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

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