Colonialism in Greenland

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

Series Editors Richard Drayton Department of History King’s College London London, United Kingdom

Saul Dubow Magdalene College University of Cambridge Cambridge, United Kingdom The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a collection of studies on empires in world history and on the societies and cultures which emerged from colonialism. It includes both transnational, comparative and connective studies, and studies which address where particular regions or nations participate in global phenomena. While in the past the series focused on the British Empire and Commonwealth, in its current incarna- tion there is no imperial system, period of human history or part of the world which lies outside of its compass. While we particularly welcome the ﬁrst monographs of young researchers, we also seek major studies by more senior scholars, and welcome collections of essays with a strong thematic focus. The series includes work on politics, economics, culture, literature, science, art, medicine, and war. Our aim is to collect the most exciting new scholarship on world history with an imperial theme.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13937 Søren Rud Colonialism in Greenland

Tradition, Governance and Legacy Søren Rud University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ISBN 978-3-319-46157-1 ISBN 978-3-319-46158-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46158-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017941721

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This book was advertised with a copyright holder in the name of the publisher in error, whereas the author holds the copyright. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: King Christian X of Denmark visits Greenland in 1921 in celebration of the 200 years anniversary of Hans Egede’s arrival. National Library of Denmark.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

2 Ethnography, Time, and the Idealization of Tradition 9

3 Invoking Tradition as a Governance Strategy: Danish Colonial Policies in the Late Nineteenth Century 33

4 Achieving a Correct Blend: Tradition, Modernization, and the Formation of Identity 55

5 Diagnosing Vulnerability 73

6 Shame and Crime: The Effects and Afterlife of Tradition 95

7 Toward a Postcolonial Greenland: Culture, Identity, and Colonial Legacy 119

8 Afterword 145

Bibliography 149

Index 165

v LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 2.1 Map of Greenland 10 Fig. 3.1 Designation protocol 45 Fig. 3.2 List of repartition 47

vii LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Greenlandic customs and rules 20

ix CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Colonialism in Greenland: Tradition, Governance and Legacy

Colonial pasts are sensitive and unsettling matters. Their presence serves as a reminder of uncomfortable historical trajectories. Historical narratives of the colonially ruled are linked with notions of national identity for the former colonizers as well as the formerly colonized, and these narratives have the capacity to provoke strong emotional responses. The relationship between Denmark and Greenland is deeply marked by the legacy of colonialism. This book offers an analysis of the colonial project in Greenland.1 More speciﬁcally, the following chapters seek to add nuance and qualify one-dimensional images of the past and their related past and present identities—crucial in the current situation where assessments are characterized either by the destruction (or perceived destruction) of the traditional Inuit culture or a naive celebration of exceptional Danish benevolence. It draws attention to the equivocal nature of the colonial practices and deals with the establishment of an ethnographic discourse, the way in which this ethnographic “knowledge” was utilized in a speciﬁc form of colonial governance, the past and effects of this colonial epistemology including the legacy of colonialism in Greenland and Denmark today.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DENMARK AND GREENLAND Fifty times the size of Denmark, Greenland is known as the world’s largest island. The country is characterized by its extreme geographical conditions. Approximately 80 percent of Greenland’s area is covered by a gigantic ice sheet (approximately 1.8 million km2) yet the ice-free coastal areas equal the size of Germany. The population of around 56,000 inhabitants live in towns and settlements in the ice-free coastal regions, mainly along the west coast, which is more accessible by ship. No roads connect the towns or settlements in Greenland and all transportation is by ship, helicopter, or plane. The lack of infrastructure and the geographical realities present great challenges to contemporary Greenland. The Greenlandic population can be divided into four main categories: (1) West Greenlanders (around 80 percent); (2) East Greenlanders (around 6 percent); (3) North Greenlanders in Avanersuaq [the great North], also known as the Thule area (around 1.5 percent); and (4) the remainder comprising a group of predominantly Danish inhabitants.2 The composition of the population reflects the long relationship between Greenland and Denmark; many Greenlanders have family ties to Denmark as a result of marriage or migration. The colonial phase began in 1721, when the Danish-Norwegian priest Hans Egede established a mission and trading activities in the area of the present-day capital Nuuk, and this phase lasted until 1953, when Greenland was integrated into the Danish Realm. Greenlanders born before 1953 were thus born in the official colonial period and they have experienced the palpable consequences of the modernization policies in the subsequent period. They have also witnessed a period of political mobilization against inequalities and a lack of cultural and political recognition—culminating in the Greenland Home Rule Act in 1979 and the Self-Government Act in 2009. In spite of Greenland’s increased political autonomy, the interconnec- tion between Greenland and Denmark is strong. Yet, the ambiguous legacy of colonialism remains somewhat unresolved in both countries. The Self-Government Act stipulates the Greenlanders’ status as a distinct people in the Realm with the right to self-determination; the Greenlandic and Danish parliaments are considered equal parties. However, Denmark still retains authority over political fields such as foreign policy, security, and international agreements. Intimately tied together at political and cultural levels, they are also economically DANISH EXCEPTIONALISM 3 bound. Greenland depends on annual grants from Denmark which cover more than half of the public spending of the Greenlandic government.

DANISH EXCEPTIONALISM At the height of its career as a colonial power in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Denmark was engaged in India (1620–1845), Africa (1659–1850), the Caribbean (1672–1917) and the North Atlantic (Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands). This small colonial empire gradually began to diminish in the mid-nineteenth century when Great Britain took over in India and the Gold Coast. In 1917, the Danish government sold the Danish West Indies (today the US Virgin Islands) to the USA. In 1930, Danish Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning claimed that Greenland was Denmark’s last colony.3 In spite of its colonial past Danish historians and anthropologists have only slowly taken theoretical and methodological inspiration from the ﬁeld of postcolonial studies since the 1990s.4 Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin note that in recent years historians, anthropologists and archaeologists have scrutinized the Scandinavian involvement in colonial ventures more vigorously.5 Despite the upsurge in awareness and research interest, the understanding of the Scandinavian participation in colonialism is, according to Helle Jørgensen, marked by unfamiliarity or denial; and perception can swing from national pride to bitter consideration of human tragedy.6 In a similar vein, Danish scholar Lars Jensen has strongly critiqued what he perceives to be a Danish lack of interest in acknowledging the colonial past. In his book, Danmark. Rigsfællesskab, tropekolonier og den postkoloniale arv [Denmark: realm, tropical colonies and the postcolonial legacy], Jensen analyzes a multiplicity of texts, with diverse views on Danish colonialism ranging from apologetic, chastising, and apparently objec- tively analyzing, and concludes that all of them fundamentally underpin the same whitewashing of Danish colonialism.7 In doing so, according to Jensen, the authors are silencing the brutality and culture of oppression that colonialism constituted as a system.8 Commenting on the Greenlandic reconciliation commission Jensen notes:

In relation to the Greenlandic reconciliation commission it is of course interesting that there was no slavery. This, however, does not mean that the Danish presence cannot be seen as a history of abuses. That is after all 4 1 INTRODUCTION

what colonialism is. Here it is signiﬁcant that the commission concerns itself with the period of modernization, which by strictest deﬁnition is postcolonial, because it was after Greenland gained its own distinct status.9

While I sympathize with the project of deconstructing the hollow narrative of Scandinavian exceptionalism, I find it pertinent to apply an historical analysis that allows the specifics of the various colonial projects to emerge. As Nicholas Thomas notes: “Colonialism can only be traced through its plural and particularized expressions [ ...].”10 Danish practices relating to the slave trade and planter-slave colonialism were every bit as brutal and inhumane as the practices of other powers in similar colonial projects. And Denmark was every bit as invested as other western nations in the production of hierarchized notions of culture, race, and society. However, deconstructing the narrative of Scandinavian exceptionalism must not entail the conflation of all colonial projects into a hodgepodge of brutality and oppression. The following chapters have been organized to address several deconstructions of sometimes all-too familiar narratives about Greenland. Chapter 2 (“Ethnography, Time, and the Idealization of Tradition”) shows how an idealized perception of Greenlandic/Inuit- culture was forged throughout the colonial period. This view of the uncolonized Greenlanders as the true representatives of Greenlandic/ Inuit-culture became increasingly dominant in nineteenth-century ethnographic portrayals of the Greenlanders. Expeditions to uncolonized areas of Greenland reinforced this tendency. The focus centers on ethnographic work carried out by missionaries, administrators, and participants in expeditions to the East Coast and the northwestern part of Greenland. Chapter 3 (“Invoking Tradition as a Governance Strategy: Danish Colonial Policies in the Late Nineteenth Century”) continues the discussion of the nascent cultural idealization, and how it became a strategic tool used by the government when important colonial reforms were implemented toward the middle of the nineteenth century. The declared objec- tive of these colonial reforms was to restore the traditionally revered position of the most proficient seal hunters in the local communities by establishing local boards in (and through) which the seal hunters gained political influence, prestige, and economic benefits. Given the nature of the implemented changes, however, the reforms caused a transformation rather than a restoration of the Greenlandic communities. DANISH EXCEPTIONALISM 5

Chapter 4 (“Achieving a Correct Blend: Tradition, Modernization, and the Formation of Identity”) continues the discussion of how—in addition to revisiting the importance of seal hunters—the colonial administrational strategy aimed to form (or reshape) and thereby elevate certain types of individuals among the Greenlanders. To be part of the Greenlandic elite thus meant conforming to an ideal structured around an ambiguous template based on a delicate intermixture of traditional and modern virtues. The analysis shines a light on a boarding house in Copenhagen established in the late nineteenth century, the way it was used to house Greenlandic students, and its accompanying purposes. The appearance of mental disturbances is addressed in Chapter 5 (“Diagnosing Vulnerability”). The analysis points out how various settings conditioned the scientific understanding of these “culture-bound syn- dromes.” Medical and popular views made assessments based on Greenlanders’“capacities.” The chapter uses the diagnoses as a lens through which the political, economic, and epistemological premises of the colonial project in Greenland become clear. “Shame and Crime: The Effects and Afterlife of Tradition” is the title of Chapter 6 and analyzes the practices related to maintaining law and order in colonial Greenland. The early Greenlandic author Peter Gundel’s frequent episodes of conflict with the law provide the framework for the analysis of various procedures related to the juridical area. The chapter highlights the reluctance on the part of the Danish colonizers to modernize the penal system. During the colonial era, the Greenlandic elite made repeated requests for reforms and standardiza- tion of the penal practices. However, colonial authorities and legal experts found that a modern penal system was “too heavy an armor for the Greenlanders.” In the eyes of the colonial and later “postcolonial” authorities, Greenlanders were culturally immature, ruled by traditional customs and not competent enough to be governed by a codified legal system. This chapter provides an historical background for understanding the development of a penal system imbued with ideas about the Greenlanders’ cultural specificity. The penal system in Greenland is still influenced by these ideas. Finally Chapter 7 (“Toward a Postcolonial Greenland: Culture, Identity, and Colonial Legacy”) analyzes how and to what extent past colonial perceptions and legacies of Greenlanders—i.e., ideas of cultural competency—still flourish in contemporary debate. Greenland possesses a double role as a culture belonging to the indigenous peoples of the North represented in the ICC (Inuit Circumpolar Council) while at the same time positioned as a semiautonomous state acting in a sometimes strained 6 1 INTRODUCTION and ambiguous association with Denmark. In this complex setting, Greenlandic identity is a field of constant contestation and negotiation. The colonial project in Greenland was fundamentally different from Danish (and many other) colonial projects elsewhere. Too often the effect of colonialism in Greenland is understood to consist of a process of cultural destruction of the precolonial, traditional Inuit culture. The narrative which follows invites room for understanding the way in which colonial governance in Greenland—especially in the nineteenth century—to an increasing degree became based on the notion and utilization of Greenlandic traditions. If we want to understand the modernization and anti-colonial critique following Greenland’s integration into Denmark after 1953, it is crucial to contextualize these trajectories in relation to the preceding colonial period and allow the complexities of history to unfold.

NOTES 1. Kalaallit Nunaat is the Greenlandic name for Greenland (meaning “land of the kalaallit/Greenlanders”). In Danish, however, most Greenlanders use Grønland, and in English Greenland. 2. Gyldendal. Den store Danske: http://denstoredanske.dk/Geografi_og_his torie/Gr%C3%B8nland/Gr%C3%B8nlands_geografi/Gr%C3%B8nland.It must be noted, however, that ethnic or national identity in Greenlandic is a matter of ongoing debate in which the subject of language has a significant position. See for example: Hanne Thomsen, “Ægte grønlændere og nye grønlændere—om forskellige opfattelser af grønlandskhed,” Den Jyske Historiker 81 (1998); Kirsten Thisted, “Pioneering nation: markedsføring af Grønland under selvstyret,” Tidsskriftet Grønland 60, 3 (2012); Karen Langgård, “Grønlandsk etnisk-national identitet i slutningen af 1800-tallet og begyndelsen af 1900-tallet,” in Høiris, Ole; Marquardt, Ole, ed. Fra vild til verdensborger: grønlandsk identitet fra kolonitiden til nutidens globalitet (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag 2011). 3. Stauning, Thorvald, Min Grønlandsfærd (Copenhagen and Oslo: Jespersen og Pios forlag, 1930). 4. Niels Brimnes, “Dansk kolonihistorie mellem historievidenskab og antropologi — et forslag til metode,” Den Jyske Historiker 60 (1992). 5. Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin, Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena (New York: Springer, 2013), 3–4. 6. Helle Jørgensen, “Heritage Tourism in Tranquebar: Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Encounter?” In Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin, eds., NOTES 7

Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity Small Time Agents in a Global Arena (New York: Springer, 2013), 69–89. 7. Lars Jensen, Danmark: rigsfællesskab, tropekolonier og den postkoloniale arv (København: Hans Reitzels Forlag, 2012), 15–56. 8. Jensen, Danmark, 18, 30–31, 36, 55. 9. Jensen, “Forsoningskommission.” Author’s translation here and elsewhere unless otherwise stipulated. 10. Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), ix–x. CHAPTER 2

Ethnography, Time, and the Idealization of Tradition

According to Bernard Cohn, “Historians and anthropologists have a common subject matter, ‘otherness’; one ﬁeld constructs and studies ‘otherness’ in space, the other in time.”1 Indeed, the ethnographic exploration of traditional Greenlandic culture might well be compared to time traveling. Observers who traveled to the yet uncolonized spaces in Greenland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries gained the opportunity to come face-to-face with the pre-colonial past in Greenland and to study and construct the Greenlanders’ otherness in the intersection of past and present. Accordingly, the following deals with the way in which ethnographers and other observers invoked tradition as a cultural ideal in Greenland, especially in the nineteenth century. Colonial administrators in turn drew on these images to fortify their knowledge of the past and use it as a resource to inform policy decisions (Fig. 2.1).

BEYOND VOICE:ESKIMO-ORIENTALISM AND THE COLONIAL PROJECT Following the lead of Edward Said and others, scholars have long attended to representations of the Inuit.2 With her books Eskimo Essays: Yup’ik Lives and How We See Them and Freeze Frame: Alaska Eskimos in the Movies, Ann Fienup-Riordan has exerted a huge inﬂuence in the ﬁeld.3 Fienup-Riordan successfully transferred the insights of Edward Said’s work to an Arctic context by coining the expression

North Greenland

Qaanaaq (Thule)

Uummannaq (Thulebefore1953) East Greenland

West Greenland

Upernavik

Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) Northernprovince Uummannaq

Appat (Ritenbenk)

Qeqertarsuaq (Godhavn) Ilulissat (Jakobshavn)

Aasiaat (Egedesminde) Qasigiannguit (Christianshåb)

Sisimiut (Holsteinsborg)

Maniitsoq (Sukkertoppen) Tasiilaq (Ammassalik)

Nuuk (Godthåb) Qeqertarsuatsiaat (Fiskenæsset)

Paamiut (Frederikshåb)

Southernprovince

Qaqortoq (Julianehå)b Nanortalik

Fig. 2.1 Map of Greenland Map of Greenland with present-day town names and the Danish colonial names, in brackets. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, colonies/towns were established from Nanortalik in the south of West Greenland to Upernavik in the north of West Greenland. Administratively colonial West Greenland was from 1782 divided into two provinces, each led by a provincial governor. The colonial activities in East Greenland and North Greenland were established only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century BEYOND VOICE: ESKIMO-ORIENTALISM AND THE COLONIAL PROJECT 11

Eskimo-Orientalism.4 In concert with Said’s conclusion about Western representations, she viewed the representation of the Inuit as a mirror image of western self-identity:

Just as representations of the Orient mirror the Occident in speciﬁc historical moments [ ...], so representations of Eskimos provide another window into the history of the West. Like the representation of the Orient, the representation of the Eskimo is about origins – in this case the origin of society in the “pure primitive”: peaceful, happy, childlike, noble, independent, and free.5

Lars Jensen has assessed Fienup-Riordan’s application of Said’s concept of Orientalism in the Arctic context as having various shortcomings.6 According to Jensen, Fienup-Riordan fails to recognize the particularity of the contexts to which she applies Said’s theoretical tools. Moreover, Jensen claims that in spite of Fienup-Riordan’s identification of the potential in “considering Said’s insights in the Arctic,” she “fails to address the questions of what types of national imaginings the Arctic produced and in service of what interests.”7 In the end, according to Jensen, Fienup- Riordan reduces the focus to a “very limited critique of a Eurocentric aestheticism.”8 Building on his analysis of three Danish-made films about Greenland, Jensen concludes that the representation of the Greenlanders has served the purpose of legitimizing the Danish colonial endeavor and the subsequent Danish influence in Greenland. Another line of critique that has been raised against the focus on representation, stemming from Said’sinfluence, is the (now classic) problem with the “silenced other” that arises from the focus of western representations of the non-West. Kirsten Thisted observes, commenting on Erik Gant’s dissertation on “Greenland movies,” that “when the Danish Greenland movies are presented exclusively as resulting from a Danish discourse, things can only add up when the Greenlandic influence on the product is excluded.”9 Thisted forcefully critiques the way in which a narrow focus on representation can ironically end up confirming the dominance it set out to reveal and undermine.10 But while the points raised by Jensen and Thisted are pertinent and sympathetic—and supplement Fienup-Riordan’s analyses with new important perspectives—the concern outlined in this chapter lies beyond the colonial discourse in another sense. What will be teased out is the way in which ethnographic 12 2 ETHNOGRAPHY, TIME, AND THE IDEALIZATION OF TRADITION discourse (in this case on Greenlandic/Inuit culture or tradition) was deeply entangled with the colonial project. This focus on the entanglement of ethnographic discourse and colonial administration does not extend specifically to how the Artic Orientalism silenced, misrepresented, or oversimplified various Inuit cultures, or worked to legitimize asymmetrical power structures. In his book, The Devil’s Handwriting, George Steinmetz stresses how precolonial ethnographic discourse was a decisive factor in the shaping of the varied forms of colonialism that were established by Germany from around 1879.11 As Steinmetz argues: “Blueprints for colonialism were prepared not so much in Europe’sofficial foreign ministries as in the scholar’s study, the traveler’s diary, and the playwright’s tale of Oceanic shipwreck and African adventure.”12 But where Steinmetz notes that precolonial ethnographic discourse was instrumental in the shaping of the modern German colonial projects (Samoa, German West Africa, and Qingdao), in Greenland, the ethnographic work was forged within its colonial period.13 However, just as in the cases described by Steinmetz, it was the uncolonized culture that was at the center of ethnographic interest in Greenland.14 The formation of ethnographic knowledge of the “precolonial Greenlanders” was particularly resonant in Greenland because it functioned as a yardstick for measuring the success of the colonial project, and as a template for colonial reforms cast as what might be referred to as retraditionalization or a rebirth of indigenous traditions in the nineteenth century. Accordingly, exploration of the uncolonized areas in Greenland appeared to provide the opportunity to compare the colonized Greenlanders of the West Coast with their uncolonized countrymen from the East Coast and far Northwest. Here the “scholar’s study and the traveler’sdiary” certainly gain prominence, as suggested by Steinmetz, in relation to shaping the colonial project. However, the exploration and, accordingly the ongoing establishment and elaboration of the ethnographic discourse, were carried out within an already existing colonial context.

EARLY DEPICTIONS OF INUIT AND GREENLANDERS:CIVILIZED AND CORRUPTED The earliest descriptions of Inuit, aside from the sporadic tales of encounters between Norsemen and Inuit, date from the sixteenth century where explorers in search of the Northwest Passage recounted meetings with EARLY DEPICTIONS OF INUIT AND GREENLANDERS ... 13 people of the polar region. Typically these images depict Inuit as savages clad in fur clothes surviving on a diet of raw meat. In these European portrayals they are posed animal-like, often inviting notions of cannibalism which ﬂourished, presumably as a logical consequence of the Inuit’s fondness for raw meat.

I think them rather anthropophagi, or devourers of man’s flesh than otherwise: for that there is no flesh or fish which they find dead (smell it never so filthily) but they will eate it, as they finde it without any other dressing.15

These early narratives depict the Inuit as barbaric and barely human. Over time, however, the depictions slowly evolved to become more nuanced as well as positive.16 Accordingly, when the Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede arrived in Greenland in 1721, the general understanding of the Inuit had widened beyond pictures of barely human creatures. However, the framework for understanding the non-westerners was still informed by Hobbes’ barbarian, and Egede certainly viewed the people he encountered in Greenland as inferior primitives desperately in need of guidance toward civilization and Christianity:

By and large this people’s main temperament is phlegmatic, thus they are stupid and cold hearted by nature and rarely exhibit any kind of affect and passion amongst them, but almost all their behavior rests on an emotionless disposition. However, I do hold that it contributes greatly to their stupidity and cold-heartedness that they lack the education and means by which their minds could be polished and sharpened.17

According to Egede, in addition to being stupid and unemotional, Greenlanders lacked the capacity to possess a varied or rich internal life. Egede depicted the Greenlanders as a sort of defective version of (western) human beings, and he expressed contempt for the shamanistic aspects of social life in Greenland, such as drum-singing events. In Egede’s view, the shamanistic “angakok” culture conﬂicted with his mission of disseminat- ing Christianity among the Greenlanders.18 He labeled the shamans liars, and perceived them to be bent on simultaneously exploiting and display- ing what Egede saw as the Greenlanders’ gullibility. He believed guidance was needed to counter this superstition. 14 2 ETHNOGRAPHY, TIME, AND THE IDEALIZATION OF TRADITION

They ought henceforth to be held under a degree of retributive discipline, whereby their [ ...] superstitions and their deceitful Angekuter’s art of deceptions, and from this ﬂowing evil consequences, were disal- lowed and taken from them, so they would not, in all matters, be their own masters.19

Overall Egede expressed a rather contemptuous attitude toward Greenlanders and their culture, with some exceptions. He praised their social harmony, which he found to characterize their social life, and their harmonious childrearing practices. This convoluted understanding and assessment of the Greenlander—so present in Egede’s work—did evolve in broader terms to accommodate more positive impressions beyond condescension or tolerance as evidenced in later eighteenth-century depictions.20 Fienup-Riordan reads this shift in the general representation of Inuit in the light of philosophical and scientiﬁc developments. An awaken- ing critique of civilization, drawing on Rousseau’s picture of the noble savage came to work in alliance with the later social Darwinist currents to underpin a growing fascination of the Inuit’s adaption to life in extremely hostile surroundings.21 Fienup-Riordan notes the emergence of increasingly romanticized images of Inuit in journal accounts from Arctic explorers and later movies and popular culture in general. “[ ...] nineteenth-century Euro- Americans began to clothe Eskimos in a new, romantic image that they wear to this day.”22 As noted by several scholars, the idealized image pertained to the traditional Inuit culture whereas the “civilized” Inuit were considered to be “corrupted by civilization.”23

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL TIME-PORTALS According to Fabian, anthropology has always made an effort “to construct relations with its Other by means of temporal devices.”24 Therefore what characterized the establishment of ethnographic knowledge was “a persistent and systematic tendency to place the referent(s) of anthropology in a time other than the present of the producer of anthropological discourse.”25 Following this, the encounters were played out in settings marked by what Fabian coins the denial of coevalness, and the exploration of primitive, premodern, preindustrialized peoples provided the West with what appeared to be an image of its own primitive, premodern, preindustrialized past. THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL TIME-PORTALS 15

Continuing the thread of this thinking—as well as Fabian’s observations—one may view the exploration of remote places and the connected encounters with “primitive” people as equivalent to time travel or the opportunity to view events of the present while simultaneously peering through a time porthole into cultures and events of the past. Indeed, one may also consider them time portals. In the case of nineteenth-century Greenland, the passage from the colonized West Coast to the uncolonized East Coast (and later the passage from colonial Northwest Greenland to the Thule area) constituted a passage through an “anthropological time-portal” allowing entry into “times past” where explorers could be confronted with “uncontaminated,” precolonial, and traditional Greenlandic culture, and subsequently reenter the “contemporary time-zone” with ﬁrst-hand knowledge of the past. The yet-uncolonized areas in Greenland offered themselves as a yardstick to measure the success of the colonizing process, and as a template in a process where colonial reforms were molded on a selective reading of precolonial tradition. Between 1828 and 1830 Marine Ofﬁcer Wilhelm August Graah carried out his expedition to the East Coast of Greenland. His main purpose was to search for remains of the Norse settlement, then believed to have been located on the East Coast. Through the expedition’s results and later examinations, it was eventually established as a fact that a Norse settlement had never been located on the East Coast, but rather was to be found in the southern part of Greenland. Accordingly the participants in the expedition found no Norse remains, and so focused rather on the other purposes of the trip: to map the coast and deliver an ethnographic description of the inhabitants. Even though there had been a degree of contact between the groups of people living on the inaccessible coast and the outposts of the colonial and missionary system located in the South of Greenland, the Inuit of the East Coast were uncolonized.26 Graah provided an interesting depiction of the uncolonized Inuit, whom he cast in a surprisingly positive light:

In their interaction with each other they are most gracious. Surely they do not know of empty compliments or polite manners, rather they are modest, kind and gentle. One clearly feels how much they wish to be pleasant towards each other and how much they dread saying or doing something offensive or indecent [ ...].27 16 2 ETHNOGRAPHY, TIME, AND THE IDEALIZATION OF TRADITION

Evidently Graah’s depiction of the uncolonized Greenlanders is consider- ably more positive than that given 100 years earlier by Hans Egede. Graah’s degree of sympathy and admiration for the Greenlanders he encountered on the East Coast are clear in his report from the expedition. On several occasions Graah compares the uncolonized Greenlanders of the East Coast favorably to the colonized Greenlanders of the West Coast. Critical of the “results” of colonization and generally of its inﬂuence, he provides as an example the clothing worn by the uncolonized East Coast Greenlanders with the clothing of the Greenlanders from the colonized areas:

Since the East-landers do not have the opportunity to sell so many furs in return for coffee and other luxury articles, or items of terribly poor quality, they are generally better dressed than the Greenlanders in the vicinity of the colonies.28

Greenlanders in the colonized areas were selling their furs to buy unne- cessary or “learned” items of luxury such as tobacco and coffee and as a result were no longer clothed adequately to face the harsh climate, in comparison with the uncolonized who had done no such thing. In relation to the moral constitution of the uncolonized Greenlanders, Graah is no less positive:

In regards to the moral state of the East-landers, they deserve much praise. It is widely known that the Greenlanders of the West Coast, at the time of Egede’s arrival, were not only thievish [ ...] I have found them to be different [ ...] in any case I have never experienced or found traces of the wife swapping customs of which Egede reports.29

Here again Graah’s description deviates from Egede’s, ﬁnding no evidence of the “depraved sexual activities” the latter had noted. Accordingly, Graah’s tone is more favorable toward the Greenlanders’ lifestyle. The reference to Egede suggests that the encounters with uncolonized Greenlanders in the 1830s were an opportunity to compare the colonized Greenlanders’ culture and lifestyle with the uncolonized Greenlanders, presumed to live more or less like West Greenlanders in the precolonial era. Graah’s work and accompanying arguments were pivotal for a number of reasons and one could argue that he laid the foundation for future beliefs about the corruptive effects of early colonialism in Greenland. ETHNOGRAPHIC DISCOURSE 17

Returning to Fienup-Riordan’s description of Eskimo-Orientalism as centered around “the origin of society in the ‘pure primitive’: peaceful, happy, childlike, noble, independent, and free,” accessing uncolonized Greenlanders through the anthropological time portal, presented the opportunity to study the origin of society as well.30 In other words, representations of uncolonized Greenlanders came to function as an image of a distant primitive European past, but indeed also as an (often idealized) image of the Greenlanders’ more recent, precolonial and uncivilized past. For those who chose to access these time portals, these “visits” served to reinforce beliefs of the negative and corruptive inﬂuences that were in some cases threatening to lives and livelihoods.

