Greenland - Viking, Inuit, Colonization: The Inuit are believed to have crossed to northwest Greenland from North America, using the islands of the Canadian Arctic as stepping-stones, in a series of migrations that stretched from at least 2500 bce to the early 2nd millennium ce.

Although Norse Vikings initially succeeded at merging their European lifestyle with Greenland’s harsh terrain, they failed to adopt key Inuit survival techniques when presented with severe climate change, and thus fell victim to nature while the Inuit prevailed.

By sometime in the 15th century, Greenland’s Norse seem to have disappeared entirely, their territory eventually overrun and colonized by the Inuit, and their story largely forgotten by the modern world.

Early theories to explain their disappearance revolved around imagined conflict with the Inuit, Greenland's isolation from the perceived safety blanket that was Europe, and even inbreeding supposedly ruining the originally fine physical specimens that were the Vikings, but have since been discarded for lack of evidence.

Following the disappearance of the Norse population, expeditions from England and Norway came to Greenland throughout the 16th and 17th centuries and from the 17th and 18th centuries it was primarily the European whalers who came into contact with the Inuits.