Etah is an abandoned settlement in the Avannaata

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

in northern

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland i ...

. It was a starting point of discovery expeditions to the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...

and the landing site of the last migration of the

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

from the Canadian Arctic.

Geography

The village was located on the shores of

Foulk Fjord Foulk Fjord is a fjord in Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. Geography Located near Reindeer Point, the fjord is about wide and several miles long with cliffs on each side. Brother John's Glacier terminates at the eastern end of ...

near Reindeer Point. The fjord is about wide and several kilometres long with cliffs on each side. Brother John's Glacier terminates at the eastern end of the fjord. At the foot of the glacier is Lake Alida, a small body of frozen fresh water. The northern end of Baffin Bay west of the former village, narrowing into

Nares Strait , other_name = , image = Map indicating Nares Strait.png , alt = , caption = Nares Strait (boxed) is between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. , image_bathymetry = , alt_bathymetry ...

between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, is usually frozen from October to July.

History

Last migration to Greenland

Etah lies on the ancient migration route from the north of the Canadian Arctic with several waves of ancient migrants passing through the area from the northbound Independence I and Independence II cultures 4,400 and 2,700 years ago, respectively, to the southbound

Thule culture The Thule (, , ) or proto-Inuit were the ancestors of all modern Inuit. They developed in coastal Alaska by the year 1000 and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people o ...

migrants less than a thousand years ago. It is also the point where the last migration of the Inuit from Baffin Island reached the coast of Greenland in 1865. An Inuit

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spir ...

( kl, angakok) named Qidlaq led the migrants from Baffin Island alongside the coast of Ellesmere Island for seven years, crossing the strait to Etah. The group split there, with some returning to

Pond Inlet Pond Inlet ( iu, Mittimatalik, lit=the place where Mittima is buried) is a small, predominantly Inuit community in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada, located on northern Baffin Island. To the Inuit the name of the place "is and always h ...

in Canada at a cost of many lives. Inhabitants of

Pituffik Pituffik is a former settlement in northern Greenland, located at the eastern end of Bylot Sound by a tombolo known as ''Uummannaq'', near the current site of the American Thule Air Base. The former inhabitants were relocated to the present-day t ...

, later relocated to

Qaanaaq Qaanaaq (), formerly known as Thule or New Thule, is the main town in the northern part of the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. It is one of the northernmost towns in the world. The inhabitants of Qaanaaq speak the local Inukt ...

, are partially descended from this last group of Arctic migrants to Greenland.

20th century

Etah was used in the past as a base camp for several Arctic expeditions, including

Knud Rasmussen Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (; 7 June 1879 – 21 December 1933) was a Greenlandic–Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology" (now often known as Inuit Studies or Greenlandic and Arctic Studie ...

's expeditions to the northern coast of Greenland, Robert Peary's failed attempts at the North Pole, the ill-fated

Crocker Land Expedition The Crocker Land Expedition took place in 1913. Its purpose was to investigate the existence of Crocker Land, a huge island supposedly sighted by the explorer Robert Peary from the top of Cape Colgate in 1906. It is now believed that Peary fraud ...

of 1913, the Humphrey Expedition of 1934–35, the MacGregor Arctic Expedition in 1937–38, and the Haig Thomas Expedition of 1938. Descendants of Peary and the local Inuit still live in Qaanaaq. Etah was once the most-northerly populated settlement in the world, while

Annoatok Annoatok or Anoritooq, located at , was a small hunting station in Greenland on Smith Sound about north of Etah. It is now abandoned. History Annoatok was used as a base by Frederick Cook during his Arctic expedition of 1908–09, when he cla ...

, located approximately to the north, was only a seasonally-occupied hunting camp. The village was abandoned with the Inuit moving south to Pituffik due to the harsh climate. In 1984, a group of Greenlanders from Qaanaaq moved to Etah in an attempt to repopulate the village. The attempt failed, with the hunters unable to support themselves and their families with income from animal hides, as well as unable to sever connections with the settled life and the amenities of Qaanaaq. The huts of the former village are still standing. Today, Etah is seldom visited except by occasional hunter visitors in the summertime because of abundance of

walrus The walrus (''Odobenus rosmarus'') is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in the fami ...

es and polar bears.

References

{{Authority control Former populated places in Greenland