Kirsten Thisted

Imperiets genfærd – Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden og den dansk-grønlandske historieskrivning

While the official Denmark has declined taking part in a reconciliation process with Greenland, its former colony, a large literary audience has embraced the novelist Kim Leine, who puts colonial history and Danish-Greenlandic power relations on the agenda. Originally published in 2012, his novel Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden (English title: The Prophets of Eternal Fjord ) has received huge attention and several prestigious literary awards, but it has also been the target of criticism for painting a distorted picture of Denmark’s conduct in Greenland. The article examines how the novel relates to the established narratives about Danish colonialism and how it contributes to the ongoing negotiations. The novel’s use of narrative modes is analysed in light of the assumption that certain modes are associated with certain plots, where a particular framing of the past defines a space of possibility for the way we shape the future. It is argued that the novel draws on the anticolonial dream of ‘total revolution’ and supports the struggle of the colonised to break free from the colonial power and establish their own nation state. Its key narrative mode, however, is not the preferred mode in anticolonialist literature, heroic romance; instead it is tragedy. The novel portrays the profound transformation of society and subjectivity that is brought about by modernity with Christianity and colonialism as its vehicle. As a consequence of this transformation, resistance cannot be posited from a point outside modernity but arises from within modernity itself. Thus the protagonists of the novel are not only portrayed as equals but as actors in the same universe, regardless of the highly asymmetrical power relations between Danes and Greenlanders. In this sense, the book participates in efforts to reframe the Danish-Greenlandic relationship based on the new language of equality and partnership found in the Act on Greenland Self-Government.

The Greenlandic Reconciliation Commission: Ethnonationalism, Arctic Resources, and Post-Colonial Identity

This chapter addresses the Greenlandic Reconciliation Commission established in 2014. Examining the different agendas and political positions that have shaped the debate around reconciliation, the author shows how the political processes that led to the Act on Greenland Self-Government in 2009 ran parallel to the UN negotiations on the rights of indigenous peoples, while the term “indigenous peoples” is not mentioned anywhere in the act. She argues that the Greenland public discourse of indigeneity is currently being transformed from a language of resistance to a language of independent governance, providing a model of global significance in terms of postcolonial identity and ethnonationalism. The Reconciliation Commission negotiations furthermore address Greenland’s interest in establishing itself as an Arctic resource extraction economy while recognizing its colonial and postcolonial dependency on Denmark.

Pioneering Nation: New Narratives About Greenland and Greenlanders Launched Through Arts and Branding

Throughout the Arctic, identities are currently being renegotiated on a foundation that is undergoing radical changes. Global warming has led to an increased focus on arctic and subarctic areas, and thus it is not only the physical conditions for peoples’ livelihood that are changing but the way in which they identify and create new subject positions for themselves in the interaction with the rest of the world. As such, there is nothing new in the importance of the Arctic in international politics. What is fundamentally different today is the status of the indigenous peoples of the far North. No longer can these peoples be governed and treated as voiceless creatures on equal footing with the marine mammals, birds and fish of the area. Today, the indigenous peoples have their own political voices, and various forms of self-rule are the norm rather than the exception. While the Arctic has for generations been described and represented by people living in the South, the peoples of the Arctic are now to a much larger degree representing themselves, both on the political stage and in the media, art, literature and film. The article demonstrates how this creates completely different images from the ones we have grown accustomed to over so many years. The new Arctic is framed by a new context where people are digitally fluent and active members of the global community in a way that makes the future development completely different from previous ages – and thus also completely unpredictable.