There’s a face in the gold earrings on the table of Nadja Arnaaraq Kreutzmann’s workshop. It’s the profile of an ammassak fish—a small, silver species that Inuit Greenlandic people have relied on for hundreds of years to survive in the harsh climate. It’s surrounded by rare rubies, a welding machine, and a chunk of whale vertebrae larger than a housecat. Through the window beyond, the brightly painted, primary-colored buildings of Nuuk stand on mossy-rock outcrops above a deep blue fjord.
“We have an urge for creating in Greenland, for using our hands to make things,” Nadja says, peering through a pair of thick welding goggles. “The first stone I ever had was a piece of greenlandite that I found when I was two years old, as my family were hunting for caribou and muskox.” (Greenlandite, a type of quartz also called green aventurine, is typically 3.7 billion years old, making it one of the oldest gemstones on earth. When polished, it shines like the color of leaves pierced with sunlight.)
It’s not traditional Greenlandic practice to use precious stones in jewelry—more commonly, items like caribou antlers and walrus teeth were more used—but this incorporation of natural resources and Greenlandic meaning represents a culture that’s merging the old and new.
Today, Kreutzmann is Greenland’s first and only certified goldsmith—one of a handful of skilled craftspeople forging handmade works of wearable art in celebration of Greenland’s Inuit heritage, wildlife, and natural beauty.
Her pieces, along with those of three other jewelers, show all that with captivating beauty at the summertime Jewelry Rooted in Inuit History exhibit, at the Greenland National Museum Archives, in the country’s capital. A seaweed tiara set, forged in fine and sterling silver by Kreutzmann, pays homage to Sassuma Arnaa, the Mother of the Sea in traditional Greenlandic culture. There are also brooches and bone-bead amulets by Karen Fly, a necklace and earrings made of silver and fish skin by Hanne Bruun, and a stunning, diamond-studded seal amulet by Bent Olsvig, inspired by ancient protective amulets used by Greenlandic people on hunting expeditions.
“Life in pre-colonial times, before the colonists from Denmark and Norway arrived in the 1800s, was shaped by the worldview that people lived closely with animals,” museum curator Randi Sørensen Johansen says. “This connection to the animal spirits that you see in the exhibit, it’s our way of connecting to inua, the belief that these animal souls are part of us still.” Today in Greenland, belief in inua, or animism, varies largely from person to person, but it was undoubtedly a significant, if not integral, part of Inuit life on the island before European colonization.
This exhibit comes at a poignant time. More visitors than ever are traveling to Greenland, thanks in part to everything from a new airport (and another slated to open next year), to United Airlines’ direct flights from Newark to Nuuk, to renewed U.S. interest in the country’s rare earth minerals. As travelers arrive, there’s an opportunity for them to learn about the vibrant cultural heritage that’s existed here all along, but has been overshadowed by some 300 years of rule under Denmark.
“People are changing how they think about jewelry, and being proud of their nationality,” Karen Fly says. Like many Greenlandic people, Karen has mixed Danish-Greenlandic heritage, and grew up in Denmark. When she first visited Greenland, her mother’s homeland, in 2009, her jewelry grew in ways she had never anticipated.
“When I came back, I realized at my core I am Greenlandic, too. It fills my work,” Karen says of her pieces, which feature organic materials, like stone and whale baleen, within clean-cut shapes. “For me visually, Greenland is a country of contrasts: you see the horizon and the sea, or you look down and see the tiny flowers, berries, the trumpet lichens. Those contrasts inspire me.”
Ceramicist Kristine Spore Kreutzmann is another Greenlandic artisan, based in Nuuk, whose work is deeply inspired by nature and Greenlandic culture. From her workshop in the city center, she makes ceramic diningware and large-format jewelry, from one necklace of spun silver strands to another composed of layers of porcelain inlaid with soil and sand from locations such as Greenland’s western Kangerlussuaq settlement.
