For nearly four millennium, Greenlanders lived in simple structures, such as collapsible seal-skin tents and sod homes, built from rocks, sod, and driftwood. The sod homes were temporary buildings, abandoned when the Greenlandic Inuit inhabited an area where there was good hunting. For a nomadic people completely reliant on hunting, these structures suited the subsistence lifestyle that was completely reliant on the hunting of marine mammals and reindeer and musk ox.

The Danish colonial period, from 1721 through World War II, marked a second phase of development. Using imported wood from Europe, Greenlanders built wooden clapboard homes, which were far draftier than air-tight sod homes. (The latter could be as hot as saunas when heated with blubber lamps.) The A-frame homes and churches remain to this day. Many new homes still follow this traditional style, and are painted in bright colors: red, yellow, blue, green.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Danish officials closed half of the nearly 200 coastal villages and moved subsistence-dependent Greenlanders into large apartment "bloks" in a massive plan to develop a modern, commercial fishing economy. These hideous, gray apartments resemble arctic slums, and on a gray day create a picture of gloom in Greenland's west coast cities of Nuuk, Sisimiut, and Maniitsoq. The largest apartment in Nuuk (Blok P, seen to the right) holds approximately 1 percent of Greenland's population, alone. (See the Greenland map, courtesy of the University of Texas library system.)

Since the 1980s, and under Greenland's Home Rule government, newer apartments started springing up in these larger cities. These buildings have adapted older, colonial styles with the traditional bright colors that are now a Greenlandic trademark. In Nuuk, for example, brightly painted condominium complexes are springing up outside of the old city center. The housing shortage can force waits of up to one year for an apartment, according to an editor I spoke with. In 1998, condominiums were selling for more than $200,000, which is out of reach for many residents.

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Seal-Skin Tent

A traditional seal-skin tent, used for centuries by the island's Inuit residents, is on display in the west coast city Sisimiut.

Hunting Lodge

In Sisimiut at Knud Rasmussen high school, a typical sod hunting lodge from the Thule area was recreated by the school's alumnists.

Traditional Greenlandic Homes

Traditional homes seen at Kangaamiut on Greenland's west coast.

Blok P Lights Up

This Danish-government-financed apartment block (Blok P) is the largest single housing unit in Greenland, and typifies the heavy-handed social engineering from the 1950s and 1960s. For a brief moment it suddenly has warmth, but only during the rare summer light.

Modern Greenland Apartments

Greenland's apartments built during the 1960s and 1970s -- like this one in Qaqortoq -- feel as bleak as they look on a gray, rainy day.

Sisimiut Apartment Bloks

In Sisimiut, government housing blocks were built to hold villagers in the Danish government's efforts to turn the subsistence economy to one based on commercial fishing.

New Apartments, Sisimiut

The current Home Rule government helps finance new apartment blocks, which are painted in traditional, bright Greenland colors.

Modern Greenland Apartments

Newer apartments, in Qaqortoq, Greenland, are light years livelier than the gray blocks built in the decades after World War II.

Nuuk Cultural Center

The Katuaq Greenland Cultural Center in Nuuk (one of the boldest new buildings in Greenland) houses a conference center, art gallery, coffee shop, art school, and the NAPA Nordic Institute.