ETHNOGRAPHIC DISCOURSE The nineteenth-century ethnographic interest in Greenlandic traditions was by no means new. From the earliest point in the colonization process, Europeans (engaged in trade or missionary activities) exhibited a vivid interest in the Greenlanders’ culture. Matching Hans Egede’s fervor in describing the Greenlanders and their lifestyle was the Moravian missionary, David Crantz.31 Also part of this wave was the colonial manager, Lars Dalager.32 Dalager’s work paints a more positive portrait, and importantly asserts that it would have been wise to utilize the Greenlandic shamans as mediators of the Christian message rather than deem their activities fraudulent.33 From the middle of the nineteenth century, the critical evaluation of the colonial process, already present in Dalager’s work, became more elaborate. The colonial administrator and ethnographer, Hinrich Johannes Rink was one of the key figures behind the elaboration of the critical diagnosis of the colonial process. According to Rink, important elements in the traditional Greenlandic social order had broken down through the process of colonization. In an article from 1862, Rink rejected what he saw as the overly optimistic analysis of the Greenlandic demography, and assessed the population increase between 1820 and 1855 as resulting largely from mixed marriages between European men and Greenlandic women—not from progress within the Greenlandic culture.34 Mixing the races was, however, according to Rink, a means to stave off the population decline in Greenland.35 Rink paints a rather negative picture of the influence of western culture in Greenland, drawing a parallel between the Greenlanders’ situation and the situation of North American Indians on 18 2 ETHNOGRAPHY, TIME, AND THE IDEALIZATION OF TRADITION the verge of extinction.36 What the Greenlanders shared with the North American Indians, according to Rink, was the disintegration of important societal institutions as a result of their intermingling with western culture.37 More concretely, Rink wrote that the Greenlanders’ Skikke og vedtægter (customs and rules) had been removed primarily by the missionaries, who had energetically battled what they perceived to be superstitious beliefs and practices.38 Rink claimed that Hans Egede was wrong when he described Greenland as a place with no authority, law, order, and discipline. Rink argued that all the elements of a precolonial social order could in fact be deduced from Egede’s own text. Moreover, the role of authority figures that Hans Egede found to be missing in Greenland was in fact occupied by the shamans (or angakkut) he had struggled to remove from the Greenlanders’ social world. Rink claimed that the angakkut were both spiritual and secular authorities, and accordingly they had been the ones to uphold the necessary social customs and rules.39 Evidently, Rink suggested, it had been a serious mistake to remove these spiritual and secular authorities from the social order—disrupting and corrupting an internally balanced ecosystem. Rink believed that while the missionaries should be forgiven for their mistakes due to their lack of knowledge, in hindsight it would have been far wiser for them to convert or evangelize the shamans and use their status among their peers. In a similarly critical vein, Rink points out that the removal of the traditional drum-singing events constituted the removal of an important legal function, since drum-singing duels served as a way to resolve conflicts between individuals. The result of removing the existing (and intrinsic) social authorities and important social institutions was a near complete lack of order and discipline in Greenlandic society. While Rink’scritical assessment of the colonial process and the erosion of the traditional social structures in Greenland was far from new, the nineteenth century marked a point where his articulation (among others) of ethnographic and historical observations became operationalized in the administrative line of the colony. Rink was not alone in his quest to restore the Greenlandic social order by resurrecting traditional values and cultural institutions. Samuel Kleinschmidt was born in Greenland as the son of a Moravian missionary and grew up mainly in Greenland.40 Following a dispute with his superiors Kleinschmidt left the Moravian community, and joined the newly established catechist college in the colonial capital of Nuuk. In 1863 he was the author behind what can be deemed a “Greenlandic social/cultural constitution,” where (according to his own ethos) Kleinschmidt outlined and established the traditional Greenlandic customs and rules in 25 statements. ETHNOGRAPHIC DISCOURSE 19

This “law” was apparently distributed to the various colonial districts in Greenland (Table 2.1).41 Kleinschmidt’s 25 statements demonstrate the deep entanglement of ethnography and colonial policies. Knowledge of traditional Greenlandic customs and rules form the foundation for these statements. However contemporary, western, nineteenth-century political and social conceptua- lizations, such as the divide between deserving and underserving poor, are interwoven into the code of traditional Greenlandic social/cultural norms and naturalized in a way parallel to the naturalization of the use of tents and boats. In a similar vein, statement 24 proclaims that all children must be brought up in a Christian spirit parallel to the way in which the traditional (gendered) occupations are laid out. This was no doubt an essentialization of Greenlandic culture: Greenlanders ought to live, according to their tradition (as hunters), settle for the winter and be nomadic in the summer.42 The statements tellingly paid no attention to Greenlanders who were either fishermen or who were employed by the trade or the mission. Greenlandic “non-hunters” were excluded from this version of the Greenlandic tradition. On the other hand, essentialization also entailed a systematic strategy stipulating personal responsibility and a dedication to Christianity. In other words, the invocation of a specific Greenlandic tradition entailed fundamental social changes intermixed with the freezing of specific traditional elements. Through this strategic invocation of a traditional past, the administration could—intentionally or otherwise— call for a cultural renaissance while at the same time act as social engineers aiming for an optimization of the Greenlandic culture. Rink’s Grønlandske skikke og vedtægter [Greenlandic customs and rules] from 1881 is a clear example of these efforts. The book was first published in Greenlandic, intended for a Greenlandic audience.43 To a considerable extent Rink shared the ideology behind Kleinschmidt’s 25 statements and prescribed the traditional Greenlandic rules in areas such as family, community, social life, occupation, property, savings and inheritance, childrearing, and the passing on of hunting and kayaking skills. The knowledge of the traditional customs and rules in Rink’s work was based on a variety of sources.44 As already indicated, readings (against the grain) of the material produced by early missionaries and traders helped Rink substanti- ate his claims about the traditional social order. Adventures and tales that flourished in the oral culture among Greenlanders were another source for mapping the Greenlandic/Inuit/ 20 2 ETHNOGRAPHY, TIME, AND THE IDEALIZATION OF TRADITION

Table 2.1 Greenlandic customs and rules

1. The central family unit is parents and children. 2. The nearest widows and orphans live with the hunters and help them. 3. Hunters joined in the same house, that is siblings or cousins or brothers-in-law, together form a household in which they help each other. 4. All households are led by a hunter, who shares responsibility for both praiseworthy and reprehensible behavior of members of the household. 5. All households of an adequate size have a women’s boat. 6. Households that are too small join up with nearby households to share a women’s boat. 7. When springtime comes all leave to stay in tents. 8. Even hunters without a women’s boat own a good tent. 9. When people leave their houses they need only to remove the windows; the roofs remain. 10. All winter settlements are uninhabited in the summer. 11. All women’s boats leave to fish for ammassat [a small fish that appears abundantly in Greenland]. Owners of women’s boats bring those without women’s boats to the ammassat places. 12. All families have supply bags and storage rooms which are sufficiently stockpiled in the autumn. 13. All houses have properly constructed roofs, walls and plank beds. 14. All tents have adequate inner and outer fur lining. 15. One shall prevent against food shortages. 16. All those joining a household must have the necessary equipment and not borrow from others. 17. Another’s property must be respected. 18. Wounded animals belong to the finder and lost property is returned to the owner, if he is still looking for it. 19. If one wishes to settle in a community, one must ask first the inhabitants of that place. 20. Members in a settlement always help each other. 21. Deserving poor without family (such as widows, orphans, old, weak, sick) help their settlement members without expecting payment in return. 22. Undeserving poor (due to laziness or wastefulness) will not be helped except for help with hunting. 23. Poor in need of necessities do not buy luxuries. 24. From the point they can sense, all children shall be raised to know the truth so they are not destroyed by emptiness, and they can find their place in heaven. 25. From early childhood, children must get used to their tasks: boys to all forms of hunting, the girls to women’s work. THE WOMEN’S BOAT EXPEDITION AND THE TRUE GREENLANDERS 21

Eskimo tradition. In 1866, Rink published a collection entitled Eskimoiske Eventyr og Sagn [Eskimo adventures and tales] of tales and songs gathered from all parts of the West Coast of Greenland between 1858 and 1865.45 Later narratives of uncolonized parts of Greenland emerged to comple- ment the mapping of these traditions. Kleinschmidt’s 25 statements and Rink’s scientiﬁc work constitute examples of the ethnographic discourse that was framing the colonial project in nineteenth-century Greenland. This ethnographic discourse was not established in a western monologue; rather the “subaltern” Greenlanders were to varying extents partaking in the establishment of cultural ideals as informants and carriers of their cultural traditions. Those who documented these ideals were indeed “others” but their work nonetheless laid the foundation of ethnographic knowledge and its subsequent role in informing the colonial project in nineteenth-century Greenland.

THE WOMEN’S BOAT EXPEDITION AND THE TRUE GREENLANDERS Since Graah’s trip to the East Coast, there had been relatively little activity in regards to further exploration of the coast. However, in the early 1880s, a new expedition was commissioned to explore the East Coast. The expedition took its popular name (the women’s boat expedition) from the means of transportation by which the participants worked their way up the coast: the Greenlandic Umiaq (women’s boat). These vessels were light skin boats constructed to contain equipment during transportation between hunting grounds throughout the summer’s nomadic life. The boats were traditionally rowed by women whereas the men traveled in their kayaks; following this local custom a number of Greenlandic women were enlisted in the expedition as rowers. Graah had used the same boats during his earlier expedition, and the women’s boats had thus proved their usefulness in connection with expeditions as both durable and ﬂexible vessels easy to drag over the ice when necessary and to repair in case of damage. Among the expedition’s primary goals were the mapping of the unknown coast and a description of the people encountered along the way. Two naval ofﬁcers, Gustav Holm and Thomas Vilhelm Garde, led the expedition, and Holm’s team reached the uncolonized population in the area of Ammassalik and wintered there in 1884–1885.46 The European participants in the expedition relied on a crew of Greenlandic (female) rowers, (male) hunters and translators. 22 2 ETHNOGRAPHY, TIME, AND THE IDEALIZATION OF TRADITION

A book published by Holm and Garde in 1887 entitled Den danske Konebaads-ekspedition til Grønlands østkyst. Populært beskreven [The Danish women’s boat-expedition to the East Coast of Greenland: popular description] was intended to convey the experiences of the expedition to a broader Danish audience. The book is a traditional exploration narrative, beginning with the arrival in Greenland. A general theme in the description is a degree of disappointment over the fact that the Greenlanders are less “Greenlandic” than expected. Garde expressed his unambiguous dis- approval of the state of matters in the colonized parts in Greenland in his description of his stay in the main colonial city of Godthåb (today Nuuk).

Godthåb, the oldest of the colonies in Greenland [ ...] is one of the worst colonies in the country. That the colony is bad means that the Greenlanders there generally are poor seal hunters and impoverished, and that there is no particular procurement of the Greenlandic main product seal blubber. The reason [ ...] is such, that they [the Greenlanders] here have had the longest contact with the Europeans, and the presence of those [the Europeans] has no beneﬁcial effect on the Greenlanders. They develop a taste for civilization, but do not reach for its positive aspects; rather they latch on to its poor and easily available aspects eagerly. They devote themselves to the consumption of Coffee and Tobacco with a passion that deﬁes all description: this costs money! In order to obtain this they sell everything! Fur they should have made clothes and boats from and blubber they ought to eat.47

Garde’s points here echo those from Graah’s earlier account. According to their views, the colonial trade affected Greenlandic culture negatively as hunters sold off items essential to their survival and to the maintenance of their lifestyle as hunters (e.g., fur and blubber). So tempting were the luxuries offered by colonial trade that Greenlanders were allowing the very foundations of their traditional lifestyles to erode in order to acquire them. Signiﬁcantly the Greenlanders’ hunting equipment and clothing became insufﬁcient as a consequence of these changes. Garde is quite explicit in his critique of the state of matters in Godthåb:

The inhabitants in the colony live mostly as servants for the Danish families and as workers in service of the Royal Greenlandic Trading Company, and while almost all the Greenlanders in the better places own a kayak, here many of the men lack this piece of equipment that is essential for the true Greenlander; those who do [own a kayak] predominantly use it as a device for laying around ﬁshing on the inlet.48 THE WOMEN’S BOAT EXPEDITION AND THE TRUE GREENLANDERS 23

Here true Greenlandicness is intimately connected with life as a hunter. Essentially Garde establishes the feature most characteristic of a Greenlandic man to be the activity of hunting seals from a kayak. A sharp contrast is drawn between the (true) Greenlandic hunters and Greenlanders with alternative occupations, such as those employed by the colonial or missionary apparatus. EvenresidentsinGodthåbwhoownedakayakfailedtoliveuptocultural expectations, since they only used the kayak for ﬁshing trips rather than the traditional seal hunt. Later in the book Garde draws the following far-reaching conclusion about the inﬂuence of colonization on the Greenlanders:

We, who during the expedition have had the opportunity to live both among the christened, half-civilized Greenlanders and the truly unaffected heathens, could not help but reach the conclusion that there among the heathens is quite a different energy and willpower, a viability and a deeper grasp of one’s self than that among the Christian Greenlanders.49

Here Garde delivers a harsh evaluation of the colonial project after 150 years of European inﬂuence on Greenlandic society. Garde’spoints were based on a central divide between what he deemed half-civilized Christian Greenlanders, on the one hand, and true and authentic heathen Greenlanders, on the other. For Garde, true Greenlanders were those most unaffected by European culture, in spite of the fact that only a relatively small minority of the Greenlanders were uncolonized. In Garde’s eyes, the more a Greenlander was modernized and adaptedtoEuropeanculturalinﬂuence, the further he was from true Greenlandicness. Uncompromisingly following the logic of his observations and analysis, Garde, presumably somewhat polemically, urges the trading company to withdraw and let the Greenlanders in the colonized parts of Greenland return to their traditional lifestyle, now represented by the uncolonized and authentic Greenlanders of the East Coast.

If they [the colonized Greenlanders] are to become cured from this impro- vidence, then there is no alternative to withdrawing the trade and let them support themselves like the heathens on the East Coast of the country do.50

Accordingly Garde attacks the legitimacy of the whole colonial endeavor in Greenland by expressing his sincere doubt about the beneficial influence of colonialism and civilization. The matter was pressing in the sense that 24 2 ETHNOGRAPHY, TIME, AND THE IDEALIZATION OF TRADITION the expedition’s description of the coastline and the description of the population in the Amassalik area generated a debate over whether or not the East Coast should be colonized. Holm and Garde knew that future colonization of the East Coast would be a likely consequence of their discoveries. They both expressed concern about the weakening of the small community’s traditional values connected with a potential colonization, and Holm suggested that potential missionary efforts on the East Coast should refrain from opposing traditional societal institutions. Later, however, Garde supported colonial activities on the East Coast, reasoning that the inhabitants of the East Coast had now become aware of the existence of the colonized areas, would travel there and accordingly the area would eventually become depopulated.51 The Ammassalik area was indeed included in the colonial project in Greenland in 1894, when various activities were established. Just years later in 1910, a private trading station was established in the Thule area.52 The most important results from the expedition were—aside from the mapping of coast—the ethnographic work carried out. The investigation stretched from measuring the head skulls of East Greenlanders to observations compiled in the scientific report, most importantly Holm’s Etnologisk Skizze af Angmagsalikerne [Ethnographic sketch of the Angmagssalik Eskimos] a work that has gained status as a classic among ethnographic depictions. Between Graah’s expedition in 1828–1831 and Garde and Holm in 1883–1885 there is a clear pattern of how the uncolonized Greenlanders are represented as more authentic or true than colonized Greenlanders. While reflecting prevailing attitudes in the colonial system of practices and representations, the discourse also contributed to the formation of these attitudes. The ethnographic work was informed by and helped underpin a growing appreciation of traditional Greenlandic culture as an idealized contrast to what was perceived as the failure of the colonial process. The idea of a dynamic and virtuous precolonial past came to function as a template for colonial reforms in the second half of the nineteenth century.

TIME,SPACE, AND CULTURAL IDEALS In a description of Greenland published by the society for the Danish Atlantic Islands in 1906: Grønland. Naturforhold, befolkning, hjælpekilder og næringsveje [Greenland: Natural conditions, population, resources and TIME, SPACE, AND CULTURAL IDEALS 25 occupations], it is clear that the recently explored parts of the population in Greenland formed a somewhat idealized image of the Greenlandic tradition. This image paradoxically worked as a yardstick for measuring the failure of the colonial process. Ethnographer William Thalbitzer’s account of the Greenlandic population drew heavily on the East Greenlanders, with whom he visited and wintered in Ammassalik in 1905–1906.

The only two places in Greenland, where the Eskimo population and its traditional culture are still relatively preserved from the intruding Europeanism are in the vicinities of the Colony Ammassalik in East Greenland and at Cap York (Smith Sund) farthest north on the West Coast. The rest of the West Greenlanders have in the course of 200 years been strongly europeanized.53

Much like Kleinschmidt’s and Rink’s previous statements, Thalbitzer wrote that Greenlanders were traditionally settled in the winter and nomadic in the summer. However:

The commonality of community, the social equality, which is particular to the houses of wintering Eskimo communities, is disappearing [ ...] and has allowed division to take root in the Greenlandic colonial community between a few well-off [ ...] and a proletariat of pitiful, impoverished unfortunates, who live hand-to-mouth in the ﬁlthiest unhealthy dwellings imaginable, and never switch to tents.54

This description of the inauthentic colonized Greenlanders who do not turn to the summer lifestyle of hunting and residing in a tent is starkly contrasted with the East Greenlanders. In the Ammassalik area, people still followed the tradition of moving into tents in the summertime, and gathering for drum-singing events where conflicts could be resolved in the duels between opponents. Here the “authentic” Greenlandic culture could still be found, and accompanying images were used to describe and propagate cultural ideals. In the early twentieth century the very recently explored Northwest Greenland, the Thule area, and the polar Eskimos were also used to provide examples of the true Greenlandic culture. This area became a matter of public attention in Denmark when a group of explorers were granted a permit to travel to the West Coast of Greenland and cross 26 2 ETHNOGRAPHY, TIME, AND THE IDEALIZATION OF TRADITION the Melville Bay in order to make contact with the people living in the area. Previously the inhabitants of this remote corner of present-day Greenland had been in sporadic contact with the whalers and explorers, since the British naval officerandpolarexplorerJohnRoss had established contact with them in 1818. Two of the participants in the Danish expedition which took place from 1902–1904 entitled the “Literary Expedition,” gave their positive depiction of the polar Eskimos: “Up here everyone is proficient, here there are no lazy and incompetents present as in so many places in Danish West Greenland.”55 In a talk given after his return Mylius-Erichsen divided Greenlanders into three groups:

• the approximately 11,400 long-since Christianized Greenlanders, who are descendants of the people among whom Hans Egede began his cultural mission and proclamation of Christianity; • the East Greenlanders at Ammassalik, approximately 400 in number, among whom the mission- and trading station has been established only 10 years ago; and • the approximately 200 Polar Eskimos on Greenland’s farthest Northwestern Coast, all unbaptized.56

It is clear that the three groups were delineated by the different degrees to which they had interacted with western culture. The majority of the Greenlanders (populating the Danish West Greenland) were descendants of the people Hans Egede encountered in 1721, whereas the East Greenlanders and the Polar Eskimos represented more or less precolonial versions of this same culture. The uncolonized Greenlanders came to act as the de facto source of knowledge on traditional (precolonial) culture in Greenland. A wide range of activities were marked by the operationalization of the uncolonized spaces as a source of information and knowledge about the past. An example can be found in medical doctor Alfred Bertelsen’swritings on sexuality in Greenland. In Bertelsen’s account, the East Coast and the Polar Eskimos served to authenticate knowledge of the Greenlandic tradition. Bertelsen’s knowledge of the Greenlanders is based on the ethnographic descriptions written by missionaries and supplemented and conﬁrmed by traders and colonial ofﬁcials’ observations of the population in East Greenland and the Thule area. Over several pages Bertelsen details the information of the Greenlanders’ sexuality known TIME, SPACE, AND CULTURAL IDEALS 27 from the work of Hans Egede (1741), David Crantz (1765)andLars Dalager (1752) and concludes:

The picture thus revealed [Egede, Dalager, Crantz], is close to the impression one gets, in our times, from the closest residing uncivilized Eskimos, the Angmassalikans and the Cap York’ers.57

Bertelsen ties descriptions dating from the eighteenth century of (almost) precolonial West Greenlanders with twentieth-century observations of (almost) precolonial Greenlanders from the marginal spaces of the East Coast and the Thule-area (Cap York). This provides a good example of the paradoxical simultaneity in space combined with what Fabian has coined as a “denial of coevalness.” This was clear when Mylius-Erichsen pointed out that the Polar Eskimos had just left the Stone Age, and needed guidance on their path toward the modern world. In 1929, renowned Danish explorer and ethnographer Knud Rasmussen pointed to the potential in using the access to (almost uncolonized) remote Eskimo communities as a source for knowledge about life in the Stone Age. In a somewhat nationalistic spirit he argued that the proud Danish tradition for ethnographic research in Greenland warranted that Danes should be at the forefront of investigating the potential of connecting Eskimo studies with Stone Age studies:

It might also be mentioned that the problems of the Eskimo culture were first subjected to systematic research by Danish scientists. Do not let us forget that it was Rink who first compared Eskimo and Indian culture, and that Gustav Holm was the first, in his book on the Angmagssalik, to give a scientific description of a newly discovered, primitive Eskimo tribe. This, then, must be a sufficient reason for suggesting a complete investigation of the most important of questions attached to the problem: Eskimos and Stone Age Peoples should come from Denmark.58

The Stone Age analogy in relation to the marginal spaces in Greenland was long-lasting. Ejnar Mikkelsen’s book Svundne tider i Østgrønland. Fra stenalder til atomtid [Bygone times in East Greenland: from Stone Age to Atomic Age] invokes, as the title indicates, the image of a rapid development from the Stone Age to contemporary times. In Jean Malaurie’s book from 1982, The Last Kings of Thule, the Stone Age (and Ice Age) analogy is widely applied. Malaurie writes about his visits (1950–1951) to the 28 2 ETHNOGRAPHY, TIME, AND THE IDEALIZATION OF TRADITION

Thule area: “It is said that a man of today could not understand his Ice Age brother. However, the Arctic in 1950 was a living Lascaux in some ways, and in this environment it was possible to attempt this understanding.”59 Malaurie explains his desire to travel to the Thule area:

Everything I had ascertained about the nature of the half-Eskimo Greenlanders who lived in the southern part of that vast island had made me wish, every year more intensely, to reach back to their origins by going to more northern latitudes where, I had been told, a handful of people preserved their ethnic character to a remarkable degree.60

Malaurie’s quotes capture accurately the potential he and others found in venturing to these “preserved” regions—both the view of the uncontaminated past in those who had not been colonized and the insight it offered into their own journeys as individuals and ethnographers. Whereas the effects of the European confrontation with its own (Stone Age) past were perhaps limited to supplement a critique of life in the industrial age, the Greenlandic past became a strategic resource in relation to colonial reforms. Mapping, discussions, and understandings of Greenlandic traditions came to play a vital role in administrative thinking. The ethnographic discourse and subsequent interpretation of these traditions wielded increasing power over political decision-making and formed the template for colonial reforms in the latter half of nineteenth century.

