History Of Greenland Research Articles

Being (in)formed by indigenous voices: First steps to using graphic narratives to decolonise speculative fiction

The Greenlandic visual artist Nuka K. Godtfredsen and his literary and scientific collaborators have produced a series of four graphic narratives to represent distinct moments in Greenland's history, spanning the pre-colonised and colonial period. These narratives employ aspects of magic realism and adopt an approach to narrative that focuses on the supernatural and presents modes of being that contrast with their audiences' understanding of realities that are ordinarily (only) visible. I argue that these graphic narratives use strategies from speculative fiction that frame the modern European presence in Greenland and the narrative of colonialism as one of several multiple realities in the Arctic, rather than its central axis, leaving open the possibility for indigenous Greenlanders to speak on their own terms. This enables these graphic narratives to illuminate aspects of knowledge (including features of oral legend and supernatural encounters) that were previously discredited in colonial discourse. Furthermore, I show that attending to how embodied aspects of Greenlandic Inuit storytelling traditions can be captured in the graphic narrative medium may be an effective decolonial strategy, which could be employed by speculative fiction. I thus advocate methodologies for speculative fiction that strategically broaden its boundaries in order to address its intractable colonial legacy. Informed by approaches that focus attention on form - such as Marks's haptic visuality (2000) and visual theories of the power of hand-drawn comics (Groensteen 2010, Chute 2008) to engage the reader/viewer in both an embodied and reflective way - I assert that including graphic narratives which employ strategies of speculative fiction may present a unique opportunity for the genre to mount a powerful challenge to a colonial knowledge production.

Producing and communicating natural history in the long 18th century: Moravian observations concerning Greenland’s climate in unpublished sources

Abstract This paper discusses weather observations of Moravian missionaries in Greenland in the long 18th century, placing them in the broader context of their missionary work at Neu-Herrnhut and other stations as well as their comments on the natural world. Some of their climate-related remarks and measurements were published and discussed in print, notably in David Cranz’ History of Greenland and a number of scholarly reviews at the time. These publications are compared to and complemented by data retrieved by the authors from unpublished source material in the Moravian Archives in Herrnhut, Germany, demonstrating that the Moravian diaries can fill in significant gaps in Greenland’s weather charts before systematic measurements were introduced in the 19th century. Their special interest for climate studies is underscored in conclusion, in particular their observations of extreme climate events that can allow us to better characterise the amplitude and geographical extent of such events and to compare them with climate model simulations in order to better understand the respective roles of external (volcanism, solar activity) and internal (atmospheric circulation) forcings and the impacts of potential feedbacks within the ocean–atmosphere system.

Pietistische Konkurrenz und Naturgeschichte: Die Südasienmission der Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine und die Dänisch-Englisch-Hallesche Mission (1755–1802)

Pietistische Konkurrenz und Naturgeschichte: Die Südasienmission der Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine und die Dänisch-Englisch-Hallesche Mission (1755–1802)

The Constitutional History of Greenland

The Constitutional History of Greenland

"En gift i blodet": Følelsesøkonomier i de dansk-grønlandske relationer

Inspired by Sara Ahmed, the article analyzes how long-established affective economies still dominate post-colonial relations between Danes and Greenlanders. Affective relationships between Greenlanders and Danes are embedded in historically inherited, asymmetric political, and financial power relations. While the political and economic conditions often are subject to analysis because data in these fields is relatively easy to access, it is much harder to access material that illuminates affective relationships. The article focuses on an email correspondence between two women, each of whom has a prominent place in the Danish-Greenlandic cultural debate. The two women know each other in advance and are both eager for the communication to succeed. It turns out not to be quite so simple. The analysis shows how the Dane, contrary to her own intentions, maintains the Greenlander in the role as the object of the Danish, evaluative and normative, gaze. The Greenlander protests against this and tries to renegotiate their positions so that the Greenlanders become subjects of their own actions and the history of Greenland. The article argues that it is not possible to understand the current political discussions, including debates on large scale projects, uranium extraction, and independence, unless these affects and their historicity are taken into account. A conversation about reconciliation must also begin here.

Climate science: The history of Greenland's ice.

