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Given that publications devoted to the life and work of polar explorer Knud Rasmussen still enjoy unvarying popularity in Denmark,78 it can come as a surprise that, as Scandinavian studies scholars Henk van der Liet and Astrid Surmatz observe in their article on re-readings of Danish colonial literature: “One of the most renowned names within this literary tradition – which one may describe as ‘sledge romance’ – is of course Knud Rasmussen. He is a very productive and most interesting figure within the history of Danish literature, and his authorship has – as far as we are aware – never been the subject of profound literary analyses based on postcolonial theories.”79
Though the observation was made in 2004, it is still valid as literary analyses of Rasmussen’s texts are few and far between amidst the wealth of publications about him. One of the notable examples is Thule i hjertet by Danish literary scholar Knud Wentzel (1990), in which the author offers a psychological reading ←36 | 37→of passages from Rasmussen’s travel accounts. Rasmussen’s life and views have also been repeatedly analysed by Kirsten Hastrup, an eminent anthropologist of the University of Copenhagen. In her articles “Menneskesyn: kultur, race og Knud Rasmussen” and “Den anden sandhed. Et essay om Knud Rasmussen,” Hastrup uses Rasmussen’s literary texts and journalism to offer a Said-inspired, anthropological critique of his Eurocentric views of Greenlanders, including the Inughuit. Hastrup has also authored a very comprehensive study entitled Vinterens hjerte. Knud Rasmussen og hans tid (2010), in which she provides rich biographical details and interpretations of Rasmussen’s diaries and fragments of his popular expedition reports. Still, because the methodology she uses is geared primarily to showing how the dominant ideologies and discourses of the age shaped Rasmussen as an individual, she devotes only scarce attention to rhetorical devices used in his writings and the techniques of presenting the Other.80
The literary qualities of Rasmussen’s narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition were more directly addressed by Norwegian literary scholar Fredrik Chr. Brøgger of the University of Tromsø, who interpreted the original Danish edition of Fra Grønland til Stillehavet (the book appeared in English in a slightly revised version entitled Across Arctic America in 1927) in two papers discussing Rasmussen’s views of the nature of the American Arctic and the Inuit communities inhabiting the region, respectively.81 The texts look into the ways in which Rasmussen’s “hybrid identity” is reflected in the representations of Arctic flora and fauna or of its population. Brøgger’s approach is largely consistent with the idea of Rasmussen as a person and writer which was outlined by the most prominent Danish postcolonial scholar, Kirsten Thisted of the University of Copenhagen, in her article inspired by Homi Bhabha’s theories, entitled “Over deres egen races lig. Om Knud Rasmussens syn på kulturmødet og slægtskabet mellem grønlændere og danskere” (2006). Thisted comprehensively analyses Fra Grønland til Stillehavet and the abridged version of this account entitled Den store slæderejse (1932) in two articles published in Danish and English, respectively: “Knud Rasmussen” (2009) and “Voicing the Arctic: Knud Rasmussen and the Ambivalence of Cultural Translation” (2010). In both publications, the starting point for the textual analysis of representations of cultural encounters ←37 | 38→with the Canadian and American Inuit is provided by Rasmussen’s hybrid identity, his capacity to negotiate between different positions and his skill at navigating cultural allegiances associated with them. Although Thisted’s approach clearly differs from those adopted by other Danish scholars, she follows her predecessors in reading Rasmussen’s texts as a record of real events which happened during the expedition and is less interested in their literary quality.82 Rasmussen’s identity and cultural belonging are also addressed by Karen Langgård, a Danish literary scholar of the Ilisimatusarfik (University of Greenland), who comparatively analyses the Danish and Greenlandic texts of The New People to conclude, like Thisted and Brøgger, that Rasmussen’s identity was a hybrid one.83
Although these studies by Danish scholars rely on postcolonial theory, they exemplify the biographical approach to the study of Rasmussen’s works, which continues the prevalent tendency registered by Van der Liet and Surmatz in 2004. Only in recent years have the accounts of polar expeditions started to invite more literary-minded readings. Important studies in this respect include Den svenske Ikaros. Berättelserna om Andrée (2003), in which Per Rydén of the University of Lund focuses on discursive representations of the balloon expeditions of Swedish polar explorer Salomon August Andrée (1854–1897), and the PhD project completed by Silje Solheim Karlsen at the University of Tromsø in 2011. Her dissertation, entitled Triumf, lojalitet, avstand: Fridtjof Nansens Fram-ekspedisjon [1893–1896] – og bøker i dens kjølvann (2011), examined accounts of Fridtjof Nansen’s expedition to the Arctic Sea.
As a result of an increased interest in the North Pole rivalry involving the countries that possess Arctic territories and in the role of Greenland in the context of global warming, polar themes are climbing their way out of the obscurity of the northern peripheries. It is likely only a matter of time before the humanities, including literary studies, develop a vigorous interest in the Arctic regions and their inhabitants.
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So-far, Knud Rasmussen’s literary writings have only rarely and selectively been examined specifically as literature, within a framework informed by postcolonial theories. The literary quality typical of Rasmussen’s works and the role of this literariness in constructing representations of the world have also remained grievously underexamined. It is my ambition and goal to fill in this gap by exploring the literary aspects of Rasmussen’s texts in order to establish how and how far they construct and subordinate North Greenland and its inhabitants at a particular colonial moment, yet also give voice to the Other, not only as a participant in the cultural encounter but also as a part of the narrator’s “self.”84
My fundamental objective in this book is to analyse the literary construction of North Greenland and the Inughuit in Knud Rasmussen’s first two expedition accounts: The New People and My Travel Diary. This is supposed to help me explore the complicated network of relationships between these literary texts and the historical process of the Danish colonization of North Greenland. My analysis starts from an a priori assumption that travel writing is intrinsically ambivalent due to the inevitable positionality and contextuality of the literary subject. Consequently, in my argument I will follow two parallel paths. Specifically, I will focus on the relationships between colonial discourse and the representations of North Greenland and the Inughuit in Rasmussen’s narratives; and, at the same time, I will explore how these very narratives articulate an opposition to the dominant representations. It is only through constantly “being at the frontiers,” through “analyzing and reflecting upon limits” that we stand a chance of moving “beyond the outside-inside alternative,” which Michel Foucault’s “philosophical ethos” calls for.85 The ultimate goal of my reflection on popular polar literature of the early 20th century is thus to conduct a “historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment into the possibility of going beyond them” in order to demonstrate that there indeed are common mechanisms and cultural practices which transcend the colonial moment I am analysing.86
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Before