Leads Unesco-application for the government of Greenland

Orri Vésteinsson, professor of archaeology at the Faculty of History and Philosophy at the University of Iceland has for a number of years studied Nordic remains in South-Greenland. Vésteinsson is the main author of Greenland and Denmark’s application to get five areas in Eystribyggð registered on the UNESCO World Heritage list. The National Museum of Greenland and the Kuhalleq municipality apply in cooperation with the Danish Ministry of Culture.

Vésteinsson says that Greenlanders wish to encourage international scientific cooperation and increase the number of those studying the country’s history and nature. Vésteinsson says Icelandic archaeologists can find a lot of interesting study material in Greenland and they can contribute to a knowledge of Nordic remains there, seeing how they are similar to remains found in Iceland. This is one of the reasons Icelandic archaeologists were enlisted to write the UNESCO application. UNESCO is expected to rule on the World Heritage application for Eystribyggð next year. 

Here below you can listen to an interview with Vésteinsson in Icelandic on his research in Greenland and the state of archaeology. Vésteinsson is also interviewed at the University of Iceland magazine.