Global sea levels would rise by several metres if the Greenland Ice Sheet melted completely. Two studies have examined its past behaviour in an effort to evaluate its vulnerability in a warming world — and have come to seemingly conflicting conclusions. Two geochemists and a glaciologist discuss the issues. See Letters p.252 & p.256 The Greenland Ice Sheet is a main contributor to modern sea-level rise, but its stability during past warm periods is uncertain, thus compromising our ability to robustly predict future rates and magnitudes of ice loss. Joerg Schaefer and colleagues present cosmogenic isotope evidence, from bedrock samples from beneath an ice core near the summit of the ice sheet, to show that the Greenland Ice Sheet was largely ice-free at some point during the Pleistocene. The data cannot constrain the time or duration of ice-free conditions, and seem incompatible with our current understanding of ice-sheet behaviour. Nevertheless, alternative explanations for the cosmogenic data are lacking, suggesting that our understanding of the response of the Greenland Ice Sheet to past warmth remains incomplete. Understanding the growth and stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet is a long-standing priority in palaeoclimate research, and one that is at the heart of modern discussion of sea-level rise. Paul Bierman and colleagues present marine records of cosmogenic isotopes and conclude that an ice sheet in East Greenland was continuously eroding sediments over the past 7.5 million years. Although the method could miss transient deglaciations and cannot firmly distinguish between remnant and larger ice sheets, the results are consistent with model simulations of a waxing and waning—but continuously present—regional ice sheet.

Mineral riches: a route to Greenland's independence?

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a brief history of Greenland which sets the scene for unprecedented recent developments, both materially and politically. After the war, in 1953, the political status of Greenland was changed from colony to an integral part of Denmark. Greenland gained home rule [Hjemmestyre] in 1979 and greater devolution to self rule [Selvstyre] in 2009. The population is becoming centralised, increasingly resembling consumer societies worldwide. In recent years the economy has been mainly based upon fish and mining, although at present there is no active mine and the economy is declining, making the country increasingly dependent on subsidies from Denmark. The former president recently predicted that Greenland would leave Denmark within her life-time, a view based upon her vision of the development of a rich mining industry. Additionally she established a reconciliation committee to examine supposed ill-treatment by Denmark. The present situation and the unrealistic expectations of huge production of different minerals are discussed based upon accepted predictions of mineral resources, world market prices, logistic problems (lack of infrastructure and tiny population) and environmental concerns. During the past year, a more realistic and less confrontational debate on the relations between Denmark and Greenland has been evident.

Climate science: A history of Greenland's ice loss.

Aerial photographs, remote-sensing observations and geological evidence together provide a reconstruction of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet since 1900 — a great resource for climate scientists. See Letter p.396 The Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) is losing mass at an accelerating rate, contributing to global sea level rise. But are the present rates unusual, compared to twentieth-century variability? It has been difficult to answer this question because of the shortage of observations before the late twentieth century. Kurt Kjaer and colleagues address this data gap by analysing a collection of aerial photographs taken in the 1980s. The photos reveal both the maximum extent of the ice at the end of the Little Ice Age — from trimlines — and its position at the time the images were taken. The change is inferred by the difference. Incorporating this work with modern observations and models, the authors show that the Greenland Ice Sheet lost mass over the entire twentieth century, but that the recent rate of loss is more than double the earlier rates. Most of the accelerated loss has been caused by changes in surface mass balance, rather than through changes in the way the ice sheet is moving, which has remained approximately constant.

The Publication and Reception of David Cranz's 1767 History of Greenland

Abstract Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, religious books proportionally lost popularity while travel books became more popular. This paper examines a hybrid of these two genres, Protestant missionary monographs, through a detailed analysis of David Cranz's 1767 History of Greenland, including the rationale behind publishing the book; its translation from German into English; how it was used as a political tool to influence British foreign policy; and how the book was received by British literary critics and scientists. This analysis demonstrates how authorial intentions that the religious and secular components of Protestant Missionary literature be considered as parts of a whole produced confusion and tension in the secular reception of such books.

The Nature of Contact between Native Greenlanders and Norse

ABSTRACT Recent archaeology has introduced a new people into the scenario of 13th-century Greenland – the Dorset people of the Paleo-Eskimo tradition. These people were encountered by Norse hunters who travelled northwards on their hunting forays, as described in Historia Norvegiae, which recounts contact with the so-called Skraelingja. The question of who these Skraelingja were has been discussed since the discovery of the source in the late 19th century. It has been proposed that they were the Inuit of the Thule culture. We now know that three different cultures—Paleo-Eskimo, Inuit, and Europeans—impacted on the development of Greenland's history in the first half of the second millennium AD. This paper addresses issues of interactions between them.

An ethics committee for medical research in Greenland history and challenges

Ethical appraisal of medical protocols for research is now well accepted, and needed when research may carry side effects and risks that may be difficult to understand for the people invited to take part in research. We argue that time has come for Greenland to establish a formal medical research ethics committee with a legal basis. With proper use of modern means of communication it should be possible to run a committee at a reasonable cost. We believe that such a committee should closely follow international standards. One urgent matter to get under a formal set of rules is to set proper standards for storage of biological samples taken from people in Greenland.