NOTES 1. Bernard S. Cohn, “History and Anthropology: The State of Play,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22, 2 (1980), 198. 2. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 3. Ann Fienup-Riordan, Eskimo Essays: Yup’ik Lives and How We See Them (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990); Ann Fienup-Riordan, Freeze Frame: Alaska Eskimos in the Movies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995). 4. Fienup-Riordan, Freeze Frame,xi–xii. 5. Fienup-Riordan, Freeze Frame,xi–xii. 6. Lars Jensen, “Greenland, Arctic Orientalism and the Search for Deﬁnitions of a Contemporary Postcolonial Geography,” KULT – Postkolonial Temaserie 12 (2015). NOTES 29

7. Jensen also criticizes other applications of Said’s work to the Arctic context for essentially failing to use the potential in Said’s work. Jensen, “Greenland, Arctic Orientalism,” 140–141. 8. Jensen, “Greenland, Arctic Orientalism,” 142. 9. Kirsten Thisted, “Eskimoeksotisme – et kritisk essay om repræsentationsanalyse,” KULT 12 (2006), 68; Erik Gant, Eskimotid analyser af filmiske fremstillinger af eskimoer med udgangspunkt i postkolonialistisk teori og med særlig vægtning af danske grønlandsfilm (PhD dissertation, Aarhus Universitet, 2004). 10. Thisted, “Eskimoeksoticisme,” 69. 11. George Steinmetz, The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 12. Steinmetz, Devil’s Handwriting, 25. 13. Steinmetz, Devil’s Handwriting. 14. Søren Rud, “Erobringen af Grønland: Opdagelsesrejser, etnologi og forstanderskab i attenhundredetallet,” Historisk Tidsskrift 106, 2 (2006); Søren Rud, “Governance and Tradition in Nineteenth-Century Greenland,” Interventions 16, 4 (2014). 15. Dionese Settle “The second voyage of Master Frobisher, made to the West and Northwest regions, in the yeere 1577 with a description of the Countrey, and people,” in The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, ed. Richard Hakluyt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016 [1589]), 227. 16. Fienup-Riordan, Eskimo Essays, 13. 17. Hans Egede, Det gamle Grønlands nye perlustration eller natural-historie (Copenhagen, 1741), 68. 18. According to ethnographic knowledge, Angakkut (pl. of angakkoq = sha- man) had an important position in the traditional culture in Greenland as spiritual intermediaries between the living and the spirit world, and perhaps also as community leaders. See, for example, Hinrich Johannes Rink, Om aarsagen til Grønlændernes og lignende af jagt levende, nationers materielle tilbagegang ved berøringen med Europæerne (Kjøbenhavn: Forlagt af den Gyldendalske Boghandling F. Hegel, 1862). 19. Egede, perlustration, 127. 20. Lars Dalager, Grønlandske relationer: indeholdende Grønlændernes liv og levnet deres skikke og vedtægter samt temperament og superstitioner tillige nogle korte reflectioner over missionen sammenskrevet ved Friderichshaabs colonie i Grønland anno 1752 af Lars Dalager (København, 1915 [1752]); David Crantz, Historie von Groönland, enthaltend die beschreibung des landes und der einwohner, &c., insbesondere die geschichte der dortigen mission der Evangelischen bruüder zu Neu-Herrnhut und Lichtenfels (Barby, 1765). 30 2 ETHNOGRAPHY, TIME, AND THE IDEALIZATION OF TRADITION

21. Fienup-Riordan, Eskimo Essays,14–16. 22. Fienup-Riordan, Eskimo Essays, 15. 23. Fienup-Riordan, Eskimo Essays, 16. 24. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 16. 25. Fabian, Time and the Other, 31. 26. Hans Christian Gulløv, Einar Lund Jensen and Kristine Raahauge, Cultural Encounters at Cape Farewell. East Greenland Immigrants and the German Moravian Mission in the 19th Century (Monographs on Greenland | Meddelelser om Grønland, 2011). 27. W. A. Graah, Undersøgelses-rejse til østkysten af Grønland. Efter kongelig befaling, udført i aarene 1828–31 (København, 1832), 130. 28. Graah, Undersøgelses-rejse, 128. 29. Graah, Undersøgelses-rejse, 134. 30. Fienup-Riordan, Eskimo Essays,xi–xii. 31. Egede, perlustration; Crantz, Historie von Groönland. 32. Dalager, Grønlandske relationer. 33. Dalager, Grønlandske relationer,40–46. 34. Rink, Om aarsagen. 35. Rink, Om aarsagen, 86. 36. Rink, Om aarsagen, 87. 37. Rink, Om aarsagen, 87. 38. Rink, Om aarsagen, 88. 39. Rink, Om aarsagen. 40. Henrik Wilhjelm, Af tilbøielighed er jeg Grønlandsk: om Samuel Kleinschmidts liv og værk (København: Det grønlandske Selskab, 2001). 41. Henrik Wilhjelm, Af tilbøielighed, 475–476. 42. Essentialization refers to the attribution of natural, essential characteristics to the Greenlanders as a culturally deﬁned group. 43. Hinrich Johannes Rink, Om grønlandske Skikke og Vedtægter (Kjøbenhavn: trykt hos Carl Lund, 1881). 44. Rink, Om aarsagen, 15. 45. Hinrich Johannes Rink, Eskimoiske eventyr og sagn, oversatte efter de indfødte fortælleres opskrifter og meddelelser (Kjøbenhavn: C.A. Reitzel, 1866). 46. Ammassalik (in old Greenlandic spelling Angmagssalik) is called Tasiilaq today. 47. Gustav Holm and Thomas Vilhelm Garde, Den danske Konebåds-Expedition til Grønlands Østkyst. Populært beskreven (København: Forlagsbureauet i Kjøbenhavn, 1887), 36. 48. Holm and Garde, Den danske, 36. 49. Holm and Garde, Den danske, 96. 50. Holm and Garde, Den danske, 108. NOTES 31

51. Thomas Vilhelm Garde, “Nogle Bemærkninger om Øst-Grønlands Beboere,” Geografisk Tidsskrift 9 (1887); Thomas Vilhelm Garde, “Om Østgrønlændernes Rejser og deres Fremtidsudsigter,” Geografisk Tidsskrift 10 (1889). 52. I use “Thule-area” to denote the area in Northwest Greenland which was gradually integrated into the Danish colonial project in Greenland in the twentieth century. Today the area is known in Greeenlandic as Avanersuaq (the Great North). The inhabitants, sometimes known as polar Eskimos, were moved to Qaanaaq in 1953, when the US military base was expanded. 53. William Thalbitzer, “Befolkningens art og nationalitet,” in Grønland. Naturforhold, befolkning, hjælpekilder og næringsveje (København, De danske atlanterhavnøer, 1906), 421. 54. Thalbitzer, “Befolkningens,” 423. 55. L. Mylius-Erichsen and Harald Moltke, Grønland (København, 1906), 482. 56. L. Mylius-Erichsen, Kap York. Foredrag ved det private møde i Bethesda den 3. maj 1905 (København: “Kristeligt Dagblads” bogtrykkeri, 1905). 57. Alfred Bertelsen, “Om Fødslerne i Grønland og de seksuelle Forhold sammesteds,” Særtryk af Bibliotek for læger, 1907, 23. 58. Knud Rasmussen, “Eskimos and Stone-Age Peoples. A Suggestion of an International Investigation,” Geografisk Tidsskrift 32 (1929), 216. 59. Jean Malaurie, The last kings of Thule (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982 [1976]), xvi. 60. Malaurie, The last kings,3. CHAPTER 3

Invoking Tradition as a Governance Strategy: Danish Colonial Policies in the Late Nineteenth Century

Danish colonial policies in Greenland in the second half of the nineteenth century have predominantly been interpreted in two ways.1 One glorifies policies as a result of a specifically humane (Danish) way of colonizing; within this understanding, these policies attempted to restore or resurrect Greenlandic aspects of culture that were fast disappearing. This interpretation also identifies institutions established during this period as facilitators of first steps toward a democratic Greenland.2 The other interpretation is significantly more critical of the period’s colonial policies—viewed as more or less manipulative of the Greenlanders, coaxing them to produce as much as possible, thus allowing for the maximum colonial exploitation of the area.3 Essentially, both interpretations are concerned with evaluat- ing the motives behind the colonial policies. Rather than aligning with categorically positive or negative interpretations of Danish colonial policies (or even examining the motives behind these policies), this chapter aims to explore the practices which grew out of specific understandings of Greenlandic tradition. In spite of the fact that the nineteenth-century colonial reforms took a rather liberal direction in terms of allowing the Greenlanders an influence on local administration, the role played by “tradition” also ended up setting boundaries for the Greenlanders’ social and cultural maneuverability. As Steinmetz argues: “Even in the most hands-off versions of indirect rule based on ‘tradition’ and ‘customary law’ the colonized were expected to present an unchanging,

© The Author(s) 2017 33 S. Rud, Colonialism in Greenland, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46158-8_3 34 3 INVOKING TRADITION AS A GOVERNANCE STRATEGY ... recognizable version of their own culture.”4 The application of ethnographic discourse in the colonial governance of Greenland was not neutral. Rather, colonial administrators acted as co-establishers of an ethnographic discourse which lent itself to be an equally useful tool for representation and colonial governance. Other scholars have pointed to the way in which the understanding of Greenlandic culture informed an essential component of Danish governing policies.5 These studies have highlighted many interesting aspects of the colonial policies, including the consequences of the focus on tradition and the understanding of Greenlandic culture.6 However, hitherto scholars have not sufficiently addressed how the increased focus on Greenlandic tradition constituted a shift in ambition within the colonial project. While eighteenth-century actors in trade and colonial administration in Greenland aimed at optimizing the economic performance of the country’s colonies, they did not seem eager to change the fundamental organization of Greenlandic society. Nineteenth-century reformers were more ambitious; they aimed explicitly at fundamental changes. Through what can be termed social engineering techniques, they were in fact working to change the character of individual Greenlanders. This shift to a much more ambitious vision of the country’s future reflected a shift in the rationale behind the colonial project in Greenland.7 It also corresponded to a widely accepted shift in western societies and colonial settings toward a modern political rationality. However, in its specific colonial version, the new political rationality was shaped by the ethnographic discourse already discussed.

ETHNOGRAPHIC DISCOURSE AND THE REBIRTH OF TRADITION The discipline of anthropology developed out of what was perceived to be authentic indigenous cultures. As stated by Bernard Cohn, the anthropologist’s “epistemological universe” was a part of the European world of social theories and classificatory schema that were formed, in part, by state projects to reshape the lives of their subjects at home and abroad.8 Paige Raibmon shows that the diversified group of colonizers around America’s Pacific Northwest coast shared an understanding of the aboriginal population that was based on parallel dichotomies between the authentic versus the inauthentic and the traditional versus the modern.9 The colonizers deemed the Indians incompatible with modern political society; the static, NINETEENTH-CENTURY GREENLAND 35 timeless nature of aboriginal culture being viewed as at odds with dynamic historical development. As seen in Cohn and Raibmon’s work, the static colonial categories were established or reinforced by the growth of anthropology and later tourism. The notion of an authentic Greenlandic tradition was used tactically by the colonial authorities. Thus I argue that a set of binaries based on the authentic versus the inauthentic and the traditional versus the modern was indeed at play in nineteenth-century Greenland. However, where Raibmon’s material reveals significant contradictions between the interests of anthropologists/tourists, demanding “authentic” aboriginals, and the interests of missionaries, colonial officials and reformers promoting the civilization of aboriginal culture, I argue that the specific nature of the colonial project in nineteenth-century Greenland enabled the colonial administration to stage fundamental changes as a restoration of (lost) traditions. The gradual establishment of ethnographic knowledge of the authentic or traditional Greenlandic culture, knowledge obtained partly through the exploration of remote places accessible through anthropological records, became an important resource for the colonial administration. By the middle of the nineteenth century, when a major shift occurred in the ambitions behind (and the rationalization of) the colonial project, ethnographic knowledge provided an opportunity to make reforms appear as a rebirthing of tradition. The understanding of Greenlandic tradition was mobilized within various settings with diverse rationalizing, legitimizing and practical means. In other words, I suggest that the colonial administrators used the concept of a Greenlandic tradition in their efforts to govern the behavior of the Greenlanders. I explore the consequences of this entanglement of colonial policies with ethnographic discourse.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY GREENLAND In the second half of the nineteenth century the gathered knowledge of traditional Greenlandic culture increasingly informed the colonial strategy. While missionaries and traders involved in the early colonial project in Greenland had studied Greenlandic culture, this knowledge was not tactically used on a large scale before the mid-nineteenth century.10 In the late nineteenth century, however, “tradition” was given a new role in the colonial reforms. 36 3 INVOKING TRADITION AS A GOVERNANCE STRATEGY ...

It is important to note here the specificity of the colonial project in Greenland. To return to Raibmon’s example on the Northwest Coast of America, the interest of government officials, aimed at transforming the indigenous population into reliable hop pickers and cannery workers, often conflicted with the interests of anthropologists and tourists. Raibmon explains that the Kwakwaka’wakw Indians found themselves at the center of an ideological dispute within colonial society. While, on the one hand, anthropologists and tourists encouraged them to enact the most traditional elements of their culture, on the other, missionaries and government officials pressured them to abandon “tradition” in favor of “civilization.”11 The situation in Greenland was more complicated. Rather than being organized around the binaries stemming from a dispute between an anthropological ideology of tradition and the missionary and colonial ideology of civilization, the project of civilizing in Greenland revolved around a balance of tradition and civilization/modernization. Missionaries as well as colonial officials aimed at civilizing the Greenlanders; however, this civilizing process potentially conflicted with the need for efficient Greenlandic hunters and in some cases missionary ideals. The explanation behind the colonial administration’s ambiguous attitude toward the process of civilization is multidimensional. At the economic level, the Royal Greenland Trading Company was in control of all issues concerning trade in Greenland, as well as the administration of the country.12 The importance of whaling in Greenland had diminished by the end of the eighteenth century, and the financial success of the colonial project had come to depend on a supply of fur and blubber “produced” by the Greenlandic hunters. The proficient hunters came to be regarded as highly valuable to the colonial project. Accordingly the Royal Greenland Trading Company took measures to limit contact between Greenlandic hunters and Europeans at an early stage, because the European influence was regarded as damaging to the Greenlanders’ hunting abilities. The colonial authorities believed that the more westernized or civilized the Greenlanders became, the less skilled they would be in traditional seal hunting. In other words, the steady support for the monopoly of trade and the “protection” of the Greenlandic culture against a westernizing or civilizing influence was heavily motivated by the need for the blubber and fur produced by the seal hunters.13 A regulation from 1782 establishes this principle by inaugurating procedures to limit the contact BRINGING BACK TRADITION: HUNTERS, SHEPHERDS ... 37 between Greenlanders and Europeans and preserve these traditions of Greenlandic culture as much as possible.14 At times the tension between tradition and westernization manifested itself in administrative disputes between trade and missionary endeavors. Here thinking around trade was typically more preservationist whereas missionary thinking was more open to westernization. The opposing interests may be explained by patterns of settlement. Whereas the mission benefitted from a pattern of fewer more densely populated settlements, trade benefits increased when there were scattered patterns of settlement with numerous smaller communities so that the hunters could cover more hunting ground and accordingly maximize productivity. The ambiguity of the civilizing mission in Greenland, however, was not limited to the two polarized interests. Rather, the ambiguity was an inherent issue within missionary as well as administrative circles. Moravian missionaries in the southern part of Greenland were keen on protecting the traditional Greenlandic culture; however, Moravian activities caused major changes in the pattern of settlement, since they also encouraged Greenlanders to move to their missionary stations. Anne Folke Henningsen describes the Moravian message to “the natives” in general as a kind of “double bind communication [ ...] become like us, but stay as you are/were.”15 As George Steinmetz has convincingly argued, economic conditions alone cannot account for the significant variations between types of colonial projects.16 The establishment of the ethnographic discourse dealt with in Chapter 2 was instrumental for the particular variant of colonial rule that was established in Greenland. The ethnographic descriptions of the Greenlandic tradition became a discursive resource which interacted with, and shaped the administrative line in conjunction with other currents and helped underpin the resulting colonial policies. Eventually the colonial authorities came to use the notion of tradition strategically to steer between the two considerations of demand for protection of the traditional culture and demand for civilization or modernization of this same culture.

BRINGING BACK TRADITION:HUNTERS,SHEPHERDS, AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF LOCAL BOARDS In 1856, a proposal for fundamental reform (forstanderskabsordningen) concerning protecting traditional culture was formulated and put forward by a group of inﬂuential colonial agents. It originated in South 38 3 INVOKING TRADITION AS A GOVERNANCE STRATEGY ...

Greenland’s provincial capital Godthåb (today Nuuk). Among these agents were the headmaster of the college, C. E. Janssen (1813– 1884); the Moravian missionary (later a teacher at the college), S. Kleinschmidt (1814–1886); the inspector of the southern province, H. J. Rink (1819–1893) and the medical doctor J. F. T. Lindorff (1823–1859), and they all supported the establishment of local administrative units, within which Greenlanders could participate in the conduct of local matters, in the various colonial districts.17 In many ways the backgrounds of the men behind the proposal reflect the merger of techniques from mission and trade/administration as well as the growing attention to the (biopolitical) governability of (health) conditions among the population as an aggregate. A pronounced purpose, stated in the proposal, was to strengthen the sense of responsibility among Greenlanders by rewarding those who were capable of supporting themselves.18 Arguments supporting the local board arrangement were founded on the belief that the process of colonization had destroyed important (traditional) elements in Greenland’s societal organization. At the heart of this initiative was the preservation of the hunter’s skills in his natural habitat. Boards were established in each colonial district and were comprised of Greenlanders elected by their peers to represent various localities in the management of local matters. These Greenlandic board members were called guardians (paarsisut). Only successful seal hunters could be elected to the boards, which handled the distribution of financial aid to the needy and kept records of the affairs of all hunters living in the district. In addition, board members acted as lay judges ruling over minor criminal offenses committed in the district. Aside from the Greenlandic hunters, the boards also included the district‘s colonial officers—the head catechist, the doctor, the missionary (often acting as head of the local board), and the district/colonial manager. The provincial governor would preside over the decisions made by the boards. Within this context, Greenlandic board members—the paarsisut— played a significant role in the administrative strategy, acting as mediators between the communities and colonial officials and representing the colonial system at the local level, along with Greenlanders employed by the mission and Greenlandic midwives. The Greenlandic paarsisut were also designated to act as local eyes of authority, watching over the conduct of their fellow Greenlanders. The local communities typically represented by the paarsisut consisted of 5–20 households. Their role as the keepers of BRINGING BACK TRADITION: HUNTERS, SHEPHERDS ... 39 public order was explicitly stated in the initial guidelines supporting reform implementation in the southern colonies:

The guardian must monitor the conduct of those residing where he is a guardian, warn those he ﬁnds to be in danger of committing an act of injustice, approach those who ought to be approached, and strive to be an example to be followed.19

The function of a guardian in the local communities was signaled by the Greenlandic title paarsisoq (singular form) which can be translated into shepherd, guard, or perhaps nanny. The role of the paarsisut (plural) in the local communities was intended to be pastoral in the Foucauldian sense of the word.20 Much as a shepherd would watch over his sheep, a paarsisoq was thus expected to keep watch over all local residents (the members of the flock), engage in setting those who misbehaved straight, and set a moral, industrious example to be followed. Local boards kept strict records of the conduct of all residents in the colonial districts and detailed information was maintained by the paarsisut. In local communities, the paarsisut also fulfilled a police-like function; they were expected to monitor the behavior of local residents, warn those in danger of misbehaving, and act as a moral example to be followed. In other words, they had to know every individual in their flock so well so they could guide them, preventing misconduct and addressing their souls in the process. Curiously enough, the initiative to establish the local boards came from Godthåb: the part of Greenland where the colonial project’sinfluence had been the strongest. In other words, it came from a colonial district in which the traditional way of life based on seal hunting was less dominant than in other parts of Greenland. The lack of traditional life in Godthåb was a source of disappointment to the colonial establishment. As expressed by Louise Janssen, wife of the headmaster of the college in Godthåb:

In matters of worldliness, a very regrettable aspect is that absolutely no national life takes place in the colony of Godthåb, not a single kayak-man or hunter lives directly in the colony [ ...] those men [employed by the trading company] are, so to speak, outside the nation [ ...] and their children are brought up to be colonial slackers.21 40 3 INVOKING TRADITION AS A GOVERNANCE STRATEGY ...

Disappointment at the lack of so-called national life (i.e., seal hunting) among the Greenlanders in Godthåb indicates that the understanding of Greenlandic culture was increasingly linked to seal hunting in the second half of the nineteenth century. With the proposed local board arrangement the most proﬁcient hunters would attain new privileges and be singled out as leaders (paarsisut/shepherds) in the local communities. In complete alignment with the ethnographic discourse (of which Rink and Kleinschmidt were some of the most prominent producers), the reform proposal argued that the precolonial societal order had been underpinned by the shamans’ (angakkut) authority and by annual gather- ings where the traditional drum-song contests were employed, as an equivalent to legal proceedings, to solve disputes between individuals. However, the colonial process had removed these traditional elements, thereby eroding the foundation of the societal order.22 Furthermore, it was claimed that the colonial administration’s poverty relief for Greenlanders in plight had impinged on (traditional) feelings of individual responsibility. The establishment of the local boards was thus intended to restore the lost (traditional) societal order.23 Accordingly, strong elements in this reform were meant to support a speciﬁc version of the traditional culture. In the proposal to establish the local boards, it is stated:

Since law, order and the courts so far have been restricted to Europeans and those in service of the trade, whereas for Greenlanders only one single regulation is in place stating that they must be punished in cases of severe crime, the local boards could possibly constitute a sort of court equivalent to what in other times were similar to courts for them, namely, the drum-song contests.24

As this quotation indicates, a direct connection was made between traditional drum-song contests and the legal functions of local boards, thus reactivating traditional cultural elements to generate a new societal order. The major theme, drawn from the drum-song contests, was premised on the Greenlanders’ presumed dislike for public humiliation. The situation prior to the local board arrangement is described in the proposal:

The aggrieved and the felon [ ...] walk side by side without an ofﬁcial voice to praise one or scorn the other. It is our opinion that this could easily be corrected with the simple public announcement of names by such an authority of the nation; it would be a forceful means of punishment.25 COMBINING TRADITIONS WITH A NEW SOCIAL LANDSCAPE 41

The proposal outlines penal practices that were culturally adjusted to replace the tradition of the drum-song contests. Rink wrote that the removal of the drum-song contests was a mistake. According to Rink, the contests traditionally upheld “law and order” in precolonial society: “The public crowd acted as judge and the punishment was public humiliation.”26 The local board arrangement techniques, in a number of areas, were intended to reawaken the Greenlanders’ feelings of responsibility by using public humiliation as an instrument of social control.

COMBINING TRADITIONS WITH A NEW SOCIAL LANDSCAPE In addition to the election of boards, the reinvigoration of law and order, and the clearly focused initiatives to protect and elevate the “art of hunting.” one of the most essential techniques of the colonial reform was the attempt to establish a more differentiated social landscape with various social groups. According to the preliminary regulations from 1857, the members of the boards should find principles for the compartmentaliza- tion of the whole population into social classes according to everyone’s proficiency. This initiative was founded upon a critique of the aid system in Greenland. Informed by liberal ideology, the thinking was that just and efficient distribution of poverty relief had to be based on detailed knowledge of each family. According to this logic, providing aid without a sufficient level of knowledge of the recipients involved the risk of provoking a general demoralization among the population. The reform thus assigned the concepts of honor and dignity a significant role. The reform therefore aimed at finding methods to distinguish between different types of recipients and not least to assess the degree of the potential recipient’s moral worthiness. It is worth noting that this argument was paired with what we refer to today as “profiling” of the Greenlanders as endlessly flighty and careless. For the authors of the proposal, the Greenlanders’ perceived carelessness meant that the situation was incomparable with the situation in civilized countries.27 In addition to the general demarcation among social groups, the reform was intended to establish a civil and lawful order. This was to be accomplished by:

[ ...] dragging them out of the listlessness that follows an isolated life [ ...] by involving them in the decisions regarding matters of common relevance 42 3 INVOKING TRADITION AS A GOVERNANCE STRATEGY ...

[ ...], request their position and let them cast their vote accordingly, hereby one would furthermore have an excellent method by which to highlight or emphasize, and thereby encourage the most proﬁcient and estimable hunters [ ...]28

Accordingly the reform was aimed at involving the Greenlanders in the decision-making processes, in this way, encouraging responsibility and industriousness. Moreover the local boards’ reform was intended to reshape the seemingly classless social order and support, or perhaps establish, recognizable and signiﬁcant divisions among various social groups.

It is undoubtedly so that the Greenlanders already grant the proﬁcient amongst them esteem and that this esteem, if it was supported, could develop into a true relationship of subordination. One would, by thus involving Greenlanders from remote places in the decisions, not only gain adequate information about the conditions at the various places, but furthermore perhaps launch a certain civil order amongst them according to which the proﬁcient, who serves to carry the burdens of the community, is assigned his place, and the one who drains the community’s funds, or even openly offends against it, is accorded his.29

The thinking behind the distribution of aid was speciﬁc and offers insight into how benefactors viewed those receiving aid:

The charity, so far most often only guided by immediate compassion and upon closer examination an injustice insofar as it diverts attention away from the deserving, is changed into a charity following ﬁxed rules, and it should at such meetings [in the local boards] be a main task if possible to ﬁnd such rules, for instance: No relief is given before a certain date; when in December the hunt is still good no relief will be given that winter, certain helpless persons should be excluded from such rules etc.30

The authors of the proposal attacked the unintended effects of what was considered a random distribution of relief, based on compassion rather than strict rules, and the intermixing of deserving and undeserving recipients, perceived to cause demoralization, apathy, and pauper- ization, and aimed to reform the colonial system in order to counter these effects. According to the proponents of the reform, detailed knowledge of every individual was a precondition for a successful system of relief. LISTS AND DESIGNATIONS TO FURTHER COLONIAL AIMS 43

It is easy to see the parallels to the development in Copenhagen and other western metropolises where philanthropic societies worked to generate a clear division between various groups among the urban poor. These societies promoted a careful distinction between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor, which became a determining factor in an applicant’s chances of receiving support. The core value motivating these philanthropic societies was the notion that this differentiation (between the deserving and the undeserving poor) would increase the incitement to be industrious, frugal, and morally irreproachable. The distribution of poverty relief was to be: “the just distribution according to the worthiness of the needy.”31 One signiﬁcant difference between the western setting and the colonial setting of Greenland rests in the fact that this social engineering was directed at the entire population in Greenland, whereas efforts in Copenhagen and elsewhere were limited to a more or less marginalized social group. As eskimologist Søren Forchhammer writes about the reform: “Rink and his followers intended, through the local boards, to create a civil class of proﬁcient and frugal seal hunters to spearhead the establishment of an actual Greenlandic social order.”32 The reform authors’ ambitions were thus to establish a social and legal order within which the single individual’s capability was a deciding factor in their position in society. The proposal prescribed a concrete division of the hunters based on available information about their conditions. Central to this ambition was a designation protocol, which was to be kept by the local boards, containing information about each and every provider, and a system or a repartition trough from which a portion of the amount paid for the traded Greenlandic products and was redistributed based on a principle where the most productive hunters gained the largest portion.

