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Greenlandic Foodways

Kalaallit nerisassai

National

The food of KALAALLIT NUNAAT: an Arctic country the size of western Europe with about 56,000 people, no roads between towns, an ice sheet over most of it, and settlement confined to the coast. KALAALIMERNIT — "Greenlandic food" — means the hunted and fished food: seal, whale, fish, reindeer, musk ox, seabirds, with berries and plants in the short summer, alongside imported flour, sugar, coffee and tinned goods that have been part of the diet for two centuries. ⚠ A FIRST-CLASS SYSTEM. It is not Danish food, not generic Inuit food, and not generic Arctic food; each of those is an edge.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Kalaallit community documented
  • Greenlanders community documented

Languages: Kalaallisut, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut)

What is recorded

  • Greenland is Nordic by political association. Its food system is Inuit and Arctic, and it is not classified as Scandinavian. documented
  • Greenlandic foodways are not Danish, not generic Inuit and not generic Arctic. Hunting species, practice and diet vary substantially between the five municipalities and between West, East and Polar Greenland, and no practice recorded here is presented as universal across the country. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • part of North Atlantic Foodways documented
  • related to Danish Foodways documented

    Colonisation from 1721, the royal trade monopoly to 1950, and the Kingdom of Denmark — a political and historical relationship. NOT a culinary parentage.

  • related to Faroese Foodways documented

    Two self-governing North Atlantic countries of the Danish Realm with comparable sheep, fish and drying traditions and quite different ones otherwise.

  • related to Icelandic Foodways documented
  • related to Russian Arctic Foodways documented

    Circumpolar comparison.

  • related to Sámi Foodways documented

    ⚠ A COMPARISON, NOT A KINSHIP. Both are Arctic Indigenous systems; Sámi reindeer HERDING and Greenlandic wild reindeer HUNTING are different economies, and the peoples and languages are unrelated.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

  • related to Icelandic Foodways documented

    The Norse settlement of Greenland went from Iceland, and the two countries remain closely tied.

  • related to Inuit Foodways documented

    One circumpolar Inuit food system; Greenlandic and Canadian Inuit share species, technique and language family.

  • related to The Kingdom of Denmark — Foodways Relationship documented

    Political and historical, including the colonial monopoly trade — NOT a parent-child culinary relationship.

Regional cuisines

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.