is both increasingly feasible and necessary for our survival. Chasing Icebergs delivers a kaleidoscopic history of humans’ relationship with icebergs, and offers an urgent assessment of the technological, cultural, and legal obstacles we must overcome to harness this freshwater resource. Birkhold takes readers around the globe, introducing them to a colorful cast of characters with wildly different ideas about how (and if) humans should use icebergs. Sturdy bureaucrats committed to avoiding another Titanic square off against “iceberg cowboys” who wrangle the frozen beasts for profit. Entrepreneurs selling luxury iceberg water for an eye-popping price clash with fearless humanitarians trying to tow icebergs across the globe to eradicate water shortages. Along the way, we meet some of the world’s most renowned scientists to determine how industrial-scale iceberg harvesting could affect the oceans and the poles. And we see firsthand the looming conflict between Indigenous peoples like the Greenlandic Inuit with claims to icebergs and the private corporations that stand to reap massive profits. As Birkhold shepherds readers from Connecticut to South Africa, from Newfoundland to Norway, to Greenland and beyond, he unfurls a visionary argument for cooperation over conflict. It’s not too late for icebergs to save humanity. But we must act fast to form a coalition of scientists, visionaries, engineers, lawyers and diplomats to ensure that the “Cold Rush” doesn’t become a free-for-all.

This critical history of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels covers the series from its inception in the 1970s to the The Hydrogen Sonata (2012), published less than a year before Banks' death. It considers Banks' origins as a writer, the development of his politics and ethics, his struggles to become a published author, his eventual success with The Wasp Factory (1984) and the publication of the first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas (1987). His 1994 essay "A Few Notes on the Culture" is included, along with a range of critical responses to the 10 Culture books he published in his lifetime and a discussion of the series' status as utopian literature. Banks was a complex man, both in his everyday life and on the page. This work aims at understanding the Culture series not only as a fundamental contribution to science fiction but also as a product of its creator's responses to the turbulent times he lived in.

Greenland is becoming a critically important territory in terms of tourism, climate change and competition for resource access, yet it has been poorly represented in academic literature. Tourism now features as a major source of income for the territory alongside fisheries. Cruise tourism is increasing rapidly, and might superficially appear to be best suited to Greenlandic conditions, given the lack of large-scale accommodation infrastructure and almost non-existent land routes between settlements. Ironically, one of the most spectacular tourist attractions is the large number of icebergs that are being calved as the result of glacier retreat and ice cap melting, both appearing to be taking place at ever increasing rates. As a consequence of ice removal, the territory's claimed extensive range of mineral resources, not least rare earth elements and hydrocarbons, are becoming more accessible for exploitation and, thereby, are acting increasingly as the focus for geopolitical competition. This book explores the nature of dynamics between tourism, climate change and the geopolitics of natural resource exploitation in the Arctic and examines their interrelationships specifically in the critical context of Greenland, but within a framework that emphasises the wider global implications of the outcomes of such interrelationships.