The Greenland National Museum contains a host of exhibits documenting the island’s 4500 years of human habitation. Established in 1966 within one of Nuuk’s original 18th-century buildings built by Danish missionaries, the museum was moved to its current home a few years later, after a repatriation program brought back thousands of Inuit artifacts plundered by Danish explorers who had taken the items to mainland Europe over the preceding centuries. A visit here is essential for any traveller interested in Greenland’s rich cultural history, with exhibits on archaeology, history, clothing, art and geology, to name but a few.

Visitors to this unique ethnographical collection can follow the timeline of Greenland’s colonisation, from the Stone Age cultures who first inhabited the island through to the Norse and the ancestors of modern-day indigenous Greenlanders, the Thule. You can examine ancient clothing and tools, as well as traditional modes of transportation like dog sledges and sealskin boats (known as umiaqs). But the part of the collection that will likely leave the most lasting impact is a display case containing four incredibly well-preserved mummies – a trio of women and a six-year-old boy – who were buried in a tomb north of Nuuk which has been dated to 1475 AD. Known as the Qilakitsoq mummies after the archaeological site in which they were found, the individuals are still wrapped in the furs and skins that they were buried in.

To look into the desiccated faces of these long-dead Inuit is to open a fascinating window into the past.