Mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet and adjecent glaciers and ice caps has accelerated within the last decades, and these changes are accurately observed using a variety of different data products. However, the observational era is relatively short offering little insight into past dynamics.

On order to expand the glacial history of Greenland, this thesis explores physical and geological archives for evidence of the glaciers’ past response to climatic variations. Using aerial photographs, the dynamic history of the Greenland Ice Sheet is extended back to 1900 C.E. Glacier changes covering the entire 20th century show rapid and widespread responses to climate change. On a longer time-scale is the Holocene history of Helheim Glacier reconstructed using evidence of glacial presence accumulated in lake sediments