Crantz, Martens and the "Slimy Things" in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

In Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the poem's protagonist mentions the presence in the "slimy sea" when he is becalmed in the equatorial Pacific doldrums of a "thousand thousand" "slimy things... with legs." John Livingston Lowes argued in The Road to Xanadu that these creatures were principally derived by STC from descriptions of slimy and/or many-legged sea animals in Frederick Martens's The Voyage into Spitzbergen and Greenland. However, a rather more evident source for Coleridge's "slimy things" is the accounts of the cuttlefish and of other slimy and/or multi-legged marine creatures in David Crantz's The History of Greenland. Details from these latter descriptions would have been retained by Coleridge in his remarkably "tenacious" memory. Here, they would have been multiply tied together by linkages both of similarity and of textual propinquity. The resulting associational complex would also have included particulars from those descriptions of marine fauna in Martens which are mentioned by Lowes as sources for the "slimy things" (as well as details from other accounts of sea animals that are described in Spitzbergen). While Coleridge was composing "Mariner," the just-mentioned materials from Martens and from Crantz would have been compressively synthesized through an "esemplastic" "work of condensation" to produce the image of the "slimy things... with legs." This may accordingly have signified for Coleridge himself a motley assortment of sea fauna from very many and multifarious species. The conception of the "slimy things... with legs" could well have been accompanied for STC by the same sort of vivid visual fantasy which was involved in the creation of "Kubla Khan." The results of my further investigation into the origins of the "slimy things" suggest that the conclusions of Lowes regarding the genesis of Coleridge's poetic imagery are in many cases not at all definitive. Rather, the origins of these images were often much more complex than anyone has supposed, endowing them with a very considerable richness of implicit significance.

Development of West Greenlandic Markets for Country Foods Since the 18th Century

Local markets for country foods have a history in West Greenland dating back to the early 18th century. After Danish colonization in 1721, Greenlanders gradually began selling these foods (West Greenlandic: kalaalimerngit), which included seal, whale, caribou, fish, and birds - first to the Danes and later to other Greenlandic Inuit. This trade was a significant transformation of pre-contact Inuit exchange practices. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the trade was largely between Greenlandic hunters and Danes employed by the colonial trade or by the church. Later in the 19th century, these institutions employed increasing numbers of indigenous Greenlanders. Economic specialization gradually became more pronounced within Greenlandic society, and cash became more prominent in local economies. Greenlandic hunters increasingly sold country foods to other Greenlanders earning wages. These practices continue today, with hunters regularly selling country foods in many towns at the local kalaalimineerniarfik (literally, "place where Greenlandic foods are sold"), to institutions such as schools or senior citizens' homes and in large stores. Today, Greenland's Home Rule government is promoting local country food markets as one strategy for sustainable development. The goals are to promote the use of nutritious and culturally valued foods on a sustainable basis and to provide economic opportunities for local hunters, particularly in outlying settlements. The history of Greenland's system for marketing country foods highlights some issues that may influence the contribution of country foods to sustainable community development in the Arctic.

Recovering the past: the Greenland National Museum and Archives

Following the establishment of home rule in Greenland in 1979, the last decade has seen the restitution of the greater part of the Danish collections relating to the history of Greenland to the young Greenland National Museum and Archives. The story of the transfers is told by the museum's archaeological curator who has been engaged in antiquarian work in Greenland since 1980.

Radiocarbon AMS dating of Holocene wolf (Canis lupus) remains from Greenland

Radiocarbon AMS dating of seven polar wolf (Canis lupus) remains from east and north Greenland and one from Ellesmere Island document the presence of this large carnivore in Greenland at around 6800, 1600, 800 and 500 BP, corresponding to calibrated ages of 5620 BC, AD 530, AD 1260 and AD 1420. Three of the remains yielded modem ages. These results demonstrate the presence of the wolf in Greenland since the early mid-Holocene and it is argued that it was probably present during most of the Holocene. The dates are important for a proper understanding of the faunal and environmental history of Greenland.

The History of Greenland

The History of Greenland

The History of Greenland. I: Earliest Times to 1700

The History of Greenland. I: Earliest Times to 1700

The History of Greenland: Vol. II: 1700 to 1782, by Finn Gad

The History of Greenland: Vol. II: 1700 to 1782, by Finn Gad

The History of Greenland. Volume 1, Earliest Times to 1700

The History of Greenland. Volume 1, Earliest Times to 1700

The History of Greenland. Vol. I: Earliest Times to 1700, by Finn Gad

The History of Greenland. Vol. I: Earliest Times to 1700, by Finn Gad