Monday, February 20, 2012

Greenland National Museum and Archives

The Greenland National Museum 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 is affiliated with the Danish National Museum which has expanded its collections. The museum has many artifacts related to archaeology, history, art, and handicrafts and also has information about ruins, graveyards, buildings etc. This pretty cover was given to me by Merja.

The spacious, well-presented Greenland National Museum is based in an extended 1936 warehouse. Its better exhibits include an interesting section on 1950s social change and a geological room emphasising that the world's oldest rocks (3.8 billion years old) come from the Nuuk region. However, the unmissable climax is the mummy room. Here a trio of mummified 15th-century women and a very spooky six-month-old child stare blindly out from their dimly lit display cases. Their fur clothes and kammiks (traditional boots) are intricately sewn and embroidered, but their cause of death remains uncertain. Found at Qilakitsoq near Uummannaq, they made the cover of National Geographic and are an eerily unforgettable sight.

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