ABSTRACT
Greenland is a late offshoot from the European family of Christian nations. In East Greenland, the Inuit were never completely unaware of the rest of the world since trade routes between West and East Greenland existed. Late in the twelfth century, the people belonging to the so-called "Neo-Eskimo culture" arrived in Greenland from America, without knowing, of course, that their arrival marked their impending absorption into the multicultural North Atlantic empire ruled by the distant Norwegian king. Conforming to general centripetal migration patterns in Europe, after the Black Death had created space in formerly over-populated areas, the Norsemen left Greenland, the periphery of the old Norwegian empire, in search of more favourable living conditions in the fertile lands of their ancestors. Paraphrasing Matt 3:9, it would be possible to say that new children of Abraham were roused from the rocks of Greenland in the wake of the arrival of the Norwegian missionary Hans Egede.