LISTS AND DESIGNATIONS TO FURTHER COLONIAL AIMS Protocols and lists, including protocol designations, were not new tools in the colonial administration. Even in the eighteenth century colonial managers kept lists of the inhabitants in the colonial district with information about families and accommodation and from time to time a few comments about certain individuals. Missionaries also kept designation protocols of those christened in their area which contained information about birth, death, conﬁrmation, marriage, communion, and education. However, the way in which the designation protocol was used in the later nineteenth century exceeded its initial function. Colonial powers were using their 44 3 INVOKING TRADITION AS A GOVERNANCE STRATEGY ... ethnographic knowledge strategically. The attempts to awaken Greenlanders to industriousness and frugality were intimately related to and built on the idea of the Greenlanders’ culturally conditioned fear of being publicly shamed. The ethnographically based notion entailed that: “the simple publication of a name” could function as a “powerful penal measure.” The proposal stipulated:

Every local board should keep a designation protocol, in which a complete designation over the inhabitants in the [colonial] district, carrying statements about their economic constitution, proficiency, their position as providers or dependents etc., within which the yearly occurring changes for every individual should be included. Every person could have a page or part of a page, and accordingly the protocol could cover a longer stretch of years, such that only recently born or sojourners are added. A short abstract of this protocol should be published amongst the Greenlanders on a yearly basis, which purpose should be to control and monitor the changes of the productive forces in the population over time, and specifically the extraordinarily dangerous decreasing number of proficient hunters, kayak-men, women’s boats etc., and, by the great effect that public mentioning of name has on the Greenlanders, to reinforce positive influences, strengthen aspirational tendencies to incite the lazy and indifferent towards industriousness and to punish the one that produces an outright crime against the community.33

The publication was thus intended to affect the industrious as well as the lazy members of the Greenlandic communities. For a colonial setting the techniques built on a remarkably detailed knowledge of the population. The point of publishing details from the protocol was to put the hunters’ productivity on display for the whole community in order to motivate the Greenlanders to make their utmost effort. This practice was informed by the ethnographic discourse which deemed the Greenlanders particularly susceptible to social shame. Accordingly this technique, in many respects recognizable as a liberal technique of governance, was aimed at shaping the daily life of individuals in order to guide their behavior, and based on ideas about Greenlandic traditional ways.

OTHER MEANS TO PRESERVE TRADITIONAL PRACTICES Some practices established in relation to the reform were, as already mentioned, built on an elaboration of existing techniques, such as census lists and protocols known from the ﬁeld of administration/trade and OTHER MEANS TO PRESERVE TRADITIONAL PRACTICES 45

Fig. 3.1 Designation protocol Page in a protocol of designation from Godhavn (Qeqertarsuaq), covering the period from 1860 and onward. Here details about the Greenlander Johan Broberg can be found mission. However, these practices were now given a new dimension. Figure 3.1 is an example from a page in a protocol of designation from Godhavn (Qeqertarsuaq), covering the period from 1860 and onward. Here details about the Greenlander Johan Broberg can be found. Broberg was married with a daughter and an adopted son, owned a rifle, a whaleman’s boat, two kayaks and a team of dogs. As an owner of a whaleman’s boat, Johan Broberg was remarkably wealthy. His wealth is reflected in the list of repartition further below (from the period in which the repartition principle was fully implemented).34 Furthermore, the protocol states that the unmarried Greenlander Frederik Wille, who had a rifle and a kayak, was living in Broberg’s household. The rubrics to the left indicate type and amount of the products (from the hunt) that Broberg sold off at the trading station. In 1872, after Rink was appointed director of the Royal Greenlandic Trade, the local boards were given a form more similar to what was envisioned in the proposal. The principle of repartition that was initially rejected by the Ministry of Domestic Affairs was now implemented along the lines stated in the proposal. As initially proposed, the trading company deposited an amount, based on a percentage of the price paid for the Greenlandic products, some of which was allocated to the local boards. This amount was used for financial support to the needy and to cover other expenses. The remaining part of the amount was reapportioned to hunters who complied 46 3 INVOKING TRADITION AS A GOVERNANCE STRATEGY ... with the fixed criteria, following detailed rules that ensured that the most productive hunters were granted economic advantages.35 As the list (Fig. 3.2) indicates, hunters were divided into three categories according to their productivity or proficiency. Broberg was defined as a hunter of the first class, and so to begin with this status entitled him to three parts. (One part in Godhavn’s local board in 1884 amounted to 47 øre in currency.) Additionally he was the owner of a women’s boat, which entitled him to a further four parts. He still owned his team of dogs (two parts), and his family circumstances or the number of people he was supporting, entitled him to yet another ten parts. Here it is worth noting that Broberg also had a women’s boat, for which the repartition lists indicate that he began receiving payment in 1876. The repartition system which privileged ownership of “traditional Greenlandic artifacts,” such as dogs and women’s boats was implemented a few years before 1876. It is quite plausible, however difficult to prove, that Broberg’s shift from the European whalesman’s boat to a Greenlandic women’s boat must be understood as resulting from the financial incentives in the principle of reparation, which favored the traditional lifestyle. The rules did not entail a reward for the ownership of a European vessel. So with the outlined calculations, Johan Broberg was, according to his 19 parts, entitled to eight crowns (DKK) and 93 øre. This ensured Broberg the position as the hunter who received the largest amount, given that the average amount received was three crowns and 29 øre. Given the modest average cash income at the time, the payments had a significant influence over and above their symbolic value. As the case of Hans Hansen indicates (listed in the log in Fig. 3.2), a less productive hunter (categorized in the third class, who did not own dogs or boats, and did not have a family), could receive as little as one part. Moreover a hunter who was unfortunate enough to have received financial aid during the year would be excluded from payment altogether and was consequentially ineligible to stand as a member of a local board. The system thus worked to enforce and demarcate the difference between proficient and less proficient hunters. The reform built on ethnographic knowledge and based its techniques on the descriptions of the traditional drum-singing events. By using the idea of the Greenlanders’ fear of public shame, the reform aimed to strengthen the most efficient hunters’ positions in the local communities. However assigning importance to traditional mores went further than manipulating shame to advantage. In combination with the symbolic OTHER MEANS TO PRESERVE TRADITIONAL PRACTICES 47

Fig. 3.2 List of repartition List of repartition indicating the fixed criteria that ensured that the most productive hunters were granted economic advantages. Hunters were divided into three categories according to their productivity or proficiency; moreover the system privileged ownership of “traditional Greenlandic artifacts” such as dogs and women’s boats. and economic value of being a member of the first class, the most proficient hunters were granted political influence. The criteria for deeming Greenlanders eligible for the boards were their proficiency as hunters. As pointed out by many, this meant that the most proficient hunters were privileged with increased influence through their participation in the boards, causing changes in the balance of power.36 Most importantly, the seal hunters were singled out as embodying Greenlandic culture. Greenlanders who did not hunt seals were accordingly seen as “less Greenlandic.” Basedontheinformationinthese protocols, the population was divided into different social classes.37 The hunters were to be divided into classes according to their efficiency and ability and a system of financial payments was established. Moreover, the initially proposed classification scheme divided Greenlanders who lived as fishermen into two categories, providing explanations for their “culturally abnormal” occupation as fishermen: (1) age (old age or boys); and (2) incompetence.38 In the eyes of the colonial authorities, such an occupation was unnatural for a Greenlander, and the cultural abnormality could only be explained by age or incompetence. The idea that the whole population of Greenland could be classified and divided into social groups was initially considered too controversial by the Danish Ministry of Domestic Affairs. Rink later described the 48 3 INVOKING TRADITION AS A GOVERNANCE STRATEGY ... ministry’s rejection of his request for permission to expand experiments with local boards in 1859:

After receiving these reports, the ministry found that in spite of the fact that it, on the one hand, had proven possible to transfer the management of such matters to authorities in which the natives were actively involved, the period of time had been far too limited to reach even rough clarity over the basic rules that ought to be followed, accordingly it would be inadvisable to then establish certain rules, especially concerning something as unusual as a division of the population into ﬁxed classes.39

The ambitious agenda aimed at propagating a new social order was initially viewed as too far-reaching. Ultimately, however, the proposal was accepted by the Ministry for Domestic Affairs. Between 1862 and 1863 local boards were established in each colonial district.40 In 1911, when the new colonial reform was implemented, local boards were replaced by municipal councils––smaller, locally established units with Greenlander-only membership. The number of council members depended on the number of settlements and inhabitants in the municipality: a typical council would consist of four to six members, each usually representing fewer, but never more than one hundred inhabitants. Much like the paarsisut, council members were meant to engage both in local administrative matters and to exercise authority in matters pertaining to law and order.

Every municipal council member ensures for his area that rules pertaining to the Greenlandic population are observed. In case of offenses, he must, at the ﬁrst given opportunity, report what has happened [to the municipal council ...].”41 He [the municipal council member] must devote special attention to ensure that the boys in his district are provided with occupational tools and kayak in due time, and to watch out for members of the population who, by lack of industriousness or lack of frugality, give rise to concern over whether they might become a future burden for the municipality, and if so warn the person in question.42

Also similar to the paarsisut, municipal council members were envisioned as acting as shepherds or pastors in the small communities, constituting an COLONIAL GOVERNMENTALITY AND TRADITION 49 institutionally based authority to uphold order and at the same time act as moral custodians watching over the souls of the locals. In line with the overall administrational strategy, the municipal council members’ custodial function not only concerned itself with morality in the community but also (as indicated by the concern for introducing boys to kayaks and tools, in the quote above) with maintaining “traditional” culture. The system of payments was preserved under this new arrangement, which in many respects might be seen as the continuation of important principles in the local boards’ arrangement.

COLONIAL GOVERNMENTALITY AND TRADITION Nicholas Thomas concludes that in the British colony of Fiji the colonial administration’s transcendent vision of the totality of society and custom/ tradition informed the work of regulation and reform.43 This regulation, however, only called upon those aspects of tradition which fit the colonial agenda. Similarly, colonial policies in Greenland evoked a version of tradition that fit the colonial administration’s agenda. Cultural elements considered distasteful or incompatible with this agenda were suppressed, such as the customary sharing of meat among members of small communities. The local board arrangement was constructed to help shape the subjectivity of individual Greenlanders and ultimately reframe their values to influence their lifestyle, actions, and opinions. In a comment supporting the proposal of the local board arrangement, Rink expressed his surprise at the fact that the colonial system had so far delivered poverty relief to Greenlanders in need, rather than “affecting them through their reason” in order to make them more frugal.44 As Rink’s comment suggests, the local board arrangement must be seen as resulting from a shift in the rationale behind colonial policies. By explicitly targeting the subjectivity of individuals, the reform revealed a new ambitious goal for the colonial administration: the reshaping of Greenlanders’ self-interest. David Scott has argued that Partha Chatterjee’s famous definition of colonialism as a “rule of difference” needs to be nuanced with attention to how it operated within different political rationalities.45 What Scott is addressing in his analysis of colonial policies in nineteenth-century Ceylon (today Sri Lanka) is the way in which colonial institutions, by means of social engineering, contributed to the shaping of subjectivity among the colonized. “What was at stake in the governmental redefinition and reordering of the colonial world was the design of institutions so that, following only their own self-interest, natives would do what they 50 3 INVOKING TRADITION AS A GOVERNANCE STRATEGY ... ought.”46 The local board arrangement aimed to organize the life-world of Greenlanders in order to form their subjectivity or self-interest. In using their knowledge of Greenlanders’ values (and distaste of shame) to inform a reward system which held financial and reputational implications, the administration shaped, shifted, and re-aligned values, relationships, and ways of life. The notion of Greenlandic traditions was mobilized through practices associated with the local boards. These practices sought to shape modern Greenlandic subjectivity through what appeared to be a rebirth of the Greenlandic community.

THE SPECIFICITY OF THE COLONIAL PROJECT IN GREENLAND Bearing in mind Nicholas Thomas’ emphasis on the importance of recog- nizing the particularity of colonial projects, observations on the colonial policies in nineteenth-century Greenland can in no way form the basis of a generalized theory of nineteenth-century colonialism.47 The specificity of the colonial project in Greenland derived from many circumstances. Among the most important of which were the early cooperation between trade and mission, the isolated location of Greenland, and the dependence upon the traditional seal hunt. Moreover, the reintroduction of tradition and its accompanying fundamental changes could be promoted as a response to the failures of former colonial policies. It has already been established, given the early beginning for the colonial endeavor in Greenland, that the ethnographic discourse on the Greenlanders was established in the setting of an existing colonial project. This specific trajectory ethnographic discourse on the Greenlanders also enabled officials to deliver a critical assessment of the colonial development and present reforms as a reintroduction of customs and traditions. Second—and not to be underestimated—was the intrinsic economic benefit. The success and productivity of seal-hunters dovetailed neatly with the idealization of the traditional culture. The ethnographic discourse went hand-in-hand with the economic considerations of the colonial administration. Moreover, a significant shift in the colonial policies can be identified, embodied in the colonial reforms, in the direction of a more ambitious strategy aimed at shaping the Greenlanders’ subjectivity by actively shaping their lifeworld. The ethnographic discourse was made manifest in practices aiming to influence the behavior of the Greenlanders. The encounters with uncolonized Greenlanders, described in Chapter 2, added fresh credibility to the ethnographic discourse. Uncolonized NOTES 51

Greenlanders embodied the Cultural Ideal, and nineteenth-century and twentieth-century expeditions to uncolonized areas of Greenland gave explorers, colonial ofﬁcials, and missionaries the opportunity to contrast and compare colonized and uncolonized Greenlanders.48 The critique of the modernizing or westernizing effects of the colonial project reached its most pronounced form in material stemming from these expeditions. The ethnographic discourse came to underpin the re-traditionalization of the Greenlandic social world by idealizing the uncolonized Greenlanders as the noble and authentic ideal against which the colonized Greenlanders could be blamed for being corrupted by the European inﬂuence.

NOTES 1. Søren Forchhammer, “Administrative og politiske instutioner i Grønland fra 1860‘erne til 1950,” A. Mortensen, A. R. Nielssen and J. T. Thor, eds., De vestnordiske landes fælleshistorie II. Udvalg af foredrag holdt på VNH.konfer- encerne i Ísafjördur, Tórshavn 2004 og Oslo 2005 (Nuuk: Forlaget Atuagkat, 2006). 2. Jørgen Fleischer, Grønlands historie – kort fortalt (København: Aschehoug Dansk Forlag A/S, 2003); Knud Oldendow, Grønlændervennen Hinrich Rink; videnskabsmand, skribent og Grønlandsadministrator (København: Det Grønlandske Selskab, 1955). 3. Jørgen Viemose, Dansk kolonipolitik i Grønland (København: Demos, 1977); Hanne Thomsen, “Ægte grønlændere og nye grønlændere – om forskellige opfattelser af grønlandskhed,” Den Jyske Historiker 81 (1998); Ole Marquardt, “Grønlænderne og vestens civilisation – træk af Rink-tidens grønlandspolitiske diskussion,” Grønlandsk kultur- og samfundsforskning (1998/99). 4. George Steinmetz, The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 44. 5. Ole Marquardt, “Socio-økonomiske tilstande i Vestgrønland på Rinks tid: befolkningskoncentrationen i kolonibyer og dannelsen af lokale Brætmarkeder,” Grønlandsk kultur- og samfundsforskning (1992); Ole Marquardt, “Socio-økonomiske tilstande i Vestgrønland på Rinks tid: Antal fastansatte ved KGH og grønlandiseringen af KGH-arbejdspladser,” Grønlandsk kultur- og samfundsforskning (1993); Marquardt, “Grønlænderne og vestens civilisation”; Søren T. Thuesen, Fremmed blandt landsmænd: grønlandske kateketer i kolonitiden (Nuuk: Atuagkat, 2007); Kirsten Thisted, “The Power to Represent: Intertextuality and Discourse in Miss Smilla’s Sense of Snow,” in Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of 52 3 INVOKING TRADITION AS A GOVERNANCE STRATEGY ...

the Nordic ScientiﬁcPractices,eds. Michael Bravo and Sverker Sorlin (USA: Science History Publications, 2002); Kirsten Thisted, “Hvem Går Qivittoq? Kampen Om Et Litterært Symbol. Eller Relationen Danmark – Grønland i Postkolonial Belysning,” TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek (2004); Kirsten Thisted, “Eskimoeksotisme – et kritisk essay om repræsentationsanalyse,” Kult: Jagten på det Eksotiske 3 (2006); Henrik Wilhjelm, De store opdragere: Grønlands seminarier i det 19. århundrede (København: Det grønlandske Selskab, 1997); Henrik Wilhjelm, Af tilbøielighed er jeg Grønlandsk: om Samuel Kleinschmidts liv og værk (København: Det grønlandske Selskab, 2001), Henrik Wilhjelm, De nye grønlændere: Grønlands seminarier i det 19. århundrede (København: Det grønlandske Selskab, 2008). 6. Lill Rasted Bjørst, En anden verden. Fordomme og stereotyper om Grønland og Arktis (København: Forlaget Bios, 2008); Kirsten Thisted, “‘Hvem Går Qivittoq?’”; Kirsten Thisted, ”Eskimoeksotisme”. 7. Søren Rud, “Governance and Tradition in Nineteenth-Century Greenland,” Interventions 16, 4 (2014). 8. Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 11. 9. Paige Raibmon, Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late- Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). 10. Rud, “Governance and Tradition.” 11. Raibmon, Authentic Indians, 16. 12. In the nineteenth century, Greenland was organized into two provinces (called Inspektorater). Each province was headed by a governor (entitled Inspektør). The provinces comprised a number of colonies (a total of 12 or 13, depending on the period), each led by a colonial manager. 13. Thomsen, “Ægte grønlændere.” 14. Instrux hvorefter Kjøbmændene eller de som enten bestyre Handelsen eller forestaae Hvalfanger-Anlæggene I Grønland, I Særdeleshed, saavelsom og alle der staa I Handelens Tieneste I Almindelighed, sig for Fremtiden have at rette og forholde. Reproduced in N. H. Frandsen, Nordgrønland 1790–96. Inspektør B. J. Schultz’ indberetninger til direktionen for den Kongelige grønlandske Handel (København: Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie, 2010). 15. Anne Folke Henningsen, “Race, Rights, Religion: Interactions Between White Missionaries and Black Congregants in the Moravian Mission Church in Eastern South Africa c. 1870–1940” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Århus Universitet, 2008). 16. George Steinmetz, “The Colonial State as a Social Field: Ethnographic Capital and Native Policy in the German Overseas Empire Before 1914,” American Sociological Review 74, 4 (2008); George Steinmetz, The Devil’s NOTES 53

Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 17. Hinrich Johannes Rink, Oversigt over forstanderskabs-indretningens indførelse og virksomhed i Grønland 1857–1868 (Kjøbenhavn: B. Lunos bogtrykkeri ved F.S. Muhle), 4. 18. Hinrich Johannes Rink, Samling af Betænkninger og Forslag vedkommende den kongelige Grønlandske Handel (Kjøbenhavn, 1856). 19. Foreløbige Bestemmelser om Grønlændernes Kasse og Forstanderskaber i Sydgrønlands Inspectorat (1862) in Hinrich Johannes Rink Meddelelser om forstanderskaberne i Sydgrønland 1862–1868 (Nuuk: Nunatta Atagaateqarfia, 1982). 20. In his 1978 lectures, Michel Foucault (Michel Senellart, François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana), Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978 (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Foucault carves out three major points of support for governmentality, which he claims to be the fundamental phenomenon of modern western societies: (1) pastoral power; (2) the new diplomatic-military technique; and (3) finally, a “set of very specific instruments” that can be termed (in the seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century sense of the word) police. This concept of pastoral power is useful in the analyses of the colonial reform. Pastoral power is to be understood as a technique directed at developing self-guidance and self-examination among a population: “the pastor guides to salvation, prescribes the law, and teaches the truth” (Foucault, Security, 167). However, it is important to note that pastor- alism is not limited to the religious world. Rather, “in its modern form, the pastorate is deployed to a great extent through medical knowledge, institutions and practices” (Foucault, Security,199). 21. Louise Janssen 1850, quoted from Wilhjelm, De store opdragere,71,my translation. 22. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger. 23. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger. 24. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger, 187. 25. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger, 187. 26. Hinrich Johannes Rink, Om aarsagen til Grønlændernes og lignende af jagt levende, nationers materielle tilbagegang ved berøringen med Europæerne (Kjøbenhavn: Forlagt af den Gyldendalske Boghandling F. Hegel, 1862), 96. 27. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger. 28. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger, 184. 29. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger, 184. 30. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger, 190. 31. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger, 186. 54 3 INVOKING TRADITION AS A GOVERNANCE STRATEGY ...

32. Søren Forchhammer, “Administrative og politiske instutioner i Grønland fra 1860‘erne til 1950,” A. Mortensen, A. R. Nielssen and J. T. Thor, eds., De vestnordiske landes fælleshistorie II. Udvalg af foredrag holdt på VNH.konfer- encerne i Ísafjördur, Tórshavn 2004 og Oslo 2005 (Nuuk: Forlaget Atuagkat, 2006), 148. 33. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger, 187. 34. Protocol of designation (1863–1864), from Godhavns forstanderskab. 35. List of Repartition from Godhavns forstanderskab 1884. 36. Axel Kjær Sørensen, Danmark-Grønland i det 20. århundrede. En historisk oversigt (København: Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busck, 1983), 17. 37. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger, 187–189. 38. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger, 187–189. 39. Hinrich Johannes Rink, Oversigt over forstanderskabs-indretningens indførelse og virksomhed i Grønland 1857–1868 (Kjøbenhavn: B. Lunos bogtrykkeri ved F.S. Muhle, 1869), 4. 40. Rink, Oversigt over. 41. Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger og kundgørelser vedrørende kolonierne i Grønland for aarene 1909–1912 (København: J. H. Schultz, 1914), 158. 42. Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger, 158. 43. Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture. 44. Rink, Samling af Betænkninger, 180. 45. Scott, “Colonial Governmentality,” 196–197; Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Post-Colonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 14. 46. David Scott, “Colonial governmentality.” Social Text, 43 (1995), 214. 47. Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture. 48. Søren Rud, “Erobringen af Grønland: Opdagelsesrejser, etnologi og forstanderskab i attenhundredetallet,” Historisk tidsskrift 106, 2 (2006). CHAPTER 4

Achieving a Correct Blend: Tradition, Modernization, and the Formation of Identity

Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler identify as the most basic “tension of empire” that “the otherness of colonized persons was neither inherent nor stable; his or her difference had to be defined and maintained.”1 Accordingly “a grammar of difference was continuously and vigilantly crafted as people in colonies refashioned and contested European claims to superiority.”2 Building on observations from previous chapters which indicate that the strategy of the colonial administration in nineteenth- century Greenland relied on an ethnographic discourse, this chapter looks at the way in which this administration espoused various ideals for the Greenlandic identity. The analysis targets specific practices aimed at shaping individuals into a “correct blend” of traditional (Greenlandic) and modern (western/European) cultural elements. The colonial administration’s strategy aimed to form certain types of individuals—among them a “Greenlandic elite.” Producing the latter meant drawing on an ambiguous template which combined traditional and modern virtues. Among the various methods employed to achieve this were intermarriage; language; sending Greenlanders to be educated in Copenhagen; and housing them in a controlled environment—specifically a boarding house designed to nurture an ideal. Keeping the Greenlanders under strict control during their stay in Copenhagen, the administration used the boarding house to mold them into a “correct blend of cultural components.” In light of Cooper and Stoler’s observation the efforts made toward shaping

Greenlandic identity must also be seen as attempts to deﬁne and maintain the difference between the colonized and the colonizer.

