III Encounters with the Cultural Other in the Land of the New People
1 The Literary Expedition to Greenland, 1902–1904
2 The Subject’s Preconceptions about North Greenland and the Inughuit
3 North Greenland and the Inughuit as the Other
3.1 The Eskimo Arcadia and Arcadians: Disrupting the Idealisation Trope
3.2 The Eskimos are Primitive: Subverting the Essentialisation Trope
3.3 We and Others: Reversing and Interrogating Binary Oppositions
3.4 The Inughuit as the “Infinitely Other”: (Missing) Exoticisation
4 North Greenland and the Inughuit: An Indigenous Myth Perspective
5 The Narrator’s Voice vs. Native Voices: Master Narrative and Heteroglossia
6 The New People in the Historical Context
IV Mapping Ultima Thule: Encounters with the Telluric Other
1 The First Thule Expedition, 1912–1913
2 The Split Subject: The Scientist’s Authority vs. the Arctic Hunter’s Instinct
3 The Male Journey and the Male Adventure
3.1 The Icesheet and North-East Greenland as a Dangerous Wilderness: Heroisation and Sensationalism
3.2 A Place “Away from Home”: Home vs. Away
3.3 Chasing the Scholarly Goals: The Activity-vs.-Passivity Opposition
3.4 The Inughuit as Representatives of Nature: The Culture-vs.-Nature Opposition
3.5 Destabilising Binary Oppositions at the Basis of the Polar Explorers’ Male Heroism
4 North Greenland as Terra Feminarum
4.1 Scientific Masculinity: Erasing, Charting and Measuring
4.2 Aesthetic Masculinity: East Greenland and the Icesheet as a Source of the Sublime
5 Resistance to Othering through Scientific and Aesthetic Masculinity
5.1 North Greenland as a Source of the Telluric Horror and a Measurement-Resisting Place
5.2 North Greenland as a Place with a History of Its Own: Language, History and Inughuit Voices
5.3 “Being within the Landscape” and Dismantling the Primacy of Visual Perception
5.4 The Space of the Indigenous Myth
6 My Travel Diary in the Historical Context
V Conclusion
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index of Names
Let us not be discouraged if they fail once,
Let us not be discouraged if they fail again,
They will not lose!
They will win!
For themselves! And for us!
We fellow countrymen will defend them,
They will win2
In a New Year address delivered on 1st January 2016, the Prime Minister of Greenland [Greenlandic: Kalaallit Nunaat] availed himself of this passage from Greenland’s bard Augo Lynge (1899–1959) to appeal to his compatriots for social solidarity and sustained effort for the sake of the island’s economic independence despite all the odds and adversities. The political leaders of Greenland, which has enjoyed substantial autonomy within the Danish Commonwealth since 2009, realise that the complete independence they seek will stand a chance of success only if Greenland stops being dependent on funding from Denmark, which currently accounts for more than half of Greenland’s overall budgetary spending. Given that the narrative of Denmark as a land of universal felicity, social prosperity and an exceptionally humanitarian colonial past is widespread indeed, we should enquire why Greenlanders have actually been so consistent and vocal in their efforts not only to manifest their national distinctiveness but also to win complete independence from Denmark.
Although research into Danish colonialism has long been part and parcel of Danish academia, the fact that public debates and controversies erupt time and again over artists’ attempts to address this multifaceted issue suggests that colonialism is, in fact, partly or fully suppressed in the general public self-consciousness.3 This suppression readily translates into a growing incongruity between the perceptions of Denmark within and without its borders. While Danes are only too eager to embrace the idea of Denmark as a humanitarian nation and a leader in developmental aid for underprivileged countries, this flattering self-perception ←15 | 16→is increasingly being undermined by counter-narratives that proliferate in the world media as the migration crisis sweeps across Europe.4 Admittedly, the gist and validity of some interpretations of Denmark’s current political situation can be disputed, yet the cracks in Denmark’s image as a “small country in the North of Europe” that rushes to help the vulnerable and the threatened cannot be doubted.
Denmark’s colonisation of Greenland should be studied in a comprehensive socio-historical context, for the processes unfolding at the northernmost periphery of Europe cannot be adequately explored without considering the political, economic and ideological developments that determined the course of events at the centre of Northern Europe. Missionary Hans Egede would not have set off for Greenland in 1721 had the absolute monarchy in Denmark not acquired overseas territories in quite different parts of the world in the 17th century. Denmark’s imperial past, which has only recently been retrieved from the murkiness of the nation’s collective oblivion by Danish historians, comprises the colonisation of the West Indies (the present-day Virgin Islands), the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) and Tranquebar (present-day Tharangambadi) as well as a robust Danish slave trade, which ranked seventh-biggest among all the colonial powers.5 With Greenland’s west coast colonised up to Upernavik in the north of the island, 18th-century Denmark was an empire that extended over the overseas territories, Norway, Schleswig, Holstein, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
However, the Danish colonisation of Greenland hardly resembled the manner in which colonies were administered in hotter parts of the world. As the geographical conditions were challenging in the extreme and revenues depended heavily on the raw materials which could only be delivered by the indigenous population of the colonised areas, Danish colonial rule of Greenland did not involve a ruthless exploitation of its people and natural resources. Rather, it was founded on holding a monopoly on Greenland’s trade throughout the 19th century and on keeping Greenland’s traditional, hunting-based economy in place ←16 | 17→at all costs, while at the same time