Ammassalik District

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Ammassalip Communia
Ammassalik District
location
Symbols
coat of arms
coat of arms
Basic data
Country Greenland
Commune Kommuneqarfik Sermersooq
Seat Tasiilaq
surface 243,000 km²
Residents 2949 (January 1, 2019)
density 0 inhabitants per km²

Ammassalik has been a district in eastern Greenland since 2009 .

location

The Ammassalik District is in the east of Greenland. It borders in the north on the district Ittoqqortoormiit , in the south on the district Nanortalik .

history

middle Ages

The district was first sighted by Gunnbjǫrn Úlfsson in the 9th or 10th century when he went off course on the way to Iceland . At the end of the 10th century Snæbjǫrn galti sailed with some men to Greenland to take land there and they wintered there, but the area was not permanently settled.

Erik the Red knew the reports from Greenland and when he was expelled from Iceland he went there, but drove south on the coast and ended up in southern Greenland. This route was then used by seafarers between Greenland and Iceland, although it was significantly longer than the direct sea route. However, ships sank more often in the ice, including around 1028, when Finnr feginn Ketilsson, a nephew of Harald III. died in a sinking and the survivors buried him on land. They called this place Finnsbúðir (not to be confused with the nearby Norwegian station Finnsbu ) and it can be assumed that this place is close to Tasiilaq . At the end of the 12th century, however, this route fell out of use.

As a result, the area fell into oblivion until 1285 the two pastors, the brothers Aðalbrandr and Þorvaldr Helgason rediscovered the east coast of Greenland. In 1289 King Erik II ordered Rólfr to visit the country, but it is unclear whether he actually did so.

In 1385, the wealthy Icelander Bjǫrn jórsalafari Einarsson was driven away and also reached the east coast, discovering that it was inhabited - most likely by Inuit .

Early modern age

Around 1476 King Christian I sent the navigators Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst to Greenland, where they traded with the Inuit on the east coast.

In 1579 King Frederick II sent the Englishman Jacob Allday to find the missing Grænlendingar, but Allday drove to the east coast, which was icy so that he could not go ashore. When he was carried away by a storm, he returned home. The same fate befell the seafarer Mogens Heinesen two years later .

About ten years later, the Icelander Clemens á Látrum i Aðalvík (Clemens from Látrar in the Aðalvík ) fled because he was persecuted on board an English ship and together they went to the east coast of Greenland, where they went ashore and caught birds and fish . It was said that English people regularly drove to East Greenland in the early 17th century.

In 1652 David Danell traveled to East Greenland, but he too was prevented from going ashore by the drift ice. But he named the country he saw after King Friedrich III. This land was probably the island that Kulusuk is on.

Expedition trips to the colonization of Greenland

After West Greenland was colonized, the merchant Peder Olsen Walløe was the first to take an interest in the east coast. From 1751 to 1753 he tried to reach East Greenland from the south. He met some Tunumiit , of which he reported in detail, but the northernmost point of his journey was Cape Walløe (Kangersivasik), so he hardly got across the Kangerlussuatsiaq (Lindenow Fjord), which marks the border between South and East Greenland , out.

In the 18th century it was assumed that the Eystribyggð of the Greenlanders, which Erik the Red had settled at that time, was on the east coast. Therefore, in 1786/87 Poul de Løwenørn , Christian Thestrup Egede and Carl Adolph Rothe unsuccessfully searched for the settlement in East Greenland.

The next expedition was undertaken by Wilhelm August Graah , who came to Ikertivaq Bay in 1829 , which delimits the area actually known as Ammassalik to the west. He assumed that no one would live north of it anymore.

In 1861 the then Udsteds administrator of Saarloq , Ulrik Frederik Rosing, reported that the place Ammassalik, where many people live, would be far to the north on the east coast. At that time, many Tunumiit came to South Greenland, traded there or settled there.

In 1879 Louis Alphonse Mourier traveled with the Ingolf to East Greenland, where they saw the coast of Ammassalik for the first time in over two hundred years.

In September 1883, Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld managed to go ashore in Ammassalik, more precisely in Tasiilaq Bay , which he called Kong Oscars Havn. He was arguably the first European to set foot on the area since the 17th century. He met no people, traveled a little further north and then returned.

From 1883 to 1885 Gustav Frederik Holm undertook the women's boat expedition . At the end of August 1884 they arrived in Ammassalik. The expedition team did not find the Eystribyggð, but counted 548 tunumiit. They wintered there and came into contact with the residents. The population then wished to be Christianized and planned to move to West Greenland, but Holm and his people convinced them to stay there because they were planning to build a station there.

In 1888 Fridtjof Nansen completed his inland ice crossing in the district area, albeit contrary to the plan well south of Ammassalik.

In 1892 Carl Ryder traveled to East Greenland, where he also landed in Tasiilaq. The population was impatient and Ryder promised them that the station would be built in the next few years. At that time only 294 people lived in Ammassalik.

Colonized East Greenland

In 1894 the mission station was finally founded in Tasiilaq . After looking for a suitable location, the choice was made for the place where Nordenskiöld had anchored eleven years earlier.

Around 1900 all Tunumiit lived in Ammassalik, as the inhabitants of Southeast Greenland had all migrated to South Greenland and settled there.

From 1898 to 1900 Georg Carl Amdrup undertook another expedition to East Greenland, during which the coast of the district was mapped. From 1901 to 1902 Christian Kruuse carried out biological studies. From 1905 to 1906 William Thalbitzer explored the language, culture and music of the Tunumiit. In 1912 Alfred de Quervain reached the Sermilik after crossing inland . In 1919 Knud Rasmussen collected myths and legends in Ammassalik.

In 1909 a mission site was established in Kulusuk and in 1915 in Kuummiit . In both places, people said in the early 20th century that Grænlendingar used to live there, but archaeological research has found no evidence of this. However, it is quite possible that the Icelandic seafarers would have wintered in East Greenland, where they made the route regularly.

The Tunumiit were nomads and so there were no permanent and continuously populated living spaces, only summer and winter living spaces and the residents mostly lived in a different place every year. In 1918 there were 22 places to live.

In 1925, Ammassalik was officially a colony and thus placed on an equal footing with the West Greenland colonies. In the same year, the Scoresbysund colony was founded in Ittoqqortoormiit , which was settled from Tasiilaq.

In 1938, residents of the rapidly growing Ammassalik were again relocated, this time to Skjoldungen in southwest Greenland. Skjoldungen became an Udsted in 1960 , but at the same time some residents moved north, where they settled in Umiivik and Pikiittit . In 1964 Skjoldungen was abandoned again and in the early 1970s Ammassalik was again the only inhabited area of ​​the municipality after Umiivik and Pikiittit had given up.

While West Greenland was decolonized in 1953, this was not the case in East Greenland until 1963 and the colony district became the municipality of Ammassalik. During the administrative reform in 2009, the municipality of Ammassalik was incorporated into the Kommuneqarfik Sermersooq and became a district.

places

In addition to the city of Tasiilaq , the following villages are located in the Ammassalik district:

In addition, the following abandoned settlements are in what is now the district area:

There are also some abandoned stations in the Ammassalik district:

coat of arms

Blazon : three capelin .

The name Ammassalik means something like place of capelin , which is why the coat of arms also shows three capelin.

literature

Coordinates: 65 ° 23 ′  N , 37 ° 24 ′  W