INTERMARRIAGE AND MIXED CHILDREN AS TOOLS AND TARGETS OF COLONIAL GOVERNANCE Inge Høst Seiding has demonstrated that intermarriage between European men and Greenlandic women was considered an important tool in the early phases of the colonial project.3 These marriages helped the colonial officials gain access to information about the Greenlandic social world otherwise inaccessible or obscure to the European observer. Initially when visions of a European settlement were still flourishing, intermarriage was seen as part as this strategy. Jacob Severin, who was in charge of trade in Greenland between 1734 and 1749, held a very positive view of marriage between European men and Greenlandic women. In the subsequent period, where the Almindelige Handelskompagni, the“General Trading Company,” had control over trade and administration in Greenland until 1774, intermarriage appears to have been an established practice. Seiding has found marriage contracts which indicate a bourgeoning regulation of the field. These contracts “bound the grooms to Greenland and designated them to a lifestyle that was to be as ‘Greenlandic’ as possible.”4 Interestingly Seiding notes that the trade administration was acutely “aware of the importance of the intimate and the domestic as a site of intervention.”5 She also identifies a growing ambiguity in attitudes toward intermarriage:

Towards the mid-19th century, the persistent opposition against intermarriage at superior staff level resulted in the arrival of more European wives. This coincided with changing colonial policies aiming at modernizing Denmark’s arctic colonies towards a greater emphasis on commercial trade. In Greenland, a changing perception of the role of the mixed families and the reinforcement of an all-European upper class saw the colonial administration counteracting the hybridity of the colonial “middle ground”: in part by keeping it completely out of the superior staff group [ ...].6

Whereas interracial marriage could provide colonial officials (mission and trade) with strategic advantages, these marriages also posed the danger of subverting established power relationships. The blend of blood and INTERMARRIAGE AND MIXED CHILDREN AS TOOLS ... 57 cultural components was to an increasing degree subjected to careful consideration and regulation. Children of marriages between European men and Greenlandic women were generally referred to as blandinger, i.e., mixtures or mixed bloods. The blandinger were placed in an ambiguous category throughout the colonial period, initially (in 1782) comprised of children of European fathers and Greenlandic mothers, but later also to Greenlanders with a European grandfather.7 These individuals were subject to regulations in the first code of conduct directed at the employees of the Royal Greenland Trading Company, the Instruction of 1782. It detailed the importance of Greenlanders staying proficient hunters, which could thus provide the trading company with needed products. In spite of this main goal, the instructions prescribed that boys of mixed descent could be brought up to function in a number of positions within the trade company as an alternative to the preferred occupation of seal hunter.8 Thus, at this stage of the colonial project, the mixtures were clearly established as a group with special potential; they came to occupy positions as mediators bridging the gap between Europeans and Greenlanders.9 In the nineteenth century, this group presented an obvious target for the different strategies employed by the colonial administration to civilize the Greenlanders. Debates about Greenland in the nineteenth century were often based on the question of whether to maintain the trade monopoly given to the Royal Greenland Trading Company in 1776. Advocates of the monopoly argued that abandoning the monopoly in favor of free trade would destroy the Greenlanders. In 1835, a commission was appointed to address the question of the trade monopoly and other issues such as mission, living conditions, and the medical system, as they related to the administration of the colony of Greenland. One of the pronounced themes in the commission’s work was the discussion of various strategies that could be employed to “elevate” Greenlandic culture beyond basic subsistence as it was perceived by the commission. One outcome of the commission’s work was an increase in the prices paid by the company for the Greenlanders’ products. Another initiative included the construction of houses, meant to replace traditional dwellings. The aim of these initiatives was to increase the seal hunters’ efficiency; the underlying assumption was that the initiatives would encourage a sense of ownership, ensuing pride and thereby productivity i.e., securing the basis for the colonial trade. These efforts also seem to have been motivated by a genuine wish to advance Greenlandic culture toward what was perceived as a higher level of 58 4 ACHIEVING A CORRECT BLEND civilization.10 The dual motive of securing the colonial trade and the Greenlandic culture is illustrated by the policies concerning the new woo- den houses introduced in Greenland as a result of the commission’s work. W. A. Graah, who was a member of the board of directors of the Royal Greenland Trading Company as well as the commission of 1835 and a staunch supporter of the houses, argued that the houses would increase the amount of blubber available for the company’s trade, since the source of heat in them would be wood instead of blubber. Furthermore, in offering replicas of modern dwellings, the houses would help acclimatize Greenlanders to more civilized surroundings than what currently existed.11 Yet another initiative aimed at civilizing the Greenlanders was the practice of sending them to Copenhagen to be educated. This began in 1837 after a request from the commission. The intention was explicitly to allow Greenlanders to travel to Denmark and become as civilized and educated as possible, in order for them to return to Greenland and influence the rest of the population. J. Collin, Chairman of the commission of 1835 believed that

To drive a common people from their position of powerlessness requires a number of measures. The main measure is to put the simple people in close connection with other peoples. [ ...] I propose that a few young Greenlanders, eight to ten at a time, mostly boys, ought to be sent down here [Copenhagen, Denmark] to learn Danish ways and customs, and return home after two to three years stay.12

Between 1837 and 1843, 12 Greenlanders traveled to Denmark. They stayed for varying lengths of time, and were housed mainly by different families in Copenhagen. All 12 were considered to be blandinger. This had obvious advantages for the colonial administration, since many of them spoke some Danish as well as Greenlandic. Generally, they were perceived to be much easier “to civilize” and to deal with than “pure” Greenlanders. The task of housing them was speciﬁc in its approach. According to the 1835 commission, Greenlanders in Denmark

[ ...] should certainly not reside together in one place [ ...]. [O]ne would have to choose some [hosts for the Greenlanders], between skilful and upright people, among craftsmen, preferably those who work in wood or iron, schoolteachers, priests, those who have previously been missionaries in Greenland, Sailors [ ...].13 MODERNIZATION AND TRADITION AMONG THE GREENLANDIC ELITE 59

The aim was clear: to make the Greenlanders as civilized—that is, as Danish/western—as possible. In contrast to what would come later, this particular strategy for civilizing the Greenlanders was not as troubled by the ambiguity which became so prevalent later in the century.

MODERNIZATION AND TRADITION AMONG THE GREENLANDIC ELITE Following recommendations from one of the commissions addressing Greenlandic affairs in the nineteenth century, a royal resolution in 1844 authorized the establishment of two catechist colleges in Greenland.14 ThecollegesweresituatedinGreenland’s present capital Godthåb (today Nuuk), in the southern part of Greenland, and in Jakobshavn (today Ilulissat), in the northern part. From an early point in the colonial process, Greenlandic catechists assisted the missionaries in the colonial cities and took care of teaching and religious tasks in the small settlements. The idea behind the establishment of the colleges was to strengthen the level of education among these catechists.Thoseeducatedinthetwocollegeseventuallycametobe considered the core of the Greenlandic elite. The establishment of the colleges meant Greenlanders could be educated in their own land for the duration of their education. It also meant these students would not endure lengthy stays in Denmark—an experience which was now deemed as allowing them too much time to become western in their lifestyle, thus losing valuable components of their “Greenlandicness.” Here again, as with those sent to Denmark, the majority of the educated catechists were “mixtures.” This question of how to “mix” cultural elements received overwhelming attention from the colonial administration in the nineteenth century. The promotion of traditional cultural elements such as seal hunting became integrated into the educational program of the two colleges. Promotion of the seal hunt, or as it was termed, the national occupation, formed part of the instructions to the headmasters of the two colleges from 1845:

The headmaster will see to it that the college students in their spare time studiously practice the Greenlandic occupation; he will watch over their conduct and expel the negligent and the indecent when warnings prove fruitless.15 60 4 ACHIEVING A CORRECT BLEND

Both colleges employed Greenlandic teachers who trained the students in seal- hunting skills. Given the nature of their occupation and the fact that the catechists were envisioned to become leaders among their peers and inspire the Greenlanders to develop their culture, it was not obvious why hunting skills became part of their educational syllabus. One plausible reason was of course that hunting would enable them to supplement their very modest incomes.16 However, debates often focused on how much civilization the Greenlanders ought to be exposed to during their education. Soon it became apparent that the two colleges employed different approaches: in Jakobshavn, there was more receptivity to western influence; in Godthåb, there was far more skepticism.17 The issue of language was an essential component in these debates. The approach in Godthåb prescribed that Greenlanders should not bother learning Danish; conversely it was considered important in Jakobshavn.18 In Godthåb, it was argued that exposure to luxury of any kind would spoil the Greenlanders and thereby reduce their connection to the indigenous culture. The differing approaches of the two colleges embodied dominant positions in the debates on the project of civilizing the Greenlanders. On one side were the traditionalists, who greatly admired what they perceived to be Greenlandic culture (here they drew heavily on the ethnographic discourse described in the previous chapters) and wanted the traditional culture preserved and protected against the negative aspects of western culture. On the other side was a modernist wing more preoccupied with progress and far less concerned with protecting the traditional Greenlandic culture. These wings had proponents among the trade and administration as well as in missionary circles. The discussions involved subjects such as the language of teaching at the colleges; whether or not the Greenlanders ought to be sent to Denmark to receive their education; and the important question of free trade versus a continuation of the trade monopoly.19 Relatedly, the issue of whether or not some Greenlanders ought to be educated in Copenhagen embodied the tension between the ideologies of preservation and development. On the one hand, educating Greenlanders was perceived to be positive; but on the other, education called up questions about how to maintain and demarcate the difference between the colonized and the colonizer. A number of scholars have, from different theoretical perspectives, pointed to the colonial power’s attempts to establish an elite among the Greenlanders in the nineteenth century.20 In the work of Søren Thuesen, TWO LIVES, LIVED DIFFERENTLY 61 where the group is referred to as an elitært lag (elitist layer), the interest is, under the influence from anthropologist Robert Paine, aimed at the catechists as a group of intermediaries operating in the space between the Greenlanders and the Europeans. Thuesen is especially interested in sources through which the catechists expressed themselves and left impressions of their daily life. Thereby Thuesen aims to access the agency so often sought after in scholarly work on colonial settings.21,22 Specific conditions in Greenland presented the colonial administration with a set of strategic possibilities concerning the management of the colony. These conditions paved the way for an exercise of colonial power that to some extent resembled the subject-oriented project of changing population members into self-governing individuals, as Michel Foucault proposes took place in Western societies. However, in Greenland, the subject-oriented project was riddled with ambiguity toward “civilizing” the Greenlanders. Chief among these was the convergence of an idealized image of the Greenlandic tradition and the colonial project’s dependency on seal hunting—both of which underpinned an administrative strategy that promoted seal hunting as the central aspect of Greenlandic culture.23 The increasingly dominant ethnographic discourse heavily influenced ideas about the benefits and dangers of exposing Greenlanders to western culture.

TWO LIVES,LIVED DIFFERENTLY Twelve Greenlanders (or mixtures) were sent to Denmark in the period between 1837 and 1843, following the initiatives taken by the 1835 commission.24 They were housed privately and received education in either craftsmanship or skills that prepared them for the tasks of a catechist in Greenland. One of the most gifted of these young Greenlanders was Rasmus Berthelsen (1827–1901), who was sent to Denmark in 1843. Berthelsen proved to be both intelligent and hard-working and in 1849 he became employed as an assistant teacher at the college in Nuuk, a position he kept until his death in 1901.25 As a highly educated Greenlander, Rasmus Berthelsen experienced the impact of the assigned importance of the traditional Greenlandic cultural traits, and in the process of becoming well educated, he lost his authenticity as a Greenlander in the eyes of the colonial administration. Rasmus Berthelsen was not very skilled either with a kayak or as a hunter, and as a consequence he suffered in his professional life.26 As a gifted man who 62 4 ACHIEVING A CORRECT BLEND succeeded in acquiring the necessary skills to function as an assistant teacher at the catechist college, Rasmus Berthelsen could easily have taken his career further if he had not collided with the limits of what was expected of a Greenlander. The principal of the college in Nuuk, C. E. Janssen, stated, “Rasmus Berthelsen [ ...] has become unused to, and unskilled in, the essential national occupation [i.e., seal hunting], and has at the same time of course become accustomed to manners and needs that make life as a Greenlander difficult if not impossible.”27 Rasmus Berthelsen’s lack of hunting skills disqualified him as a Greenlander in the eyes of the colonial officials in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is not surprising that Rasmus Berthelsen had a somewhat troubled relationship with his Danish superiors at the college, and he expressed his bitterness to that effect. He voiced his frustration over the fact that he had not been allowed to pursue his educational ambitions further (in Denmark) after residing with a schoolteacher. Instead, he was sent back to Greenland in 1847 to conclude his education at the college in Nuuk, and he later commented “[W]hat stupidity; it was a great loss for the [Greenlander] eager to learn, who dedicated his life to gathering knowledge that he can use when he returns to his peers.”28 Berthelsen had excelled under the conditions dictated by the colonial power in the 1830s, but having succeeded, he had lost his identity as a Greenlander along the way, and he encountered the limitations caused by a colonial emphasis on difference that emerged later in the century. Sadly, we can identify Berthelsen as an example of a gifted Greenlander who was perceived to comprise an incorrect blend of the two cultures. He did not match the colonial administration’s idealized picture of the Greenlandic elite. Like Rasmus Berthelsen, Johannes “Hansêrak” Hansen was also a “mixture.” He worked as a catechist in the southern part of Greenland after he graduated from the college in Nuuk in 1858. From 1883–1885, he played a leading role as a boatman in the Women’s Boat Expedition (Konebådsekspeditionen) to the uncolonized East Coast. During the expedition, Hansen’s Danish superiors praised him as a helper and leader of the Greenlandic participants in the expedition. According to one of the Danish participants:

The 49-year old Hansêrak, a little bald man with a partly grey beard, a big sharp nose and a pair of small bird-of-prey eyes [ ...] is a mixed blood, and has, as such, a number of the good aspects of the Greenlander, supplemented with what the Greenlanders generally lack, namely, the European energy.29 ACHIEVING A CORRECT BLEND 63

This quotation epitomizes the central aspects of the ethnic ideal developed in the nineteenth century: Greenlanders were supposed to stay Greenlandic in terms of many cultural traits, but ideally possess qualities deemed “non-Greenlandic,” such as energy and reliability. In the eyes of his Danish superiors, Hansen, in contrast to Rasmus Berthelsen, had not lost his authenticity as a Greenlander during his education. He was still able to “live as a Greenlander” and during the expedition he proved skilful in the difficult task of navigating a traditional Greenlandic skin boat (Umiaq, women’s boat) through the ice-filled waters off the coast of East Greenland, and he helped supply the travelers with prey. He was educated as a catechist and frowned at “superstitions” among his fellow Greenlanders during the expedition, but at the same time he was able to hunt, thus maintaining his “Greenlandicness.”30 It appears that Johannes “Hansêrak” Hansen embodied the desirable blend of cultural traits. This tendency to define ideal “Greenlandicness” as a combination of certain traditional cultural traits supplemented with European morality, work ethic and energy was not only important on the personal level. It was prevalent throughout the entire administration of the colony from the middle of the nineteenth century onward in the educational policies of the colleges, where traditional hunting skills were taught, and the organization of the local boards, in which the hunters’ social position was privileged, and in terms of influence in the establishment of the boarding house, which was meant to secure and control the elite Greenlanders’ exposure to civilized culture in Copenhagen. Thus, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Danish administration of Greenland became increasingly preoccupied with finding and managing a correct mixture of Greenlandic and “civilized” European cultures.

ACHIEVING A CORRECT BLEND In 1879, the Danish Ministry of Domestic Affairs approved a proposal to construct a building in Copenhagen which was meant to function as a boarding house for Greenlanders while they were being educated in the metropole. The building, Grønlænderhjemmet (the Greenlander home), was used from 1880 until 1896, when the practice of sending Greenlandic men to Denmark for educational purposes came to a halt.31 While in use, the boarding house functioned as an instrument of the colonial administration and embodied a central aspect of the their strategy for civilizing Greenlanders: to monitor and control the 64 4 ACHIEVING A CORRECT BLEND process to ensure that Greenlanders did not lose their connection with their traditional Greenlandic/Inuit background while acquiring western knowledge deemed appropriate. This was essentially a concern for the grammar of difference identiﬁed by Cooper and Stoler. The brief publication, Plan til Indretning af “Grønlænderhjemmet” eller Pensionatet for Grønlændere, som Opholde sig i Danmark [Design plan for the Greenlander home, or boarding house for Greenlanders residing in Denmark] describes the rationale for the boarding house.32 Its main purpose, as noted in the publication, was to make it possible for Greenlanders to receive an education and thus prepare them for a number of jobs in Greenland that hitherto had been held by Danes.33 This, it was argued, would enable the Greenlanders to develop their culture, moving them toward a “higher level of civilization.”34 The boarding house was, thus, meant to provide optimal housing conditions for the Greenlanders during their stay in Copenhagen. The state- owned company responsible for the administration of Greenland, the Royal Greenland Trading Company, had personnel consisting of three groups:

1. the higher functionaries (the two provincial governors and the colonial managers of the different colonial districts); 2. the lower functionaries (craftsmen, boatmen and managers of the trading posts); and 3. the staff (the lowest positions, such as workers, crew members, and waiters, often employed loosely on a short-term basis).35

The top tier of employees or the higher functionaries were comprised exclusively of Danes while the bottom tier (workers, crew members and waiters), were made up exclusively of Greenlanders. The positions in the middle layer were ﬁlled by Europeans and Greenlanders; however, the Greenlanders often maintained subordinate functions. Supporters of the boarding house envisioned that once educated, Greenlanders could eventually be employed to a larger extent in the middle layer (lower functionary positions such as craftsmen, boatmen, and managers of the trading posts).36 More broadly, the ofﬁcial thinking behind the colonial process was that by giving lower administrative positionstoGreenlanders,theywouldthenbeequippedtopotentially (and later on) undertake the political and legislative administration in their own country. ACHIEVING A CORRECT BLEND 65

The establishment of the boarding house reflects the ambivalence inherent in the Danish colonial strategy for developing Greenlandic civilization in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Given the pervasive idealization of the Greenlandic tradition, one of the essential concerns associated with the project of educating Greenlanders was to control the influences they were exposed to while living in Copenhagen. The intent of restricting the Greenlanders to the safe environment of the boarding house was to ensure that they came into contact with only the “good” elements of civilized Danish culture, not the “bad.” In this sense, the boarding house functioned as a piece of colonial machinery which was meant to control the elite Greenlanders’ exposure to the culture of the Western world. The design of the boarding house also reflects how important it was for the colonial administration to control the Greenlanders’ exposure to the surrounding culture during their stay in Copenhagen. According to H. J. Rink, now the director of Royal Greenland Trading Company: “[T]he Greenlanders should be educated by local employers in the city and, as much as possible, get accustomed to being among strangers, but they should have a common refuge, where, furthermore, one can keep them under appropriate control.”37 The rules stated in the Design Plan for the Greenlander’s Home (Plan til indretning af “Grønlænderhjemmet”) prescribed that the Greenlanders should be kept under strict supervision during their stay at the boarding house. A retired Danish craftsman was hired as a caretaker and attendant to ensure that the boarding house was run in accordance with the principles put forward in the Plan.38 Different members of the Board of Directors for the Royal Greenland Trading Company inspected the boarding house regularly and kept a record of their visits.39 The boarding house was to resemble a reformatory, where one of the key goals was to prevent the Greenlandic boarders from getting too accustomed to the luxuries of the civilized world.40 The boarders’ contact with Danish culture was meticulously monitored and controlled. The meals served in the boarding house were unsophisticated and simple, though nutritious with adequate portions, and alcohol was completely prohibited. An essential function of the boarding house was to guard against creating “spoiled” Greenlanders. The boarding house was also designed to remind the boarders of their Greenlandic background. A number of measures were taken to ensure this: two rooms contained Greenlandic artifacts, such as artwork, everyday tools, and other objects from Greenland. Kayaks were available so that the male lodgers could maintain the skills necessary for traditional Greenlandic seal 66 4 ACHIEVING A CORRECT BLEND hunting. One room was used as a library, with books on Greenlandic topics, and an Umiaq (a women’s boat) was fabricated at three-quarters of the authentic size and kept in the boarding house.41 At the same time, the bedrooms were constructed so that they would match what was perceived to be the boarders’ cultural background. Two rooms were specifically designed with sleeping arrangements consisting of plank beds and linen separating the living/sleeping spaces of the individual boarders (or families), resembling the setup of traditional Greenlandic houses. One room had an organ, and was accordingly meant specifically for visiting catechist students. While two other rooms were designed to house Danes or other Europeans employed in the colonial administration or the mission, a clear distinction was evident in how their rooms were designed—devoid of the efforts to preserve a sense of “Greenlandicness” via props and reminders. To understand the function of the boarding house (Grønlænderhjemmet), we can turn to anthropologist David Scott’s re-contextualization of Foucault’s notion of governmentality in a colonial frame.42 Scott’s understanding of a shift to a modern political rationality may be applied to the boarding house and its function as a piece of colonial machinery. In it, “the conduct of conduct” was played by finding a difficult balance between the need to change Greenlandic culture and the need to control and monitor the conditions through which this change could occur.43 In general, the boarding house was meant to control and secure the boarders’ cultural identity as Greenlanders. The Board of Directors for the Royal Greenland Trading Company stated that Greenlanders “must not [by staying in the boarding house] become more demanding [ ...]; in terms of their expectations in life they will then remain Greenlanders.”44 The boarding house in Copenhagen must be seen in this light: it was intended to function as an instrument in the process of mixing the two cultures, in order to ensure that the elite Greenlanders would represent the ideal blend. To paraphrase Cooper and Stoler, the function of the boarding house was tied to the continual and vigilant crafting of the grammar of difference. The renowned Danish explorer and ethnographer Knud Rasmussen wrote in his introduction to the first published novel written by Greenlander Mathias Storch—En grønlænders drøm [“AGreenlander’s dream”]:

It is a matter of course that it always is the Danish mixtures who are groundbreaking among their fellow nationals, and such cultural shoots ACHIEVING A CORRECT BLEND 67

must of course be met not only with sympathetic gentleness but also with a keen criticism; so far thus they exemplify a type which has appropriated the alien without having the resources to manifest their own originality under the alien forms. In any event, today we have the pleasure of seeing the first flowers shoot. Along come obligations. Thus, one must keep strict watch against all that is artificial [ ...].45

Here at the beginning of the twentieth century, and in his introduction to the first Greenlandic novel, Rasmussen was accordingly warning against inauthentic Greenlanders, typically mixtures, who had appropriated European culture but lacked a firm grounding in their Greenlandicness. Rasmussen’s remarks reflect the intense attention given to the question of identity and borrowed cultural components. Mathias Storch and his fellow elite Greenlanders were under close scrutiny by European observers. Any activity that involved elements of cultural transcendence involved an element of danger that could destabilize the fundamental grammar of difference inherent in the colonial project. Later in the twentieth century, in 1930, Danish Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning visited Greenland—or the last Danish colony as he called it. In his account of the visit he emphasized the warm emotional connection between Denmark and Greenland, which he felt his experiences during the visit confirmed. According to Stauning, the Danish colonial project had “secured subsistence for the [Greenlandic] population and the possibility for a development which leads the indigenous people (Naturfolket) toward higher culture and greater happiness in the life of our own people [the Danes].”46 In another passage Stauning praises the group of mixtures in Greenland and links the mixture of cultural components within this group with the overall purpose of the colonial project in Greenland:

The Eskimo’s courage, rigor and sense of the wild have come together with the practical sense and social understanding of the Dane, and accordingly the development, that has been the purpose of isolation, monopoly of trade, law and administration in past times, is promoted.47

The aspect of an ideal—or an ideal blend—is clearly at stake here at the individual level as well as a more general social level. The project of achieving the desired blend of cultural integration was essentially a project of stabilizing the otherness of the Greenlanders. The Greenlanders’ transition 68 4 ACHIEVING A CORRECT BLEND to civilized modernity was to follow strict guidelines, according to which the Greenlanders would remain distinct from the colonizing Europeans. The practices aimed at shaping the Greenlandic identities were based on the ethnographic discourse and intertwined in the connected techniques of governance. The notion that the Greenlandic culture was fragile and needed protection dominated the colonial paradigm. Indeed, this idea supported and perpetuated the belief that Greenlanders possessed an inherent vulnerability: a belief which had an enduring inﬂuence over policies and decisions.

