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Summary

The chapter discusses the period from the loss of communication with Greenland until the mid-seventeenth century. During this time Greenland existed primarily as a cultural memory negotiated in European texts. The focus is on the most central texts that established what we may call Greenland’s discursive terrain. It is examined how a dualistic perception of Greenland came to dominate European representations. These were the themes of wealth and violence. Central to the account of early colonial Greenland is the mid-fourteenth-century report by the church official Ívar Bárdarson, to which the chapter pays particular attention. There is also a discussion of how Inuit legends negotiated a memory of the European colonists. These legends may appear to provide an Indigenous account of the violent clashes between peoples in Greenland. Yet the Inuit legends were not only solicited and written down by missionaries, they were also disseminated by Europeans in print – in effect co-opting Indigenous tales as part of the West’s repertoire.

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1 - Land of Wealth and Violence

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1 - Land of Wealth and Violence

Summary