Tristan Hughes

About the people who have called this great arctic island their home for centuries, who learnt to thrive in this cold climate and about whom we know a remarkable amount.

This is a story of incredible archaeology, of prehistoric settlements preserved along the coastlines of Greenland, of organic materials, clothing, food, human remains that have survived in the permafrost.

But this is also a story about mythology.

Tales passed down for centuries that reveal more about what these communities believed in.

Together, these fields help tell the fascinating story of Greenland's prehistoric populations, how they lived, and how they viewed the Arctic world around them.

I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of prehistoric Greenland.

Our guest is Dr. Asta Munster, visiting researcher at the University of Copenhagen.

Asta, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

You're more than welcome.

And to explore the prehistoric story of Greenland, I mean, Asta, with everything that's going on in the world at the moment, it feels very important to highlight the long history the people of this land have.

That does stretch back hundreds and hundreds of years into prehistoric times.

And do we have a lot of archaeology surviving, which has been pieced together by archaeologists like yourselves over the years to learn more about these people and how they lived?

That is the incredible fact, isn't it?

You can look at other places that are very cold, whether it's in the Altai Mountains or high up in the Alps, where they do get those rare discoveries of organic material preserved in, as you say, these natural freezers.

to think that there is so much of that surviving in Greenland, that you have this invaluable record to learn more about how these people lived all along the coastline, as you say, all around Greenland.

So not just like the southern tip, you know, further north as well.

That's amazing.

You also mentioned in passing one of the things that survives is baleen.

Now, is that whale blubber?

Is it the bowhead?