NOTES 1. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 7. 2. Cooper and Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire,3–4. 3. Inge Høst Seiding, “‘Married to the Daughters of the Country’: Intermarriage and Intimacy in Northwest Greenland ca. 1750 to 1850” (PhD Dissertation, Ilisimatusarﬁk—University of Greenland—Grønlands Universitet). 4. Seiding, “Married to,” 257. 5. Seiding, “Married to,” 257. 6. Seiding, “Married to,” 258. 7. Louis Bobé, “Diplomentarium Groenlandicum 1492–1814. Aktstykker og Breve til Oplysning om Grønlands Besejling, Kolonisation og Missionering. Udgivne ved Louis Bobé,” Meddelelser om Grønland 55: 3 (København: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1936), 368. 8. Instrux hvorefter Kjøbmændene eller de som enten bestyre Handelsen eller forestaae Hvalfanger-Anlæggene I Grønland, I Særdeleshed, saavelsom og alle der staa I Handelens Tieneste I Almindelighed, sig for Fremtiden have at rette og forholde. Reproduced in N. H. Frandsen, Nordgrønland 1790–96. Inspektør B. J. Schultz’ indberetninger til direktionen for den Kongelige grønlandske Handel (København: Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie, 2010). 9. See also Søren Thuesen, Fremmed blandt landsmænd. Grønlandske kateketer i kolonitiden (Forlaget Atuagkat, 2007); Mette Rønsager, Imellem lægerog landsmænd. Den vestgrønlandske jordemoderinstitution 1820–1920 (Ph.D. dissertation, Copenhagen: Eskimology and Arctic Studies/Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, 2006). 10. P. P. Sveistrup and Sune Dalgaard, “Det danske styre af Grønland 1825– 1850,” Meddelelser om Grønland 145: 1 (København: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1945), 248–279. NOTES 69

11. Sveistrup and Dalgaard, “Det danske styre,” 325–344. 12. Indenrigsministeriet, Kommissionen af 16.04. 1835 for at Undersøge hvorvidt der kunne åbnes for en mere Udstrakt Frihandel på Grønland, 1835–1840, archival number: 0003+U0001, The Danish National Archives. 13. Indenrigsministeriet, Kommissionen. 14. Henrik Wilhjelm, De store opdragere. Grønlands seminarier i det 19. århundrede (København: Det grønlandske Selskab, 1997). 15. Anon. 1846, quoted in Wilhjelm, De store opdragere. 16. Thuesen, Fremmed blandt; Wilhjelm, De store opdragere. 17. Jens Christian Manniche, “Sprogbeherskelse og Herskersprog—om sprog og kolonialisme i Grønland i 1800-tallet,” Aarhus Universitet, Historisk Institut (unpublished work) (2002). 18. Wilhjelm, De store opdragere. 19. Examples can be found in material from the commissions addressing the development in Greenland (1835, 1851). 20. A number of scholars have, from different theoretical perspectives, pointed to the colonial power’s efforts to establish an elite among the Greenlanders in the nineteenth century. In Viemose’s Dansk kolonipolitik i Grønland, this group is, from a Marxist perspective, referred to as an “allieret gruppe” (allied group) who quite unﬂatteringly are portrayed as collaborators who engaged with the colonial power in order to accommodate their own ends. Jørgen Viemose, Dansk kolonipolitik i Grønland (København: Demos, 1977). In his structural analysis of the Greenlandic society, Hans Erik Rasmussen terms the group “indfødt øvre socialt lag” (upper social stratum). Other scholars have dealt with the Greenlandic catechists. Hans-Erik Rasmussen, “Genealogier og social stratiﬁkation. Eksempler fra Grønland,” Fortid og nutid. Tidsskrift for kulturhistorie og lokalhistorie XXXII: 2, 81 (1986). The work of Henrik Wilhjelm constitutes an impressively detailed account of the many matters relating to education and conditions for the catechists. This work is extremely useful as an information resource, however, it does not propose an analytical frame for understanding the role of the Greenlandic elite in relation to the colonial project. Henrik Wilhjelm, De store opdragere: Grønlands seminarier i det 19. århundrede (København: Det grønlandske Selskab, 1997); Henrik Wilhjelm, Af tilbøielighed er jeg Grønlandsk: om Samuel Kleinschmidts liv og værk (København: Det grønlandske Selskab, 2001), Henrik Wilhjelm, De nye grønlændere: Grønlands seminarier i det 19. århundrede (København: Det grønlandske Selskab, 2008). 21. Thuesen, Fremmed blandt. 22. Søren Thuesen Fremad, opad: Kampen for en moderne grønlandsk identitet (København: Rhodos, 1988). In another book, Thuesen investigates the role of the catechists in the religious revival that occurred in Greenland in the early twentieth century. 70 4 ACHIEVING A CORRECT BLEND

23. In her book Christina Petterson is also interested in the Greenlandic catechists’ role in connection with the development of a Greenlandic identity. According to Petterson, the identity of the Greenlandic hunters was the byproduct of the catechists’ attempt to assert themselves as an elite social group in Greenland. This is an interesting approach; however, Petterson’s intense focus on the missionary activities seems to be rather exclusive of the administrative politics that resulted in fundamental reforms that altered the Greenlandic community and life-world in many ways. Moreover, in spite of a self-declared mission of breaking down the barrier between missionary and colonial powers, Petterson offers no room for interaction between the two, thereby missing essential parts of Foucault’s work, on which her analyses otherwise rely. As established in Chapter 3, I tend to put less emphasis on separating the two since I ﬁnd that the techniques of governance that characterizes the period constitutes an amalgamation of tendencies from the ﬁelds of mission as well as administration. Christina Petterson, The Missionary, the Catechist and the Hunter: Foucault, Protestantism and Colonialism (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014). 24. Alfred Bertelsen, “Grønlændere i Danmark. Bidrag til belysning af grønlandsk kolonisationsarbejde fra 1605 til vor tid”, Meddelelser om Grønland 145: 2 (København: C. A. Reitzels forlag). 25. Wilhjelm, De store opdragere, 396. 26. Emil Bluhme, Fra et Ophold i Grønland. 1863–63 (København, 1865), 255–266. 27. Carl Emil Janssen, in Dansk Missionsblad 11 (1856). Quoted from Wilhjelm, De store opdragere. 28. Rasmus Berthelsen, in Bluhme, Fra et Ophold, 258. 29. William Thalbitzer (Foreword) in Johannes Hansêrak Hansen, Den grønlandske kateket Hanserâks Dagbog. Om den danske konebådsekspedition til Ammassalik i Østgrønland 1884–85 (København: Det grønlandske selskabs skrifter VIII, G. E. C. Gads Forlag, 1933). 30. Hansen, Den grønlandske kateket Hanserâks Dagbog, 33. 31. The education of male Greenlanders in Denmark was resumed in the twentieth century. 32. Direktoratet for den Kgl. Grønlandske Handel, Plan til Indretningen af “Grønlænderhjemmet” eller Pensionatet for Grønlændere, som opholde sig i Danmark (København, 1879), 2. 33. Direktoratet, Plan til,1–2. 34. Direktoratet, Plan til,3–4. 35. Direktoratet, Plan til, 2. As early as 1776, the colonial administration in Greenland had been managed by a state-owned company, the Royal Greenland Trading Company, which had a monopoly on trade in Greenland. Greenland was divided into two administrative units (the NOTES 71

northern and the southern provinces), each led by a company-employed Governor. The provinces were comprised of several colonies or colonial districts (by the middle of the nineteenth century, seven in the Northern Province and five in the Southern Province) and each colonial district had a number of outposts (with smaller populations) and several small settlements. 36. Various techniques of governance targeted various groups, all aiming to shape the individuals in certain ways. Just as the administration sought to shape the best hunter (as an elite group with specific features), here they sought to shape the educated Greenlanders (as an elite group with other, but somewhat similar, features). 37. Hinrich Johannes Rink, Om Grønlænderne—deres Fremtid og de til deres bedste Sigtende Foranstaltninger (København, 1882), 74. 38. Direktoratet, Plan til,5–8. 39. Direktoratet, Inventariebog: Direktoratet Kgl. Grønlandske Handel, – og Korrespondancekontor, Arkivserie: Grønlænderhjemmet, regnskabs -og inventariebøger, forhandlings– og brevbog, 1879–1896, archival number: 458. 24, The Danish National Archives. 40. Direktoratet, Plan til,5–8. 41. Direktoratet, Inventariebog. 42. David Scott, “Colonial Governmentality,” Social Text 43 (1995), 197. 43. The concept “conduct of conduct” employed here is inspired by Mitchell Dean’sdefinition of government as: “The ‘conduct of conduct’. Any more or less calculated and rational activity, undertaken by a multiplicity of authorities and agencies, employing a variety of techniques and forms of knowledge that seeks to shape our conduct by working through our desires, aspirations, interests and beliefs, for definite but shifting ends [ ...].” Mitchell Dean, Governmentality. Power and Rule in Modern Society (London: Sage Publications, 1999), 209. 44. Direktoratet, Plan til,5. 45. Knud Rasmussen (Foreword) in Mathias Storch, En Grønlænders Drøm (København, 1915). 46. Thorvald Stauning, Min Grønlandsfærd (København and Oslo: Jespersen og Pios forlag, 1930), 67. 47. Stauning, Min grønlandsfærd, 26. CHAPTER 5

Diagnosing Vulnerability

Throughout the colonial period—particularly in the nineteenth century–– various mental disturbances were identified among Greenlanders. Both the popular view—and that of medical practitioners—was that these mental disturbances were closely tied to (what was perceived to be) their cultural “capacities.” Their findings may be used as a lens to view the political, economic, and epistemological premises of the colonial project. How the medical profession embarked upon the diagnosis reveals much about the colonial process and the physical and emotional challenges faced by Greenlanders. There was indeed an intimate connection between medicine and colonial rule and what follows is an analysis of how diagnoses specific to Inuit can be used as a lens to supplement the picture of the colonial project’s political, economic, and epistemological premises in Greenland.

COLONIAL MEDICINE The importance of health and medicine in relation to colonial projects has been noted and analyzed since early scholarly work called it to attention. Frantz Fanon’s position as a psychiatrist informed his work and brought attention to the psychiatric aspects of the colonial situation.1 In Black skin, white masks, Fanon studied the effects of racism and colonialism on the psyche of the colonized.2 In subsequent work, interest has extended

© The Author(s) 2017 73 S. Rud, Colonialism in Greenland, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46158-8_5 74 5 DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY beyond the effects on the colonized subjects. Scholars have highlighted how medical science has fundamentally underpinned colonial endeavors by its epistemological framing of fundamental differences between colonized and uncolonized bodies, as well as the way in which the idea of fundamental differences was integrated into colonial practices. Megan Vaughan approaches biomedical discourses as narratives or the construction of reality rather than reflections of a biological reality. Vaughan’s overall argument in Curing their ills: colonial power and African illness is that “medicine and its associated disciplines played an important part in constructing the ‘African’ as an object of knowledge, and elaborated classification systems and practices which have to be seen as intrinsic to the operation of colonial power.”3 Vaughan draws on Foucault’s work, in which the body figures as a site for power. She notes, however, what appears to be a significant difference between power in the western and the colonial setting, where notions of the inferiority of the colonized play a distinct role in how power is meted out. Within the field of colonial medicine studies, as in postcolonial studies in general, this difference has been a recurrent theme. In David Arnold’s seminal work, Colonizing the body: state medicine and epidemic disease in nineteenth-century India, he emphasizes the role of “the body as a site of colonizing power and of contestation between the colonized and the colonizers.”4 According to Arnold, medicine remained “integral to colonialism’s political concerns, its economic interests, and its cultural preoccupations.”5 Reflecting upon his inspiration from Foucault, Arnold notes that it is critical to acknowledge that western medicine in India was intimately tied to the colonial state.6 And that in spite of the many parallels to the function of medicine in the West, the development in colonial India demonstrated medicine’s “exceptional importance in the cultural and political construction of its subjects.”7 Warwick Anderson describes how in the Philippines, “American bodily control legitimated and symbolized social and political control, while the ‘promiscuous defe- cation’ of Filipinos indicated their position on the lower bodily and civilizational stratum.”8 Accordingly, the image of disciplined, highly hygienic, white Americans versus the undisciplined and unclean Filipinos was used to evoke emotions of superiority. The importance of this powerful image is also noted by Nicholas Thomas in his study of British colonialism in Fiji, which was marked by the conjuncture of “pervasive state knowledge and power, and the paternalistic attitude of respect toward the ‘customary order’ which was not to be tampered with.”9 Under the MEDICINE AND MEDICAL EXPERTS IN GREENLAND 75 auspices of sanitation, colonial powers managed the complexities arising from the urge to preserve culture and the urge to intervene and regulate:

The view that population decline had a great variety of social and behavioral causes was enormously enabling: almost anything to do with the organization of custom or village life could potentially be modiﬁed in the name of sanitation, since this did not emerge from any interested attempt to impose British or Christian values, but from the state’s rational interest in preserving the native race.10

In Greenland, where a related fascination with cultural traditions informed administrational strategies, a tension can be detected between the fascination and admiration for Inuit traditions, on the one hand, and a growing tendency to highlight the sanitary problems related to the traditional lifestyle.11

MEDICINE AND MEDICAL EXPERTS IN GREENLAND The development of a western medical system between the late eighteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century mirrored the growing ambitions of the Danish colonial project in Greenland. The history of the medical system in Greenland began in 1793, when the first general practice was established in Jakobshavn (today Ilulissat). Given the fact that the doctor in Jakobshavn was the sole representative of his profession in Greenland (an area roughly the size of Sweden, Germany, France, Spain and Great Britain put together), a substantial portion of the population never saw a doctor. Even after 1838–1839 when another medical position was established in Godthåb (today Nuuk), and 1851, when the system was supplemented again with a third position in Julianehåb (today Qaqortoq), the presence of western medicine in Greenland was sparse.12 The population of approximately 10,000 Greenlanders (according to the 1886 census) was scattered over a vast area, and many localities did not receive regular visits from a doctor. During their time there, the doctors were obliged to travel around their medical districts in order to meet the scattered and summer-migrating population. The number of visits by the doctor varied among localities and during the nineteenth century, a frequency of one or two visits within a five-year period was not unusual. Thus the professional medical community in Greenland in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century consisted of only a few 76 5 DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY individuals. Debates on Greenlandic health issues were dominated by Danish-educated doctors practicing medicine in Greenland and doctors in Denmark with prior experience in Greenland.13

DIAGNOSING THE GREENLANDERS’ VULNERABILITY The establishment of diagnoses specific to Inuit in the Arctic can be used as a lens through which we can supplement the picture of the colonial project’s political, economic, and epistemological premises in Greenland. Through the shifts in understanding and interpretation of the diagnosis of nargiarneq (kayak dizziness or kayak fear/anxiety), we can gain clarity on the logic, insights, and influences of colonial thinking and the corresponding policies that resulted. The Greenlander as a patient then becomes a prism through which we can view how the production of medical knowledge was shaped and premised by social context. Accordingly, the history of kayak dizziness offers insight into the logic underpinning the colonial project in Greenland. Given that the economic success of the colonial project was hinged on a steady supply of blubber and fur, and that this supply was dependent on an effective Greenlandic kayak-hunter, it is of little surprise that the colonial system paid attention to this phenomenon. The diagnosis offered a patho- logical dimension to the idea (already prevalent in administrational thinking) that Greenlanders who did not use a kayak were culturally abnormal. The colonial policies aiming to preserve the traditional culture were reflected in the interest in this phenomenon as well as in the explanations offered by the scientific observers. The trajectory of the diagnosis had three main etiologies. First, an explanation of the phenomenon was found in what was presumed to be an excessive consumption of coffee and/or tobacco among the Greenlanders. Usage was linked to a perceived lack of self-control and spending resources without worrying about future consequences—projec- tions accepted as fact by the colonial administration. These qualities were linked to a lack of self-control and, in the eyes of the colonial administration, an inherent vulnerability in Greenlanders—who should not be allowed unrestricted access to western culture. Further, the image of their vulnerability was manifest in various discourses. In the discussion over whether or not Greenland should remain an enclosed area, where trading and administration were exclusively monopolized, the idea of vulnerability underpinned these arguments. As MENTAL DISTURBANCES IN GREENLAND DURING THE COLONIAL ERA 77

Sniff Andersen Nexø has argued, the idea of cultural vulnerability was supplemented with a bodily dimension in the colonial administration’s efforts to regulate the intimate encounters between European men and Greenlandic women.14 It seems that the concern over the Greenlanders’ physical reaction to western influence, in the understanding of nangiarneq, indicates a similar bodily dimension of the image of vulnerability. The idea of vulnerability, culturally determined and manifested indivi- dually in psychical illness, is also present in the second understanding of the phenomenon, which held the condition to be an Arctic version of neurasthenia. The Arctic version of neurasthenia, present in a colonized population, presented something of a paradox for the medical community. The explanation for the occurrence of this disease of civilization among an uncivilized population was explained by linking vulnerability with lower tolerance toward complexity. The primitive could only handle a limited degree of complexity. The last and final understanding of the phenomenon, where the image of vulnerability was cast in a racial frame, did not leave much room for battling the disease. Here the Greenlanders’ vulnerability was perceived as resulting from their racial primitiveness and the population’s propensity toward mental disorder could accordingly only gradually be countered by the intermixture with westerners. The bodily dimension is here rather different than the one described, in that where the first understanding emphasized the protection of the Greenlandic body against the temptations of western culture, the racia- lized interpretation called for the dilution of the Greenlandic race/body.

MENTAL DISTURBANCES IN GREENLAND DURING THE COLONIAL ERA Psychiatrist Inge Lynge details three mental disturbances known in the colonial era, which she ﬁnds to be rooted in traditional Inuit/Eskimo or Greenlandic culture: pibloqtoq (Arctic hysteria), qivittoq (the mountain wanderer), and nangiarneq (kayak anxiety).15 Lynge’s account of the three disturbances is informed by an understanding of the transition from a traditional Inuit lifestyle to a modernized lifestyle as marked by precariousness and vulnerability.16 The accounts of Europeans involved in the early colonial project (missionaries and trade ofﬁcials) are supplemented by renderings of traditional tales and ethnographic observations gathered during expeditions or time spent in the (newly) colonized areas in 78 5 DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY

Greenland and elsewhere in the circumpolar region. Thus, the time-traveling aspect already described as important in connection with the formation of a speciﬁc ethnographic discourse is evident in Lynge’s accounts.

Social change has taken place over a longer period in Greenland, but its manifestations have been very different in different areas. The colonization of East Greenland 100 years ago and of Thule 15 years later provide a unique opportunity to gain an impression both of society before colonization and of the manner in which the new ways affected the community.17

Based on the knowledge partly gained through observation of the marginal spaces accessible through the anthropological time-portals, Lynge sees the mental disturbances as indicative of problems arising in connection with the social transition to a modernized lifestyle.18 The pibloktoq (Arctic hysteria) phenomenon was ﬁrst described by participants in Robert Peary’s endeavors to reach the North Pole. In Peary’s description, the disturbance was characterized by hysterical behavior:

The patient, usually a woman, begins to scream and tear off and destroy her clothing. If on the ship, she will walk up and down the deck, screaming and gesticulating, and generally in a state of nudity, though the thermometer may be in the minus forties. As the intensity of the attack increases, she will sometimes leap over the rail upon the ice, running perhaps half a mile.19

Consistent with prevailing scientific ideas of his time, Peary saw the phenomenon as indicative of what he perceived to be the primitiveness of the polar Eskimos. The American psychiatrist A. A. Brill placed the cause of the disturbance, close to the contemporary understanding of the western hysteria, as unreciprocated love and affection.20 The understanding of the polar Eskimo’s inferiority in regards to civilization, culture or race, however, framed most of the early scientific investigations of the phenomenon.21 For Lynge, however, the pibloktoq-behavior offered a way to act out frustration in a manner which went beyond the narrow confines of the normatively acceptable, without facing the risk of being expelled from the community.22 She places it in the light of her observations on the importance of the traditional way of resolving conflict and tensions without jeopardizing the harmony of the small and closely knit communities.23 NANGIARNEQ: DIZZINESS AND ANXIETY IN A KAYAK 79

Quoting various older definitions, the Danish doctor Alfred Bertelsen linked the second phenomenon, qivittoq (the mountain wanderer), primarily to the anxiety he found to characterize the Eskimo mentality.24 The mountain wanderer personifies an individual who is outside of the community, often driven to social isolation by shame and embarrassment caused by nonfulfillment of hopes or expectations. Accordingly, the qivittoq phenomenon has often been depicted in novels and movies as emblematic of the Greenlandic culture where a fear of exclusion is inextricably linked to the need for belonging to a community. Both pibloktoq and qivittoq have been described by Lynge as mental disturbances according to prevailing understandings, and are marked by the notion that Greenlandic culture and individuals are vulnerable to changes in their social world. The vulnerability of the colonized helped underpin the western bourgeois self-identification and position. At the same time, the trope of Greenlandic vulnerability fit the ethnographic discourse’s depiction of a precarious traditional culture in need of protection when undergoing the dangerous transition from a traditional lifestyle to a western lifestyle.

NANGIARNEQ:DIZZINESS AND ANXIETY IN A KAYAK In 1864, the Danish doctor C. Lange made the first medical record of a peculiar condition, which he entitled “dizziness in kayak.”25 It was only mentioned in passing as one of several mental diseases among the indigenous Greenlandic population; however, a few years later the phenomenon was considered a fatal national disease.26 In the medical literature the symptoms of the condition have been described in numerous ways. Observers agreed that kayak fear is (or was) a condition that afflicted kayakers on the open sea, often in dead calm water. The kayaker would feel a loss of direction and would often become overwhelmed by dizziness and experience anxiety attacks or hallucinations during which the kayak appeared to alter shape, growing in length or becoming narrower, and become less stable in the water. More than a few of the relatively numerous deaths by drowning in Greenland during this period were attributed to this condition. Those lucky enough to get to land or helped by fellow kayakers on the sea could rarely put the experience totally behind them. Sufferers would often find themselves completely unable to re-enter a kayak.27 80 5 DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY

The lifespan of the diagnosis was more or less conﬁned to the period dating between 1864 and 1940. During this time, understanding of the diagnosis altered radically from an understanding of the condition as caused by excessive intake of coffee or tobacco, to a localized (colonial) version of the widespread neurasthenia diagnosis.28 Previous investigations into kayak fear include the work of Danish ethnographer, K. G. Hansen, who described the condition from an historical perspective.29 Hansen proposes to have found contemporary cases of the disorder and concludes that the traditional Greenlandic/Inuit understanding of kayak fear—linking the phenomenon to shamanistic beliefs—has never been acknowledged by western medicine.30 Hansen’s analysis is based on the study of the cause of the phenomenon and he calls for greater recognition by western doctors of local Greenlandic medical traditions.31

FIRST THEORIES:THE GREENLANDERS’ CONSUMPTION OF COFFEE AND TOBACCO When Dr. C. Lange first mentioned kayak dizziness in 1864, he linked it to the Greenlandic hunters’ excessive consumption of coffee.32 The understanding was thus construed on a theory of stimulant abuse leading to a toxicological explanation, and this proved to be a very resilient line of thinking. In 1882, V. Haven reiterated the idea of excessive consumption as the root cause of the condition, but substituted coffee with tobacco, claiming that “the strong Dutch tobacco seems to be the cause of the dizziness that robs many Greenlanders of their ability to use the Kayak.”33 This belief that kayak dizziness was a result of the Greenlanders’ excessive consumption of coffee or tobacco appears to be closely related to the colonial administration’s attempts to enforce the barriers between Greenlandic and western culture. The idea that the Greenlanders’ excessive consumption made them ill was aligned with the notion of a vulnerable Greenlandic population in need of guidance, dosage, and protection in their contact with western culture. According to this line of thinking, access to luxury articles such as coffee and tobacco required a self-restraint that the Greenlanders did not possess. In 1900, the tobacco theory gained a new advocate in the Danish doctor, Gustav Meldorf, who practiced medicine in Greenland between 1897 and 1903 and established himself as an eager participant in debates on Greenland.34 In his article, “On kayak-dizziness and its FIRST THEORIES: THE GREENLANDERS’ CONSUMPTION ... 81 relation to the use of stimulants,” Meldorf argued against the coffee theory and for a ‘new’ neurasthenia understanding of the condition propounded by the Danish psychiatrist Pontoppidan eight years earlier.35 Meldorf suggested that kayak dizziness could be the result of “degeneration of the original Eskimo population [ ...] due to the influence of European civilisation.” Meldorf’sideasreflected the pre- dominant tendency to criticize the colonial process for having corrupted the Greenlanders’ traditional culture.36 However, even though Meldorf found it likely that “individuals of such heavily mixed origin would have become less fit for kayaking and hunting than their ancestors, who through many generations have known how to move in the kayak [ ...] was to be expected,” he nevertheless maintained that the most likely cause of the disease was the Greenlandic hunters’ excessive use of tobacco. Over some five pages Meldorf details the various ways the Greenlanders used tobacco—how they smoked it, chewed it, shared it, etc.37 A strong believer in the excessive consumption explanation, he proposed a prophylactic intervention to reduce or completely prohibit the Greenlanders’ use of tobacco. As he noted: “The Greenlanders are in general much too fatalistic and too weak of character to subject themselves to such a loss in order to gain even guaranteed advantages.”38 The medical literature contains considerable evidence and “findings” characterizing the Greenlander as lacking self-control. Not unsurprisingly, this echoed the bourgeois reaction in major western cities to the growing working-class populations where observers expressed concern over the lack of moderation and self-control among the lower classes.39 It also exemplified the muddy uses of western thinking trends to diagnose corruptive social ills in colonial settings. Once again, power was constructed using the body as a battleground for asserting superiority. Colonial projects were often officially based on the ideal of bringing the light of civilization to dark and primitive places; in reality, however, the projects were often characterized by an ambiguous skepticism toward the introduction of a western lifestyle. Notwithstanding the multifaceted reasons behind these ambiguities, it is worthwhile to note that these ambiguities can be viewed as related to the widespread fin-de-siècle pessi- mism which at times idealized “un-civilized” peoples as noble natives uncorrupted by the destructive influence of civilization. This tendency was indeed strong in Greenland in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. 82 5 DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY

NEURASTHENIA In 1892, the noted Danish psychiatrist, Knud Pontoppidan, suggested that kayak fear was to be understood as a form of agoraphobia.40 Despite the fact that he had no first-hand experience with the phenomenon, Pontoppidan further developed his understanding of kayak fear as a form of phobia in an article published in 1901.41 Here Pontoppidan enthusias- tically rejected Meldorf’s conclusions about the use of tobacco; moreover, he strongly encouraged doctors in Greenland to study the condition. When the aforementioned Dr. Bertelsen became a member of an expedition in 1902 aiming to describe the culture and conditions in Western Greenland, Pontoppidan asked Bertelsen to investigate kayak dizziness. Bertelsen later returned to practice medicine in Greenland for several extended periods, and throughout his career he published extensively on health and other issues related to Greenland. Bertelsen became one of the most prominent representatives of western medicine in Greenland and a strong advocate of the neurasthenic understanding of the condition.42 Despite George Miller Beard’s presentation of neurasthenia as an American disease, in his widely acclaimed American nervousness: its causes and consequences (1881), the diagnosis was quickly disseminated to many European countries.43 Historical investigations reveal that the diagnosis was characterized by a remarkable flexibility. As stated by Gijswijt-Hofstra, there is “every reason to speak of cultures of neurasthenia in the plural,” since differences in the appropriation of the diagnosis ‘manifested themselves through the years and between regions or even countries, but also along the lines of class, gender, age, and religion’.44 Brad Campbell has recently proposed that neurasthenia, besides being a diagnosis, was a discourse of American identity and, furthermore, partly constitutive of American modernism.45 The discourse of neurasthenia rested on the perceived identity of neurasthenic patients as members of the privileged classes. As Campbell writes, Beard “found a way, through neurasthenia, to lend scientific credence to and provide a biological basis for the social position and political ideologies of the white American upper classes.”46 In American nervousness, neurasthenia was considered a hallmark of civilization and advancement for the nation, the race, and the classes. The class and race-related aspects of the neurasthenia diagnosis are also evident in the medical description of neurasthenia specific to tropical places. In 1905, the American doctor, Major Charles Woodruff conceptualized tropical neurasthenia in The effects of tropical light on white men.47 ARCTIC NEURASTHENIA 83

Woodruff found the phenomenon among American colonizers in the Philippines. The concept of tropical neurasthenia dovetailed neatly with entrenched beliefs about the medical problems related to the acclimatiza- tion of Europeans in a tropical climate, and the concept of tropical neurasthenia was accordingly welcomed by the international medical community.

