ABSTRACT
The conceptualization of marginality depends very much on the viewpoint of the observer. For people living in large metropolitan areas, there can probably be little more marginal than living in a small Arctic community under harsh climatic conditions, and with a limited infrastructure. The concepts of towns and villages may be difficult to use in connection with the situation in the Arctic in general and definitely in Greenland. Arctic communities have experienced unprecedented cultural, political, economic, and environmental changes, from a pre-industrial situation where income and livelihood were based on the harvesting of the region's natural resources, and with minimal communication with the rest of the world. The development of Arctic settlements from the traditional nomadic or transhumanic, where people needed to be mobile in order to follow the fluctuating resources, to the present sedentary state, which has been characterized by two marked mechanisms. These are: the development of a material base and the imposition of different institutional structures.
