A living hunting landscape – between ice, sea and UNESCO

Da Aasivissuit–Nipisat in 2018 was admitted to UNESCO World Heritage List, it was the culmination of a long work to document and recognize one of Greenland's most coherent cultural landscapes.

With this one book, the authors have created an extensive and visually strong work that both explains why the area is a world heritage site - and how it has been for millennia been used, shaped and understood by people.

Da Aasivissuit–Nipisat in 2018 was admitted to UNESCO World Heritage List, it was the culmination of a long work to document and recognize one of Greenland's most coherent cultural landscapes.

With this one book, the authors have created an extensive and visually strong work that both explains why the area is a world heritage site - and how it has been for millennia been used, shaped and understood by people.

The book takes the reader through a landscape that stretches from the coast's winter habitats over fjords, valleys and reindeer plains to the raw edge of the ice sheet. It is not just a geographical journey, but a narrative about movement as a form of life: seasonal migrations, hunting trips, trade and community. Aasivissuit–Nipisat is consistently presented as a living hunting landscape – not as an archaeological reserve detached from the present.

One of the book's greatest strengths is its ability to show, how the landscape itself functions as an archive. Cairns, paths, settlements and hunting facilities are not located randomly, but form a coherent system that testify to thousands of years of adaptation to the rhythms of nature. The fjords are described as access roads, the valleys as logistical hubs, and the reindeer plain Aasivissuit as a center for community hunting and social organization.

At the same time, it is emphasized that many of these structures can still be read in the terrain - and in some cases still used. The book manages here to build a bridge between past and present without romanticizing: motor boats, rifles and modern ways of life have changed the practices but the basic routes and places consist.

Archeology at eye level

Archeology occupies a central part of the work, but is communicated in an accessible and readable language. Excavations, settlements, middens and tools are presented as concrete traces of everyday life, not as abstract find. Particularly strong is the description of how the permafrost is thawing today both reveal and threaten the archaeological remains – and how monitoring and documentation has therefore become a crucial part of the management of world heritage.

Here it becomes clear that the UNESCO stamp not only is about the past, but also about the responsibility of the present.

The book is richly illustrated and structured with short, thematic sections that give the reader the opportunity to delve into individual aspects of the cultural landscape. The theme articles range widely – from traditional stone-built infrastructure over Greenlandic food culture through the ages for crafts and tools.

These chapters serve as both professional anchors and educational gaps. They make the book suitable not only for specialists, but also for the broader reader interested in culture. This is where the real work comes in unfolds its strength as a communication book.

However, I could have intended that the book also in higher degree was shown what the UNESCO stamp has concretely meant for the area - as well in a development and marketing context.

An important and pertinent book

Despite this shortcoming, Aasivissuit – Nipisat is one important and successful work. It is a book that insists that world heritage not only about the past, but about contemporary relationships between people, landscape and history. With its rich imagery, its clear language and its professionalism weight it gives the reader both knowledge and understanding - and a deeper respect for the landscape that stretches between the sea and the ice cap.

It is a book that deserves to be read - not just as documentation, but as an invitation to see Aasivissuit–Nipisat as that, the area is: a living, used and significant cultural landscape i world class.