In Northwest Greenland , Richard Vaughan narrates for the first time the little-known history of Avanersuaq, "the place in the farthest north." This small strip on the northwestern coast of Greenland has supported the most northerly human settlement on the globe, and remains one of the last frontiers on earth.Cultural histories usually give only cursory attention to the environment, but Vaughan integrates the people and their habitat as inextricably as they are linked in nature. Early European explorers found in Avanersuaq a strange mixture of ice, desert and rock, with surprising pockets of vegetation, and wildlife that ranged from the narwhal and polar bear to the small dovekie, or little auk. The native Inuhuit, these explorers found, used their scarce resources wisely, with a lifestyle that centered on no­madic hunting.Vaughan takes a careful look at the changes exploration and settlement brought to Avanersuaq and its people, from the pre-historic, subsistence lifestyle of the Inuhuit, to Danish colonization and later twentieth-century developments.