The Inuit are the indigenous people of Greenland. The Vikings were the first Europeans who discovered Greenland. They settled there for several centuries but did not thrive.
The country remained nominally under the Crown of Norway, which in 1380 was united with Denmark's. Greenland wasn't affected by Norway's liberation from Denmark after the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1941, when Germany extended its war operations to Greenland, Henrik Kauffmann, the Danish Minister to the US - who had already refused to recognise the German occupation of Denmark - signed a treaty with USA on April 9th, 1941, placing Greenland under US protection and granting US forces to establish stations there.
Greenland was granted self-government in 1978 by the Danish parliament. The law went into effect the following year.