But her most moving work harkens to a darker history of wear. In the beginning of 2025, she debuted a porcelain art piece that represented 4,500 contraception devices—one for each that was inserted into young Greenlandic women during the Spiralkampagnen, a mass, undisclosed contraception campaign and gross human rights violation by the Danish government in the 1960s and ’70s. This piece was part of a multi-artist exhibition titled “Kusanartuliat: Impressions Expressions” that examines the shared space between Greenlandic culture and modern craft. The exhibit has appeared at the Bornholms Center for Kunsthåndværk in Denmark and the Nääs Konsthantverk in Sweden. In November, it will arrive in the Faroe Islands–and eventually, it will return home to Greenland.
“Art and jewelry can contribute to positive change in Greenland,” says Kristine. “They can help us discuss and deal with difficult topics in history—and in the present.”
In more hopeful plans for the future, she sits on the board of the country’s future National Gallery that will one day open in the northern reaches of the city. She and Nadja are also working to raise capital to build workshops and housing in central Nuuk for artisan apprenticeships.
Twenty-five-year-old Sascha Blidorf is one member of the rising generation looking for just such mentorship. She founded her company, Jewellery by Blidorf, in 2022 with a focus on earrings. Her pieces combine modern style with traditional Inuit call-backs, such as small tufts of Arctic fox fur or walrus tusk set in small, gold-plated backings. Responsible hunting remains an important part of Greenlandic culture, and she sources materials that are leftover pieces from animals hunted for food.
“I’m inspired by the traditional way, but I have to be economical, too—I’m not able to make everything from scratch,” she says of sourcing her materials locally whenever possible, in addition to attending university and raising two young children. Her mother, Mona Blidorf, officially joined the company earlier this year to help her manage the business.
In 2023, Sascha’s pieces caught the eye of Inuvialuit fashion model Willow Allen, who proudly embraces her Inuit heritage in her work. “Willow is using her platform to inform people about the conditions Indigenous people are living under. I love that about her, and also to see the similarities we have,” Sascha says. “My jewelry is a way of being proud of who I am.”
Nadja and Kristine aren’t the only ones looking to mentor Greenland’s next generation. Stone-cutter Jens Mikkel Fly, whose work has been covered by the Gemological Institute of America, has been working with gemstones for more than 20 years—ever since he found a Greenlandic ruby in the southern Qeqertarsuatsiatt settlement when he was 26 years old. “It started a fire inside me,” Jens Mikkel says. Today, he sources precious stones with nothing more than a hammer and chisel, and has taught evening classes to pass on the stone-cutting trade to the next generation. Many of his stones can be found in Nadja’s jewelry.
Standing inside Nadja’s workshop, Jens Mikkel motions to stones he’s cut, faceted, and polished: nephrite jade, stormy rainbow moonstone, smoky yellow prehnite and more Greenlandic rubies, which can date back three billion years. There are dazzling chunks of quartz that Jens Mikkel has cut to such a degree that their faceted angles shine like diamonds—except unlike diamonds, which can be found on every continent, some of these stones are incredibly rare.
“Tugtupite is very precious to me,” Jens Mikkel says, pointing to a case of tiny, bubblegum-pink stones. “These don’t exist like this anywhere else in the world.” Tugtupite is a rare fluorescent mineral with almost magical qualities—in differing lights, the stone can quickly change from Barbie-like rose to deep purple-red to faint, almost white salmon hue. First discovered in Greenland in the 1960s, its name shares roots with the Greenlandic word for caribou, tuttu, because the stones were found in a region where the animals seasonally give birth. The story goes that the little gems looked like droplets of caribou blood.
Within this close community of jewelers based largely in Nuuk, Greenlandic jewelry is only set to grow, offering wearable works of art that show the world about this remote, oft-overlooked island.
And the growth isn’t only to do with the next generation. Hanne Brunne, one of the presenting jewelers at the museum exhibit, began turning back to her Greenlandic roots in 2014 when she moved back to Nuuk after living in Europe for 28 years.
“I’m over 50 and I’ve started relearning my Greenlandic language,” she says with a laugh. “In jewelry, you create what you’re connected to–and you can use it to learn new things.”