ARCTIC NEURASTHENIA Beard’smainargument—and the one adopted by Pontoppidan—was that neurasthenia was primarily caused by modern life in urban cities where excessive demands were made on the brain, the digestive organs, and the reproductive system. As Pontoppidan stated (with reference to Beard):

The greater haste that nowadays has entered our existence, the unrest and hurry that mark all relations, are an expression of an intensiﬁed cerebral activity; but the greater the demands on the nervous system, the more easily are its powers exhausted, and the quicker its resistance will fail. The greater the efforts civilisation in our century has cost, and the greater the ferocity of working towards the progress and well-being of our generations, the more our nervous constitution has been weakened.48

Civilization as a social and cultural phenomenon thus sat at the center of this explanation. When kayak fear became a sign of neurasthenia, the focus shifted from the Greenlanders’ consumption of coffee and tobacco toward the conceptualization of the phenomenon as a local expression of neurasthenia, an arguably “universal” disease. Neurasthenia in Greenland was then viewed as a result of pressures on the nervous system, more or less similar to the pressures that were believed to cause the disorder in western metropolises. The connection with the kayak was viewed to be the result of the local context in which the neurasthenia appeared. Because Pontoppidan, and later Bertelsen had argued against coffee and tobacco as the cause of the disorder, this aspect of the Greenlanders’ consumption was played down. Pontoppidan had only second-hand experience of the disease. However, when his neurasthenia theory was adopted by Bertelsen, his influence widened. Bertelsen firmly believed that most of the Greenlandic hunters experiencing kayak fear were in fact neurasthenics; 84 5 DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY kayak fear was, in this understanding, a specific phobia symptomatic of the patient’s neurasthenia.49 This categorizing of kayak fear as a symp- tom of neurasthenia did not, however, correlate well with the aforementioned links to the formation and maintenance of class, race, and culture identities. How could a syndrome associated with civilized life appear among primitive, colonized people? Aware of this paradox, Bertelsen asserted:

It has perhaps surprised some that one can ﬁnd such great numbers of neurasthenics among primitive people as I have mentioned here. This disease is by many perceived as closely connected to the present culture, “as one of the modern societies’ biggest curses”. Indeed, in 1868 Beard even deﬁned it as a particular American disease.50

Bertelsen therefore proposed a reversed relationship between culture and human mental development. It was not too much advanced culture that caused the diseases of the nervous system but instead a lack of culture. Referring to the work of C. Lange, Bertelsen argued that:

Individuals, as well as entire peoples are more affected, the more subjected they are and the lower cultural level they stand on. With increased culture comes the all-dominating calm of intellectual life, with which one is capable of carrying vicissitudes that would bring the uncivilised to uncontrollable emotional outbursts.51

What at ﬁrst glance appears as a complete reversal of the logic behind the neurasthenia diagnosis is perhaps less so when the ﬂexible nature, and diverse history, of the diagnosis are considered more closely. There seems to be a connection between the way in which the neurasthenia diagnosis became conceptualized in the Greenlandic context and the way in which it was articulated in relation to gender and class in the western context. According to Warwick Anderson, the general picture was that whereas “men became neurasthenic from overwork, competition, and economic acquisitiveness; women succumbed through dissipating their more limited neural vitality in study or excessive socializing.”52 This allowed the diagnosis to restore the respectability of the male sufferers, by appearing as a sign of manly ambition while simultaneously signaling the mental limitations of women. NEURASTHENIA ACROSS METROPOLE AND COLONY ... 85

NEURASTHENIA ACROSS METROPOLE AND COLONY:CLASS, GENDER, AND THE PRIMITIVE The links between the neurasthenia diagnosis and the (ongoing process of establishing) various identities in the city is evident in the Danish case. In his article on neurasthenia of 1886, Pontoppidan stated that unfortunately many middle-class women in Copenhagen would break down under the pressure of complicated life in the capital. Previously, according to Pontoppidan, not much was asked of a good wife: she should basically give birth to her husband’s children. Now, however, the complicated life in the city demanded women’s involvement in a variety of activities and, furthermore, the women were forced to share the practical concerns of their husbands. As Pontoppidan wrote, the complicated life in the capital would therefore “inevitably exceed her resources.”53 The class aspect is as clear as the gender aspect in the Pontoppidan text, where he connects the occurrence of neurasthenia with the fact that members of the middle class had adopted the diet of the upper classes without being able to enjoy this lifestyle in accordance with the original intention. This observation bears a certain resemblance to the excessive-consumption understanding of kayak fear presented above. In both cases, the adoption of the luxurious lifestyle by other classes or races/cultures is associated with danger. What is significant, in relation to the analysis of kayak fear as neurasthenia, is that the neurasthenia diagnosis is articulated with such flexibility. The condition could function as the ambiguous sign of the civilizational advance of western culture, and could participate in the formation of identities by ascribing varying degrees of ability to cope with this complexity to various societal groups. The condition’saffiliations with class appear to have varied between countries. Generally, neurasthenia in England was associated with the upper class, whereas in Germany it was associated with both the middle and upper class. Similarly, in Denmark, according to Pontoppidan, mainly members of the middle class and upper class suffered from neurasthenia, not the lower (or higher) classes.54 In accordance with the general scientific trend in the latter part of the nineteenth century, ideas on degeneration and heredity issues were tied to the neurasthenia diagnosis especially in European contexts. Pontoppidan’s article clearly stated that the main cause of nervous disorders was heredity. At that time, acquired characteristics were thought to be inherited. The confusing and restless modern city life of an individual could lead to neurasthenia, or related disorders; this individual could then pass a nervous disposition on 86 5 DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY to his or her offspring. The children of the nervous parent(s) would then have a low tolerance to the unrest and haste of modern life and accordingly be more susceptible to neurasthenia. What is interesting to note is how the evolution of the diagnosis and its convenient flexibility could be used indirectly to further colonial policy. Pontoppidan regretfully concluded that his time had not yet “matured enough” to acknowledge the radical measures required if one was to battle the pervasive degeneration.55 It was more feasible, Pontoppidan argued, to target the upbringing of children. According to Pontoppidan, the children of the capital were introduced to amusements prematurely. This led children to develop a taste for enjoyment, and have their sensuality aroused at an inappropriately young age. Related to this observation is Pontoppidan’s warning against introducing too much pressure on the children’s immature mental capacity. He argued against over-cultivation of certain mental functions at the expense of others, an unnaturally forced mental exercise coupled with the neglect of consideration for the physical development. Interestingly Pontoppidan’s concerns about introducing children prematurely to complicated activities resonated remarkably well with the ideas about primitive people and mental problems put forward by Lange and Bertelsen. It seems the medical discourse of kayak fear drew on a deep- rooted grammar of colonialism, in which members of a colonized population were viewed as children in need of western/adult guidance during their (never completed) journey toward civilized adulthood. According to this understanding, children (the colonized as children as well as western children) should not be bothered with complicated matters prematurely. This corresponds well with Dane Kennedy’s observation on tropical neurasthenia as a useful tool in the intersection between the domains of medical science and colonial power.56 However, from a wider perspective, the ability of the neurasthenia diagnosis to ascribe capacities to certain societal groups—to Greenlanders in the colony and to various groups in Copenhagen—is also in accordance with Anna Crozier’s conclusions on the strong links between the colonial model of neurasthenia and the home model of neurasthenia.57 The popularity of the neurasthenia diagnosis declined in the period following the First World War. The preeminent German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin’s incorporation of neurasthenia into the wider concept of psychosis in 1910 implied a major shift in the understanding of neurasthenia. In 1904, Kraepelin traveled to Java with the aim of investigating how mental illnesses, specifically schizophrenia, RACE, MIND, AND THE COMPLEXITIES OF MODERN LIFE 87 manifested itself among the European as well as the native population.58 He concluded that some of the Javanese patients were indeed suffering from schizophrenia. However, the disease did not necessarily manifest itself with the symptoms known in the West. Kraepelin explained this deviation by reference to what he considered the less-developed nature of the Javanese population. Thus, viewed in a wider context, Pontoppidan’s and Bertelsen’s efforts to understand kayak fear as a localized manifestation of neurasthenia seem related to an overarching debate on the question of universality of psychiatric disease. As a rare articulation of neurasthenia within a colonized population, the case of kayak fear as neurasthenia contributes to the rich historiography of the diagnosis. The Arctic version of neurasthenia later came to depend more explicitly on discourses of race. To paraphrase Gijswijt-Hofstra, Arctic neurasthenia may be viewed as a specific colonial culture of neurasthenia deeply embedded in the style of hierarchized thinking that characterized the colonial settings.

RACE,MIND, AND THE COMPLEXITIES OF MODERN LIFE In the period from the publication of Bertelsen’s comprehensive study of kayak fear in 1905 through the First World War and until the late 1930s, medical interest in kayak fear seemed to decline, much in line with the broader currents in international medical research into neurasthenia described above. In the same period there was, however, a noticeable increase in medico-anthropological studies of the Greenlanders’ racial constitution. Despite declining attention, the neurasthenia diagnosis did not die out in Greenland. Rather, it appears that the intensified scientific discourses on the racial constitution of Greenlanders became more fundamentally linked to the understanding of kayak fear as Arctic neurasthenia. From the onset, Bertelsen conceptualized kayak fear in relation to race. In an extensive questionnaire about kayak fear, which Bertelsen sent out to Danish doctors and officials in Greenland, investigators were asked to categorize patients according to whether or not they had any “Danish blood.”59 The Danish scientific community was receptive to broader anthropological thinking in Europe and the USA. Already in 1893, it had become accepted as scientific fact that the population of Greenland belonged to a particular Eskimo race. Danish doctor Erik Bay-Schmidt published his “race-biological investigations” between 1926 and 1930. Here he distinguished between an Eskimo race and a mixed-race in 88 5 DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY

Greenland, and, furthermore, claimed that he was able to determine the degree of civilization of the Eskimos from blood analyses. Accordingly, all of the 60 published patient histories stemming from the survey place each patient in one of two racial categories, pure (Eskimo) or mixed (i.e. with European blood).60 Dividing the severity of the afflic- tion into three stages (severe, moderate and mild) and dividing the patient population into two racial categories, pure and mixed, enabled Bertelsen to confirm his hypothesis: the data showed that those of ‘pure’ Eskimo blood were more severely afflicted than those who were of mixed blood. In a later publication he elaborated on the reasons for this:

Since the prevalence of reactions, such as those mentioned above, are probably much rarer in Greenland now than earlier, it is natural to assume that it is due to the culture achieved through colonization. However, personally I would emphasize the mixing of the races: the Aryan individual generally carries with ease vicissitudes that would bring the Eskimo to uncontrollable reactions. Varying degrees of this self-control are found in the Aryan-Eskimo offspring.61

Bertelsen’s hypothesis on the importance of the racial component in the understanding of kayak fear is related to the overarching colonial idea of a certain sensibility among the uncivilized, which is detectable already in eighteenth-century Greenland. However, the hypothesis was also related to the growing scientific interest in the human races. The theory of cultural and biological stratification was adopted by Bertelsen in his racial understanding of kayak fear. Bertelsen based this reading of the condition on the concept of a cultural hierarchy following perceived racial lines, i.e. a biologically determined cultural hierarchy, which he believed influenced the ability to resist the disease. For Bertelsen, the concept of race became central to understanding kayak fear. During this period, the disease was understood to be a psychiatric condition, and therefore the link between the race and the psyche had to be investigated. Bertelsen took this topic up in 1940 and argued that:

Just as the Eskimo race presents several conspicuous somatic deviations (as for example in the shape of the cranium, blood type groups, skin pigmenta- tion, etc.), it [the race] also leaves its particular mark on several elements of the psyche.62 RACE, MIND, AND THE COMPLEXITIES OF MODERN LIFE 89

Among these marks on the psyche was a racially determined primitiveness in the Eskimo brain which Bertelsen believed created “characteristics, which in the Aryan race are seen as characteristics of different types of psychopaths.” And it was also this primitiveness that underlaid the kayak fear disease.

The common prevalence of kayak fear among Greenlandic men seems to me to point to a certain primitiveness in the reactions of the Eskimo brain: in the Aryan race such types of anxiety as being afraid of the dark (pavor nocturnes) or afraid of thunder (astraphobi) are closely connected to the childhood years and the female gender.63

In other words, the male Eskimo brain was as primitive as that of the Aryan child or female. This theory coincided well with the conclusions of some Danish anthropologists’ views on the Eskimos’ psychical development. The Danish doctor and anthropologist Søren Hansen had already published an article in 1893, in which he claimed to demonstrate that by measuring craniums and the proportions between different limbs, that the Eskimo race had several childish features and for this reason was to be considered physically less developed than other races. These results were also in line with the Freudian understanding of the similarities between the child, the primitive, and the neurotic, mirroring the idea that the psychical development from childhood to adulthood reﬂected the successive stages in the evolution of culture or civilization. Bertelsen’s direct linking of the Greenlanders’ primitiveness with children and women in the “Aryan race” resonates well with the observation that the diagnosis was used to ascribe capabilities to various groups. The explicit attention to the concept of race buttressed the hierarchized thinking already implicit in the neurasthenia diagnosis. The disorder could be attributed to the pace and the complexities of civilized life, and thus signal a civilized society. However, the various groups’ capacity to cope with the challenges of civilization was determined by their position in a developmental hierarchy—from this viewpoint, an individual with limited mental capacity could handle only a very small degree of complexity before being affected. It was therefore pertinent to avoid exposing women, children, and primitive people to a degree of complexity that exceeded their capacities. In one of the rare previous historiographical observations of neurasthenia among a colonized population, Warwick Anderson refers to the discussion by W. E. Musgrave, 90 5 DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY

Director of the Philippine General Hospital, on the appearance of neurasthenia among the more progressive Filipinos. Musgrave concluded that the normal stresses of western civilization exceeded the Filipinos’ racial competencies. In the words of Warwick Anderson, Musgrave meant that the local race was simply “happier in a state of nature.”64 The shift to an explicit focus on race in Bertelsen’s thinking on kayak fear meant a signiﬁcant change in terms of potential prophylactic strategies. In Bertelsen’s 1905 article on kayak fear, he concluded that the phenomenon could be countered by promoting kayak skills among the population. This conclusion was in line with the understanding that acquired characteristics were hereditary: training could make the Greenlanders more proﬁcient kayakers and these characteristics would then be inherited by the next generation. In this way the nervous inclination toward phobia in connection with kayaking could be combated. In contrast, Bertelsen’s text from 1940, in which the issue of the Greenlanders’ race took center-stage, proposed no prophylactic strategy against kayak fear—the Greenlanders were simply racially disposed toward phobia. The intermixture of races was, consequently, the only apparent remedy since the Aryan-Eskimo offspring, according to Bertelsen, were generally less prone to nervous reactions. In spite of their differences, the varying diagnoses of pibloqtoq (Arctic hysteria), qivittoq (the mountain wanderer) and careening understanding of nangiarneq all shared one element: a desire on the part of the colonialists to perpetuate an idea of Greenlandic weakness or vulnerability distinct from that of their colonizer. Sometimes confused, sometimes well-meaning, sometimes sharing global similarities with other colonizers’ views of the “inferior,” these diagnoses perpetuated the power imbalance. Cultural vulnerability has been used to great effect to justify colonial projects as well as politics of difference. The civilizational mission often evoked in colonial projects was often accompanied by the notion that colonized people were not yet ready for the full effect of the western world.65

NOTES 1. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967); Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1968). 2. Fanon, Black Skin. 3. Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 8. NOTES 91

4. David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1993), 7–8. 5. Arnold, Colonizing the Body,8. 6. Arnold, Colonizing the Body,8. 7. Arnold, Colonizing the Body, 9. Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 127, takes a similar interest in the role of colonial medicine in India. However, Prakash importantly notes that the colonial situation prevented the British from governing the Indians as modern subjects (Prakash, Another Reason, 143.). The colonial setting was, according to Prakash, characterized by the “unavailability of capillary forms of power,” and the British were obliged to introduce sanitary regulations, campaigns, and western medical therapeutics and institutions as acts of colonial rule (Prakash, Another Reason, 127). For Prakash, the specific nature of colonial governance in India provided the colonial elite with an opportunity to establish contending strategies (Prakash, Another Reason, 127). The way in which the field of medicine was a site for power as well as resistance has, thus, been a recurrent theme within the field. 8. Warwick Anderson, Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 106. 9. Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 117. 10. Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture, 116. 11. See, for example, Alfred Bertelsen, “Om fødslerne i Grønland og de seksuelle forhold sammesteds,” Særtryk af Bibliotek for Læger, VII række (1907); Alfred Bertelsen, “Ældre og nyere Tids Fødselshjælp i Grønland,” Tidsskrift for Jordemødre 11, 21 (1910); Alfred Bertelsen, “Om Dødeligheden i Grønland og om nogle Dødsaarsagerne sammesteds,” Bibliotek for læger 102 (1910); Gustav Meldorf, “Fra en Vaccinationsrejse i Egnen omkring Kap Farvel i 1900,” Meddelelser om Grønland 25 (1902); Gustav Meldorf, ”Tubekulosens Udbredelse i Grønland,” Meddelelser om Grønland 26 (1903); Gustav Meldorf, “Sociale og hygiejniske Forhold i Grønland,” Bibliotek for Læger 8, 5 (1904); Gustav Meldorf, “Klimaets Indflydelse paa Sundhedsforholdene m. m. i Grønland,” De danske Atlanterhavsøer vol. 3 (København, 1904–1906); Gustav Meldorf, “Den grønlandske Befolknings Huse og deres Udvikling,” Grønlandske Selskabs Aarskrift (1909). 12. The number of doctors grew: in 1905–1906 to five and in 1926 to seven. Mette Rønsager, Udviklingen i Grønlændernes sundheds- og sygdomsopfattelse i Vestgrønland som følge af mødet med det vestlige sundhedsvæsen i perioden ca. 1800 til ca. 1930, med læge Alfred Bertelsen som hovedkilde 92 5 DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY

(København: Institut for Eskimologi, Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet, 2001). 13. The field of historical research into medicine in Greenland is not over- whelmingly large. Recent research includes eskimologist Mette Rønsager’s work on the medical profession in Greenland and her extensive investigation into midwifery in Greenland in the period. Rønsager concludes that midwives embodied a significant position as agents of western medical knowledge and civilization that exceeded the field of (western) midwifery in several ways. As the sole representative of the medical system in many isolated communities, Greenlandic midwives—positioned as they were between Greenlandic tradition and western culture—became brokers between the colonial apparatus and the colonized population. Mette Rønsager, Imellem læger. og landsmænd. Den vestgrønlandske jordemoderinstitution 1820–1920 (Ph.D. dissertation, Copenhagen: Eskimology and Arctic Studies/Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, 2006), 207–210. 14. Sniff Andersen Nexø, “Undesired Contacts. The Troubled Boundaries of Colonial Bodies in Greenland,” Ethnologia Scandinavica 42 (2012). 15. Inge Lynge, “Mental Disorders in Greenland. Past and Present,” Meddelelser om Grønland 21 (1997). 16. Lynge, “Mental Disorders in Greenland,” 17–20. 17. Lynge, “Mental Disorders in Greenland,” 21. 18. Lynge, “Mental Disorders in Greenland,” 20–22. 19. R. E. Peary, The North Pole. Its Discovery in 1909 Under the Auspices of the Peary Arctic Club (New York: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1910). 20. A. A. Brill, “Piblockto or Hysteria Among Peary’s Eskimos,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 40 (1913). 21. Lyle Dick “‘Pibloktoq’ (Arctic Hysteria): A Construction of European-Inuit Relations?” Arctic Anthropology 32, 2 (1995). 22. Lynge, “Mental Disorders in Greenland,” 18. 23. Lynge, “Mental Disorders in Greenland,” 18. 24. Alfred Bertelsen, “Grønlands Medicinsk Statistik og Nosografi, III Det sædvanlige grønlandske sygdomsbillede,” Meddelelser om Grønland 117, 2 (1940), 177–180. 25. Carl Lange, “Bemærkninger om Grønlands Sygdomsforhold,” Bibliotek for Læger, Række: 8 (1864): 53–54. 26. Alfred Bertelsen, “Neuro-patologiske Meddelelser fra Grønland,” Bibliotek for Læger 8, 6 (1905). 27. Bertelsen, “Neuro-patologiske,” 121–122. 28. Ivan Lind Christensen and Søren Rud, “Arctic Neurasthenia—The Case of Greenlandic Kayak Fear 1864–1940,” Social History of Medicine (2013). NOTES 93

29. Klaus Georg Hansen, “Kajaksvimmelhed—Begrebshistoriske reﬂeksioner over en særlig grønlandsk lidelse,” Grønlandsk kultur- og samfundsforskning (1994). 30. Hansen, “Kajaksvimmelhed,” 56–60. 31. Hansen, “Kajaksvimmelhed,” 59–60. 32. Lange, “Bemærkninger om.” 33. V. Haven, “Nosograﬁske Bemærkninger om Grønland,” Ugeskrift for Læger 4, 13 (1882): 190. 34. Gustav Meldorf, “Om Kajaksvimmelheden i Grønland og dens Forhold til Brugen af Nydelsesmidler,” Bibliotek for Læger 8, 1 (1900). 35. Meldorf, “Om Kajaksvimmelheden.” 36. Meldorf, “Om Kajaksvimmelheden.” 37. Meldorf, “Om Kajaksvimmelheden,” 525–527. 38. Meldorf, “Om Kajaksvimmelheden,” 537–538. 39. See, for example, Wilhelm Munck, Om de fattiges vilkaar paa Christianhavn (Kjøbenhavn: Den Gyldendalske Boghandel (F. Hegel), 1867); J. C. Holck, Om Godgjørenhed og frivilligt Fattigvæsen (Kjøbenhavn: V. Thanning & Appel, 1869). 40. Knud Pontoppidan, Psychiatriske forelæsninger og studier (Th. Lind, 1892). 41. Knud Pontoppidan, “Om den grønlandske Kajaksvimmelhed,” Bibliotek for Læger 8 (1901). 42. Bertelsen, “Neuro-patologiske.” 43. Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Roy Porter, eds., Cultures of Neurasthenia from Beard to the First World War (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001). 44. Gijswijt-Hofstra and Porter, Cultures of Neurasthenia,2. 45. Brad Campbell, “The Making of ‘American’: Race and Nation in Neurasthenic Discourse,” History of Psychiatry 18, 2 (2007). 46. Campbell, “The Making of,” 162. 47. Charles E. Woodroff, The Effects of Tropical Light on White Men (New York/London: Rebman, 1905). 48. Knud Pontoppidan, “Neurasthenien: bidrag til skildringen af vor tids ner- vositet” (T. H. Lind, 1886), 1. 49. Bertelsen, “Neuro-patologiske.” 50. Bertelsen, “Neuro-patologiske,” 325. 51. Bertelsen, “Neuro-patologiske,” 326. 52. Warwick Anderson, “The Trespass speaks: White Masculinity and colonial breakdown.” The American Historical Review 102, 5 (1997), 1344. 53. Pontoppidan, “Neurasthenien,” 7. 54. Pontoppidan, “Neurasthenien,” 1–2. 55. Pontoppidan, “Neurasthenien,” 6. 56. Dane Kennedy has proposed that the diagnosis proved to be a useful tool in the intersection between the domains of medical science and colonial power: 94 5 DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY

first, it supported the doctors’ claim to expertise by providing them, and the patients, with an explanation for various symptoms; second, it gave scientific credibility to established understandings of the fundamental difference between colonizers and colonized and, finally, it lifted the phenomenon from the individual level to the societal level—thereby relieving the individual sufferer of responsibility. “Diagnosing the Colonial Dilemma: Tropical Neurasthenia and the Alienated Briton,” in Durba Ghosh and Dane Kennedy, eds., Decentring Empire (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006). 57. Recently Anna Crozier, focusing on British East Africa, has argued that even though tropical neurasthenia was closely linked to colonial hierarchies, it had more similarities with the metropolitan model of neurasthenia than both Anderson’s and Kennedy’s accounts allow for. Furthermore, Crozier proposes that the diagnosis, in the case of British East Africa, was utilized as a powerful management tool by the colonial administration. Screening for signs of neurasthenia in the hiring process of young men as colonial carriers gave the administration officers a tool that secured selection of the fit and ardent. Furthermore, the label of tropical neurasthenia provided the authorities with a medical reason to send unwanted personnel home. Anna Crozier, “What Was Tropical About Tropical Neurasthenia? The Utility of the Diagnosis in the Management of British East Africa,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 64, 4 (2009). 58. Nathan Porath, “The Naturalization of Psychiatry in Indonesia and Its Interaction with Indigenous Therapeutics,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 164, 4 (2008). 59. Arktisk Institut, Copenhagen, Arkivfond A 308, item no. 1. 60. Bertelsen, “Neuro-patologiske Meddelelser.” 61. Bertelsen, “Grønlands Medicinsk Statistik,” 180. 62. Bertelsen, “Grønlands Medicinsk Statistik,” 176. 63. Bertelsen, “Grønlands Medicinsk Statistik,” 186. 64. Anderson, “The trespass speaks,” 1368. 65. Dipesh Chakrabarty has coined this situation, by suggesting that colonized and former colonized people have been assigned a place in the imaginary waiting room of history—while the (former) colonizers remain reluctant to make any movement toward leveling out the perceived cultural differences. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 8. CHAPTER 6

Shame and Crime: The Effects and Afterlife of Tradition

Immediately before Greenland’s status as a colony was amended, work was carried out by a government commission, namely “the Juridical Expedition to Greenland.” Taking place between 1948 and 1949, it drew heavily on colonial ideas about Greenlandic culture. Heavily informed by ideas about cultural specificity, Greenland’s penal system had resisted modernization for various reasons not least an overall reluctance on the part of Danish colonizers to do so. What follows is an examination of the evolution of the system and various episodes of conflict that took place between early Greenlandic author Peter Gundel and “the law.” His documentation of events gives the reader a glimpse into the penal system from a unique perspective. Today in Greenland where the first actual prison is scheduled to open in 2018, the penal system is still influenced by colonial specificity as well as its modus operandi which was a source of aggravation for Gundel.

