A living hunting landscape – between ice, sea and UNESCO

When Aasivissuit–Nipisat was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2018, it was the culmination of a long process of documenting and recognizing one of Greenland's most coherent cultural landscapes.

With this book, the authors have created a comprehensive and visually powerful work that explains both why the area is a World Heritage Site – and how it has been used, shaped and understood by people for millennia.

The book takes the reader through a landscape that stretches from the coastal winter settlements over fjords, valleys and reindeer plains to the raw edge of the inland ice sheet. It is not just a geographical journey, but a story about movement as a way 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 grounds are not located randomly, but form a coherent system that bears witness to thousands of years of adaptation to the rhythms of nature. The fjords are described as access routes, the valleys as logistical hubs, and the reindeer plain of Aasivissuit as a center for communal 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 are still used. The book manages to bridge the gap between past and present without romanticizing: motorboats, rifles and modern ways of life have changed the practices, but the basic routes and places remain.

Archaeology at eye level

Archaeology occupies a central part of the work, but is conveyed in an accessible and easy-to-read language. Excavations, settlements, middens and tools are presented as concrete traces of everyday life, not as abstract finds. Particularly powerful is the description of how the thawing of permafrost today both reveals and threatens the archaeological remains – and how monitoring and documentation have therefore become a crucial part of the management of the World Heritage.

Here it becomes clear that the UNESCO seal is not only 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 thematic articles range widely – from traditional stone-built infrastructure to Greenlandic food culture through the ages to handicrafts and tools.

These chapters function as both professional anchors and pedagogical breathing spaces. They make the book suitable not only for specialists, but also for the broader, culturally interested reader. It is here that the work truly unfolds its strength as a communication book.

However, I would have liked the book to have also developed to a greater extent what the UNESCO seal has specifically meant for the area – both in a development and marketing context.

An important and relevant book

Despite this shortcoming, Aasivissuit – Nipisat is an essential and successful work. It is a book that insists that World Heritage is not just about the past, but about contemporary relationships between people, landscape and history. With its rich imagery, clear language and scholarly weight, it gives the reader both knowledge and understanding – and a deeper respect for the landscape that stretches between the sea and the ice sheet.

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