Ammassalik wooden maps are carved, tactile maps of the

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 ...

ic coastlines. In the 1880s, Gustav Holm led an expedition to the Ammassalik coast of eastern

, where he met several

Tunumiit Tunumiit or Iivit are Greenlandic Inuit from Tunu or Kangia, the eastern part of Greenland. The Tunumiit live now mainly in Tasiilaq and Ittoqqortoormiit and are a part of the Arctic people known collectively as the Inuit. The singular for Tunu ...

, or Eastern Greenland

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 Territorie ...

communities, who had had no prior direct contact with Europeans. He returned to Denmark with a set of three-dimensional wooden maps of the coast around , carved by a native of Umivik named Kunit.

History

Kunit approached Holm on February 8, 1885, and sold the maps representing the coast from Sermiligak to Kangerdlugsuatsiak. Kunit returned on March 21 with another piece representing the peninsula between Sermiligak and Kangerdluarsikajik. Upon Holm's return, the maps were deposited along with the rest of the collection at the

National Museum of Denmark The National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet) in Copenhagen is Denmark's largest museum of cultural history, comprising the histories of Danish and foreign cultures, alike. The museum's main building is located a short distance from Strøget ...

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...

. As of 1948 the maps were still in Copenhagen; copies were deposited in the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

. At some point the maps were transferred to the

Greenland National Museum The Greenland National Museum ( kl, Nunatta Katersugaasivia Allagaateqarfialu) is located in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. It was one of the first museums established in Greenland, inaugurated in the mid-1960s. The museum has many artefacts rela ...

Nuuk Nuuk (; da, Nuuk, formerly ) is the capital and largest city of Greenland, a constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark. Nuuk is the seat of government and the country's largest cultural and economic centre. The major cities from other coun ...

, which was established in the mid-1960s. write that the "only other known example" of such a map is a specimen at the

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States. It ...

museum — item 896.7, 62154 — which is probably a copy of Kunit's work. In 2000,

Post Greenland Tusass A/S, doing business as Tusass (formerly Greenland Technical Organization and Tele-Post), is a Greenlandic postal and telecommunications company dating back to 1879. Tusass is the largest telecommunications company in Greenland. The company ...

issued a stamp designed by Anne-Birthe Hove featuring the coastal map, as part of its "Greenland's Cultural Heritage" series. The Greenland National Museum loaned out the maps for a 2007-8 exhibition at the

Field Museum of Natural History The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

entitled ''Maps: Finding Our Place in the World'', which also traveled to the

Walters Art Museum The Walters Art Museum, located in Mount Vernon-Belvedere, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is a public art museum founded and opened in 1934. It holds collections established during the mid-19th century. The museum's collection was amassed ...

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...

Features

Related maps

Marshall Islands stick chart Stick charts were made and used by the Marshallese to navigate the Pacific Ocean by canoe off the coast of the Marshall Islands. The charts represented major ocean swell patterns and the ways the islands disrupted those patterns, typically d ...

Straight-line diagram A straight-line diagram (abbreviated SLD) is a diagram of a road where the road is shown as a straight line. Such diagrams are usually produced by a highway department, and display features along the road, including bridges and intersecting roa ...

Notes

References

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History

Features

Related maps

Notes

References

Further reading