Greenland blog 07: colonial legacies

Statue of Hans Egede, old harbour, Nuuk, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008.

I mentioned about Greenland’s relationship with Denmark. Having lived much as they had for five thousand years (although there were several different native Arctic cultures over this period), the Greenlanders encountered various Norse and Scandinavian attempts at settlement, beginning around the tenth century, one of which failed spectacularly. However by the 1800’s the Danish had established successful trading, whaling and even farming settlements in a number of places. Denmark claimed Greenland as a part of the Kingdom of Denmark in 1814, having built up the colony under the leadership of such persons as Hans Egede, depicted here in a statue overlooking the old harbour of Nuuk, which he founded and named Godhåb. Denmark’s empire also extended to the Faroe Islands, which explains why both Greenland and the Faroes have characteristically Scandinavian architecture, Danish as an official language, and the kroner as currency. On the whole being colonised by Denmark was about as well-meaning a situation as possible under the circumstances, but Greenland has been in a process of growing independence since the 1970’s. Although it is still part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland is now an autonomous country administered by a Danish home rule government - a situation roughly parallel to the process of devolution taking place in Wales and Scotland. Greenland is even the only country to have voted itself out of the European Union. And shortly after my visit, they voted for further steps towards self rule. Seeing the posture of Hans Egede thrusting his staff in gesture of progress and Protestant sobriety, I can’t help thinking there must have been reasons for the desire for home rule. Not everyone could have been so willing to accept Greenlandic culture on its own terms as the famous explorer Knud Rasmussen, known affectionately by the Greenlanders as ‘our little Knud’.

26 August 2008 14:40 recalled 11 January 2011

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Greenland blog 06: the inland icecap

Inland glacier/icecap, between Kangerlussuaq and Nuuk, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008.

Flying again over the icecap, I was struck with the present moment, as I would be for so much of my time in Greenland. And the present moment said: Greenland is big. Greenland is enormous. Before I had even boarded the plane in Copenhagen, I knew that Scotland had a far bigger feeling, space-wise, than Wales, and that Shetland had a far more remote feel than highland Scotland, each place having a feeling of bigness or remoteness about ten times more than the previous place. So if every landscape in Scotland felt ten times bigger than a similar landscape in Wales, I figured that the emotional impact of Greenland would be about ten times that of Scotland.

Flying over a white expanse that seemed to press right up to the window, an undulating sea of snow broken by dark peaks of mountains breaking through like rocky froth, I revised my scale of bigness. It was Scotland, times a hundred.

26 August 2008 10:39 recalled 10 January 2011

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Greenland blog 04: scrum in the fjord

Kangerlussuaq airport, looking down the fjord, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008

Having landed, my perspective changed back to that of a land-dweller, and I was dealt my first and only disappointment in Greenland: it suddenly looked all too much like the Scottish highlands. Why had I bothered to come so far, at such expense, I thought peevishly, when I could have stayed in the country I love and call home, and seen much the same scenery? Now this narrative is not meant to be about my own psychological blips and foibles, but forgetting that I’d spent a less-than-luxurious night on a bench in the food court at Copenhagen airport, my perspective was a little skewed at the sight of ruddy snow-capped mountains rising up on either side of the airstrip, a fjord stretching away very much like a sea-loch in Wester Ross. What wasn’t obvious from my perspective was just how long the fjord was (190 km, nearly three times as long as 65 km Loch Fyne, Scotland's longest sea loch), which accounts for the climate in Kangerlussuaq being somewhat warmer and more stable than almost anywhere else on the west coast, except for the similar fjord at Narsarsuaq, which is much further south.

There wasn’t much time for negative thinking, as action was called for: we emerged down a staircase directly onto the tarmac (ah, this was what flying was like in the 1960’s) and walked less than a hundred metres to the terminal, passing a sign with fingerposts giving the distances to Moscow, London, Washington, etc. Once inside the claustrophobically tiny terminal there was no attempt at customs but an immediate scrum inside the duty free. Toblerones, cigarettes and especially alcohol flew off the shelves while staff at two tills stoically coped with queues bursting in and out the turnstiles. I was worried about my luggage in the hold, or missing my next plane, but needn’t have been; by the time I emerged clutching a single bottle of white wine (encased in some ingenious Scandinavian fishing-net type plastic mesh to prevent breakage) my bag had been magically transferred and it was time for a gentle stroll back onto the tarmac, and to board a Dash-7 standing ready, bound for Nuuk.

26 August 2008 09:49 recalled 8 January 2011

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Greenland blog archive