LAW AND ORDER IN GREENLAND:ACULTURE-BASED PENAL SYSTEM? Law and order in colonial settings are often associated with brutality and lack of respect for local tradition and customary procedures. In contrast, the colonial administrators’ reluctance to adopt excessive interference, described in the preceding chapters, meant that the

© The Author(s) 2017 95 S. Rud, Colonialism in Greenland, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46158-8_6 96 6 SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION practices of law and order during the colonial project in Greenland were quite lenient and apparently complied with “local tradition.” The first Greenlandic penal code, introduced by the Danish authorities in 1954 shortly after the amendment of the colonial status, was, in con- formity with the prevailing logic of cultural preservation, explicitly built on Greenlandic traditions. Accordingly, scholars have deemed this 1954 penal code to be the first “culturally adjusted” penal code in the world. To date, however, historians have rarely investigated the handling of law and order during the colonial period, and accordingly the assumed trajectory of the Greenlandic sociology of law has suffered from a lack of historical analysis. Research on traditional Greenlandic legal customs has included that done by Hanne Petersen1 as well as Finn Breinholt Larsen, the latter providing further analysis in which he proposes that Verner Goldschmidt, the main author of the penal code implemented in 1954 (and a participant in the preceding juridical expedition), misinterpreted the lack of penal institutions (specifically prisons) in Greenland.2 Goldschmidt (mis)took the absence of these institutions as evidence of how peacefully the Greenlanders traditionally resolved conflicts, thereby to some degree denying the influence of the colonial process.3 Henrik Garlik Jensen offers a similar critique when he observes that it seems as if “the Danish authors of the Criminal Code have been more Greenlandic- minded and culture-oriented than the Greenlanders themselves.”4 This chapter expands these claims with an historical analysis of the material relating to law and order in Greenland in the period preceding the implementation of the penal code in 1954. What follows is an investigation of how law and order were handled in the Danish colonies in Greenland and the argument that what appeared to be Greenlandic tradition was in fact the outcome of a complex interplay between colonial strategy and local reception. What lies beneath is the close entanglement of ethnographic knowledge and colonial governance. The internal administrative logic of preserving “traditional” Greenlandic culture was indeed an essential element informing governance in colonial Greenland. Given the significant emphasis on culture preservation, the specific version of colonial governance that developed in Greenland was characterized by a limited degree of direct interference in the Greenlanders’ life-worlds, and diverged from the general picture of ruthless colonial policies. In spite of the apparently benign and subtle forms of dominance, the underlying rationality behind the colonial ETHNOGRAPHY AND PUNISHMENT IN GREENLAND 97 administration in Greenland nonetheless shared the hierarchized epistemology known from most colonial projects. Greenlandic author Peter Gundel’s frequent episodes of conflict with the law provide the framework for the analysis that follows of various procedures relating to law and order during the period ranging approximately from 1911 to 1953. Gundel’s story is certainly not a typical example of a Greenlander’s interaction with the colonial system of law and order; however, the rather exceptional story of Gundel’s offenses provides a lens through which the rationale and practices of the colonial administration become clear. The analysis illuminates the more subtle practices of colonial governance within a field normally associated with brutality and violence. Moreover, it seeks to describe how those practices worked to ascribe particular roles to the various actors involved. In other words, the following questions guide the analysis: How did the strategy of cultural preservation play out within the field of law and order? How did practices pertaining to law and order work to promote or limit certain types of behavior within certain groups? Answering these questions provides some insight into the complex interplay between ethnographic knowledge and colonial governance.

ETHNOGRAPHY AND PUNISHMENT IN GREENLAND From the early ethnographical work on Greenlandic culture conducted by missionaries and traders and later on by explorers, there was an explicit interest in traditional cultural thinking behind the handling of disputes and conflicts.5 Traditionally, Greenlanders handled disputes between individuals when inhabitants of various communities gathered at drum-singing events. Here counterparts confronted each other in a song contest. A participant in a song contest duel would mock the opponent by performing prepared or improvised songs through which the participant aimed to win the support of the audience.6 The winner of the duel was indeed the contender who gained the audience’s support. Ethnographical scholars have often taken the practice of drum-singing events as evidence of the traditional Greenlandic culture’s peaceful way of resolving conflict.7 However, the picture of the Inuit culture’s peaceful way of resolving conflict overshadowed the violent traditions of blood feuds and witch killings that were also part of that same tradition. In the prevailing understanding, an underlying premise of the drum-singing institution was the Greenlanders’ fear of 98 6 SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION public humiliation. This idea of the Greenlanders’ shamebecamea pivotal element in the administrational strategy.8 East Greenland and Thule, noted in Chapter 2 for their function as places of the precolonial past accessible through “time-portals,” were geographically significant here. In June 1948, the Danish Prime Minister Hans Hedtoft appointed “The Juridical Expedition to Greenland” (Den juridiske ekspedition til Grønland).9 The expedition was tasked with investigating the field of law and order in Greenland. It may seem odd that Denmark after more than 200 years as a colonial power in Greenland (toward the official end of the colonial relationship), suddenly felt an imperative need to investigate the organization of law and order. It is, however, more understandable in light of the mentioned reluctance toward interference into the field of law and order. Faced with the prospect of decolonization and possible related changes in the legal status of Greenlanders, the Danish government needed a clearer picture of the situation. During the first hundred years of the colonial enterprise, authorities struggled to maintain sovereignty and openly withdrew from interference in the Greenlandic life-world.10 In his historical account of the period before the nineteenth century, historian Finn Gad emphasizes the tendency to avoid interference in the Greenlanders’ way of dealing with criminal offenses.11 Aside from a few exceptions, Danish authorities refrained from handling specific cases, even when the Greenlanders committed serious crimes (as judged by European stan- dards). Accordingly, a dual legal system with parallel logic applied to different groups of residents was established in Greenland. Danish law applied to European residents and (depending on the period in question) Greenlandic employees in the Royal Greenland Trading Company; rather inconclusive legal regulations guided the remaining part of the population. No formally recognized penal code dictated specific sanctiones for specific crimes, no formal police force enforced law, and no prisons were available for convicted criminals in Greenland.12 Gundel’s legal troubles demonstrate how seemingly traditional Greenlandic practices were in fact the outcome of interactions between colonial governance and local reception. They also highlight the complex role of ethnographic knowledge in colonial and postcolonial settings. GUNDEL BEFORE THE MIXED COURTS OF JUSTICE 99

PETER GUNDEL:INTELLECTUAL AND CRIMINAL Peter Gundel was born in 1895 in the colonial district of Jakobshavn (today Ilulissat). He must have displayed a potential for learning since the local missionary sent him to Godthåb (today Nuuk), the provincial capital of South Greenland, when he was 14. Here he attended the catechist college, where talented Greenlanders were educated to become catechists (assisting the Christian missionaries) and according to the college protocol, he did quite well. When the court convicted Gundel of his first criminal offense (various minor thefts) in 1913, however, it held enormous consequences for his future. Adding to the sentence, the authorities expelled Gundel from the catechist college in Godthåb, and the scope of his career opportunities narrowed significantly. For the remainder of his life, Gundel lived primarily as a fisherman in Jakobshavn, supple- menting his income in whichever way possible. His talent and ambitions, however, did not vanish, and Gundel persisted in writing and pushing (at times successfully) for the publication of his literary work. Today we know Peter Gundel as one of the first Greenlandic authors who succeeded in this regard. In the period between 1918 and 1927, the North Greenlandic newspaper Avangnâmioq published four short stories by Gundel.13 Life as a fisherman in Jakobshavn was never easy for Gundel. He suffered from various physical shortcomings, and for substantial periods illness prevented him from earning a living. Moreover, being positioned far from the elite––Danish as well as Greenlandic––Gundel often found himself confronted with his fellow Greenlanders (or Danes), whom he found to be significantly less gifted than he was but who nevertheless held relatively high positions in colonial society. The impression one gets from reading his letters is that Gundel was gifted and resourceful, but also mischievous. More than anything, intellectually minded as he was, Gundel frequently questioned the premise for acceptable conduct in the colony. Accordingly, figures of authority seemed to find him maladjusted and a constant source of irritation.

GUNDEL BEFORE THE MIXED COURTS OF JUSTICE A mixed court of justice in Godthåb handled Gundel’s first criminal case in 1913.14 The mixed courts of justice were implemented through a colonial reform in Greenland in 1911; thus, at the time of Gundel’s first trial, these courts were a recent invention.15 The reform also entailed the replacement 100 6 SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION of important institutional units in the various colonial districts, the “local boards” (forstanderskabsråd) with smaller, more localized units: Municipal councils (kommuneråd) in which the members were (almost exclusively) Greenlandic. Furthermore, two provincial councils (the provincial council for South Greenland and the provincial council for North Greenland) were established (landsrådene for Nord- og Sydgrønland).16 The members of the municipal councils elected the members of the provincial councils to represent the areas more or less to correspond with the colonial districts. The provincial councils were political units, in the sense that they had the authority to suggest legal changes and comment upon various reforms in Greenland. Within the field of law and order, the municipal councils handled minor misconducts committed by individuals under Greenlandic law and disputes between Greenlanders; whereas the aforementioned mixed courts of justice handled criminal cases. The mixed court of justice in Godthåb that handled Gundel’s case was acting under the leadership of Ole Bendixen, the provincial governor (inspektør) of South Greenland. As prescribed in the legal statute (retsanordningen), four members of the local community, that is two Danes and two Greenlanders, functioned as members of the court.17 For his crime, the mixed court in Godthåb sentenced Gundel with a rather mild sanction. The sentence entailed forfeiture of Gundel’s privilege to receive complementary supplies at Christmas and the (Danish) King’s birthday.18 This was a widespread sanction in the period from the 1860s to approximately 1925. The forfeiture functioned as a technique of punishment in at least two ways: it was an obvious disadvantage to lose access to any supplies that could supplement a (most often) modest income and it involved an element of public shaming. The court system often used forfeiture in combination with other sanctions. Shortly after, in July 1915, Gundel found himself once more before one of the mixed courts of justice, this time in Jakobshavn, again accused of theft.19 The court members found themselves unable to prove that Gundel was guilty. However, they considered the material incriminating enough to accuse Gundel of illegal handling of other people’s belongings.20 After these charges had been handled by the mixed court of justice in Jakobshavn, Gundel found himself charged yet again —this time for a criminal offense referred to fornication with a schoolgirl and the spreading of venereal disease.21 According to the court protocol, Gundel pleaded guilty to the charge of fornication—but claimed that he was unaware of the fact that he had venereal disease (gonorrhea) at the time of intercourse. GUNDEL’S COMPLAINT 101

Accordingly, he pleaded not guilty to the charge of consciously infecting the girl with gonorrhea. The court sentenced him to a ﬁne of 25 crowns (DKK), and once again, forfeited his privilege to receive the complementary supplies at Christmas and the King’s birthday, this time for a period of three years.

GUNDEL’S COMPLAINT In connection with his venereal disease case, Gundel wrote a letter of complaint in which he directed an accusation against the members of the municipal council in Jakobshavn.22 The letter (addressed to the provincial governor) provides insight into the handling of legal matters during that period. According to Gundel’s letter, the municipal council summoned him to appear at a meeting on 27 April 1916. Here the members confronted Gundel with the accusation mentioned above. Gundel denied having any recollection of the incident. According to the letter, a member of the council—who happened to be Peter’s uncle, Johan Gundel—then struck Peter in the face with his fist. In his recounting of events, Gundel instantly questioned this conduct and in response to his complaints, one member of the council, Lars Thor, stated, “policemen use a baton to hit with, and when we must act like policemen we can’t be blamed [for using violence].” In the letter, Gundel emphasizes the breach of his rights committed by the council members during the episode. In the municipal council’s protocol, the account of the interrogation is unsurprisingly different from Peter Gundel’s. Here it is Peter’s failure to comply with the correct procedures that provoke Johan Gundel to strike him.23 The dialogue Gundel reproduced, however, provides an interesting insight into the handling of law and order in Greenland. It is significant that the members of the municipal council, in Gundel’s account, compare themselves to police officers and consider themselves the managers of the locality. Just like the paarsisut/guardians (members of the local boards from the 1860s to 1911), the municipal council members held a role as quasi police officers in their localities. Just like the guardians, they wore symbols of this role: caps with an emblem signaling their position and a band with a “police shield.”24 The council members were thus handling various police-like tasks in the local community including the summoning of witnesses and interrogation of suspected offenders, etc. Any member of the council was responsible for upholding order in the local community, and whenever rules were broken, 102 6 SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION council members were supposed to discuss the incident. The council then evaluated whether the council could handle the case as a matter of misconduct, or whether they ought to report the case to the provincial governor (as a criminal case). The council members were also obliged to notify the council if a member of the community displayed laziness or other signs indicating that he might become an economic burden to the community later on.25 In general, the municipal councils handled complaints over misconduct and criminal offenses and evaluated whether or not particular cases came under their own jurisdiction. Around the time of Gundel’s third case, the council members in Jakobshavn were engaged in battling an epidemic of gonorrhea in the community.26 In a sense, they were policing sexual relations in the community. When it became clear during the investigation of the gonorrhea epidemic that two members of the council had “behaved immorally” by engaging in extramarital sex, they were expelled from the council. The council also sentenced several members of the community with an economic sanction for immoral behavior (among them was Peter Gundel), and the council investigated how the disease could have been brought into the community.27 During this investigation, the council members seem to have taken steps to map out all sexual encounters conducted out of wedlock. The local doctor tested all members of the community, with the notable exception of the wives of uninfected men. Matters related to Peter Gundel’s case clearly point to the level of power held by members of the municipal councils. The analogy with the powers vested in a policeman as stated by council member Lars Thor is therefore not a random one. From a wider perspective, the combination of the municipal councils and the mixed courts of justice appear as a recognizable colonial arrangement in which the colonial administration incor- porated indigenous legal practices into the colonial system. Gundel’s conviction for knowingly transferring venereal disease and his complaint about the municipal council member’s conduct suggest that both sides–– Gundel and the council members––acted within the framework of a legal matrix strongly influenced by western tendencies. Gundel claimed that the municipal council members had exceeded their legal authority, and that they had failed to comply with the formally prescribed procedures. In a similar vein, the council members responded to Gundel’s claims within the framework of western legal logic. In the larger picture, Gundel’s case shows that many Greenlanders seem to have quickly adapted to formalized elements within the penal system. A CHILDISH DISPOSITION—FIRST DRAFT OF A PENAL CODE 103

ACHILDISH DISPOSITION—FIRST DRAFT OF A PENAL CODE When the mixed court handled Gundel’s cases between 1915 and 1916, there was no standardized system of penal sanctions for Greenlanders; however, at the time, the two newly established provincial councils were discussing a draft for a Greenlandic penal code. The process was in accordance with the statute for the provincial councils, which prescribed that the council members, assisted by the provincial governors, should participate in the preparation of a formal penal code. As noted by Harald Lindow, the provincial governor of North Greenland, who took it upon himself to author the draft of a Greenlandic penal code, the colonial administration had long been aware of the impending need for formal penal procedures. One example indicating the need for a standardized system and new punitive measures was a 1909 request from the Greenlandic members of the local board in Julianehåb (today Qaqortoq).28 Specifically, the Greenlandic members of the Julianehåb Board requested the establishment of prison sentences in Greenland as well as prison facilities.29 The administration of the Royal Greenland Trading Company stressed in a letter to the provincial governors that the fact that the Greenlandic guardians requested the modernization of the penal system suggested that the Greenlanders were indeed mature enough for such a modernization.30 Furthermore, the letter to the provincial governors stated that the development of a new penal code was an obvious task for the (soon-to-be-established) provincial councils. The members of the two provincial councils discussed in detail the penal code proposed by the provincial governor Lindow.31 This is not the place to unravel the many nuances in the feedback, where not only members of the two provincial councils but also various actors in Greenland (Danes as well as Greenlanders) commented upon the draft,ortheextensivedebatein the provincial councils. It is sufficient to say that the great majority of the Greenlanders (mainly members of the provincial councils and municipal councils) expressed eagerness to renew the penal sanctions, and specifically expressed positive attitudes toward the use of prison sentences in Greenland. In the introduction to his draft penal code, Lindow went through the various penal practices employed in Greenland to date: physical punishment, economic sanctions, dishonoring penal techniques, and loss of civil rights. Capital punishment had never been used, and imprisonment (in ad 104 6 SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION hoc facilities) was used only in rare cases.32 Lindow urged the modernization of the system and specifically requested the instigation of imprisonment as a penal procedure in Greenland. He argued that the widely employed dishonoring penal techniques no longer had the desired effect in Greenland. Lindow concluded that the implementation of prison sentences was an unavoidable development in Greenland. The register of dishonoring or shaming penal techniques, of which Lindow was skeptical, included the forfeiture of complementary supplies on Christmas and the King’sbirthday, exclusion from trade in the local shop, publication of the punishment in the local shop and the cutting off of women’shair.33 These penal techniques built upon an understanding of the Greenlandic culture that matched the picture of the Greenlanders’ vulnerability to public shame.34 Moreover, the colonial authorities’ ethnographically based perceptions confined the Greenlanders to a narrow––culture-bound––realm of possibilities, according to which Greenlanders were governed by their fear of public shame and unable to grasp the complexity of a modern penal system. According to the colonial authorities’ understanding, Greenlanders possessed many child-like characteristics. The following description, given in 1898 by Carl Ryberg, Head of Division in the Royal Greenland Trading Company, testifies to the prevalence of the familiar colonial trope.

Greenlanders are generally a peace-loving nation [ ...] They have a childish disposition and are easily led, especially when they sense that the European is taking an interest in them and their conditions and most importantly treats them with honesty and fairness.35

Ryberg characterized the Greenlanders as a remarkably peaceful people and emphasized the fear of public shame as an essential cultural trait.36 This perception of the Greenlanders underpinned the culturally adapted system of law and order in Greenland. Thus, Ryberg claimed that the division of Greenlanders and Europeans into varying legal categories rested on the cultural differences between the two groups, and accordingly he perceived the division to be in the best interests of the Greenlanders. Greenlanders employed in the colonial trade were under Danish law until 1911. However, as Ryberg remarks, this was practically insigniﬁcant: if a Greenlander employed by the trade (and therefore ofﬁcially under Danish law) committed a serious crime, he would most likely be laid off and then be treated under the native system.37 NEW CHARGES AGAINST GUNDEL 105

STALLED IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PENAL CODE The members of North Greenland’s as well as South Greenland’s provincial councils debated, revised, and finally adopted Lindow’s draft for a penal code. Yet in spite of the positive response in the provincial councils, the penal code was never implemented in Greenland since leading figures within the circles of the colonial trade, administration, and mission opposed the draft. Thus, even though the members of the provincial councils expressed their unequivocal acceptance of the Greenlandic version of the penal code, the implementation stalled. Colonial officials argued that the Greenlanders’ understanding of the legal arena was so rudimentary that it was impossible to establish a system that was in accordance with the western norm.38 Postcolonial scholars have described this colonial “not yet” attitude toward the colonized and its consequences in a variety of settings. Among many colonial officials the “not yet” attitude—and the implicit understanding of Greenlanders as “Peter Pan children” never reaching adulthood––had immense consequences for the organization of the legal system in colonial Greenland.39 It is at a minimum noteworthy that the colonial authorities rejected the draft for a penal code in spite of its positive reception among the Greenlandic politicians and that the rejection rested on the idea of the Greenlanders’ cultural immaturity. Accordingly, the colonial authorities handled Peter Gundel’s cases within a framework in which they considered Greenlanders unable to deal with a complex western legal system, and where they aimed to use shame as a penal technique.

NEW CHARGES AGAINST GUNDEL In 1924 we ﬁnd Peter Gundel engaged in a new dispute involving members of the municipal council. Gundel raised new accusations about the way in which members of the council had circumvented the legal proceedings related to the handling of criminal cases.40 He wrote the letter, dated 5 September 1924, addressed to the provincial governor of North Greenland partly as a (rhetorical) confession. Gundel admits to the crime of tearing down two public announcements (about him) from the wall in the local shop: “I now report myself to the governor.”41 He then describes the reason behind his actions: members of the municipal council had put up the two posters on the wall of the local shop without any prior notiﬁcation. 106 6 SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION

The first poster announced that Gundel had been denied all future access to foreign ships, and he was, should he fail to comply, liable to pay a fine of 5 crowns (DKK). The second poster announced a sentence of 15 crowns for having “pointed the sailors in the direction of the right women.” In other words, the two posters announced sentences that banned Gundel from all contact with foreign ships, and furthermore fined him for his actions. The sentences posted in the local shop worked as an aspect of the punishment, a public humiliation based on cultural assumptions about the Greenlanders. Gundel directed his complaint at the council members’ failure to comply with official procedures. According to Gundel, the posters announced the verdicts before the council members had summoned him to appear before the municipal council, and before he was even aware of the charges directed at him. Thus the cases had apparently been solved without a prior interrogation of Gundel—clearly a breach of the (however dubious) formal procedure for the municipal council’s handling of this type of event.42 Moreover, in the letter, Gundel accused two members of the municipal councils of having misused their positions of power. According to Gundel, one of the members (Knud Cortzen) had obtained sexual favors from Gundel’s wife against her will when she came to claim the public support granted to Gundel during a period of illness. Gundel accused the other member (Karl Sivertsen) of having severely beaten a woman in the local community. As Gundel’s complaint indicates, the municipal council initially handled the cases, but subsequently both cases came before the mixed court of justice in Jakobshavn on 24 October 1925, and Gundel received his fourth sentence.43 When the mixed court found itself unable to establish Gundel’s engagement in the “brothel-like activities” (mentioned above), the charge was found to be unsubstantiated and accordingly dropped. However, the court found Gundel guilty in two cases of theft (Karl Sivertsen, mentioned above, acted as a key witness) and the court banned Gundel from boarding ships with European crew members for a period of five years, and furthermore forbade him from hosting European visitors in his home.

TOO HEAVY AN ARMOR––SECOND DRAFT FOR A PENAL CODE Gundel appeared before the court in connection with his next two criminal cases in 1927 and 1928.44 At the time of these trials, the colonial administration had implemented a new reform whereby the institutional TOO HEAVY AN ARMOR––SECOND DRAFT FOR A PENAL CODE 107 successors to the mixed courts of justice––the Syssel courts––were established. In contrast to the mixed courts of justice, the provincial governors (the governors were now referred to as landsfogeder rather than inspektører) did not head the Syssel courts. They were instead led by the Sysselmand (most often the local colonial manager or kolonibestyrer), an official figure in the local colonial administration. The remaining members of the court were still two European and two Greenlandic members.45 The most noteworthy aspect about these court cases is that Gundel engaged an “attorney.” According to the 1925 rules for legal procedures (retsanordningen), defendants had the right to have a person (a sort of lay attorney) appointed to assist in forwarding his or her case before the court.46 However, Gundel states that the colonial authorities did what they could to discourage his legal helper. Gundel received rather hard sentences in the two cases: substantial fines, annulment of his civil rights for a period of five years, publication of the (first) verdict in the North Greenlandic newspaper Avangnâmioq and a public announcement (of the first verdict) posted on the municipal council’s wall (in the local shop) for one month. Around the time of Gundel’s last two cases, the two provincial councils were debating a new draft for a penal code.47 The draft, authored by Jørgen Berthelsen, governor in North Greenland (1928–1929), prescribed a simplification of the penalties used in Greenland: Only prison, fines, and penal servitude constituted the suggested penalties. The provincial councils welcomed and adopted the draft after negotiations in 1929. Much like the situation in 1915 and 1916, the Greenlandic members of the councils expressed their satisfaction with the suggested penal system. However (again, much like the situation in 1915 and 1916), the penal code was never adopted by the Danish colonial authorities. Again, strong forces worked against the implementation of the draft. Knud Oldendow, governor in South Greenland from 1924 to 1932, expressed his deep doubts as to whether the suggested penal code would “take root amongst the Greenlandic population.”48 In the same vein, Danish priest and expert on the Greenlandic language, Christian Wilhelm Schultz- Lorentzen stated that the penal code in its present form was impossible to translate adequately into Greenlandic.49 Finally, Jens Daugaard-Jensen, the director of the colonial administration (Grønlands styrelse), voiced his concerns about the draft, indicating that the principles behind the suggested penal system were too complex for the Greenlanders. The adversaries of the drafted penal code based their critique of what they perceived to be a gap between the sentiments among the Greenlandic 108 6 SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION population and the penal principles in the draft. Knud Oldendow stated, in an all-too-familiar way (see above), that the aim of the policies of law and order in Greenland was to raise the Greenlanders from a primitive developmental stage to a modern stage. However, as he clearly indicated, the Greenlanders were not ready for a modern penal system yet: “The Greenlandic provincial councils have adopted a draft, but this, it must be said, is too heavy an armor for the Greenlandic community and too “modern” to comply with the sense of law and order amongst the average Greenlanders.”50 And so the Danish authorities also rejected this draft and the first official penal code came as late as 1954, when Greenland’s status as a colony had been amended. It is clear in the material connected with the provincial councils’ negotiations and adoptions of the two draft penal codes (in 1916 and 1929) that leading figures among the Greenlanders were keen to modernize the penal system that they found to be too arbitrary and lenient. However, on both occasions, strong adversaries of modernization prevented the implementation of the penal codes. In the arguments forwarded by those in opposition, there was a pronounced tendency to defend their opposition in a similar way to which colonial policies used the concept of Greenlandic (or Inuit) traditions as a governmental tool.51 The material related to Peter Gundel’s convictions, however, suggests that the Greenlanders, to a greater degree than previously acknowledged, were already acting within a “modern legal logic.”

“YOU OUGHT TO BEAR YOUR SHAME IN SILENCE” In desperation over what he found to be the various courts’ unjust treatment of his criminal cases, Gundel wrote a comprehensive letter to the Danish King Christian X.52 In the letter, Gundel described his various convictions and pointed out what he found to be unfair aspects in the juridical procedures. Gundel gave detailed accounts of the cases and provided explanations for what he found to be the adverse attitudes he had encountered. The overall explanation, according to Gundel’s version of the events, was his own regrettable impudence toward the Danish authority ﬁgures. This, Gundel claimed, was the root cause of the injustices he had encountered, i.e., he had fallen prey to vindictive judges. Gundel’s letter never reached the King. Gundel had asked his friend Doctor Hvam (residing in Denmark) to ensure that the King would receive the letter. Doctor Hvam chose, instead of forwarding the letter THE JURIDICAL EXPEDITION TO GREENLAND 109 to the King, to send only minor narratives authored by Gundel. Gundel was clearly disappointed and felt betrayed that the Doctor had obstructed the transfer of his complaints to the King. In a letter to Doctor Hvam, Gundel emphasized that he had not requested the doctor’s evaluation of the letter’s contents, but only the expedition of the correspondence.53 Faced with the disappointment over Doctor Hvam, and in search of support for his complaints, Gundel sent the letter to the provincial governor in North Greenland through his former lay attorney, Niels Egede. Jørgen Berthelsen, the provincial governor and author of the second draft for a penal code in Greenland, reacted strongly to Gundel’s letter:

[Y]ou [Gundel], one of most frequently punished individuals in Greenland, ought to bear your shame in silence rather than try to direct his Majesty’s attention to your reprehensible way of life [ ...] Should you fail to correct your ways, I will make sure that his Majesty will learn from us, what an ignoble person you are.54

Peter Gundel caused trouble in colonial Greenland. He challenged the colonial system in ways that were unheard of in Greenland. In compliance with the general western notions of the Eskimos or Inuit, Greenlanders were perceived to be friendly, peaceful, and highly amenable to the evocation of public humiliation. Gundel’s behavior transcended the con- ﬁnements of this perception in numerous ways. He persistently challenged the handling of law and order with reference to the ofﬁcial statutes, by using the right provided him in the albeit sparse statutes regulating law and order in Greenland. He claimed his right to legal assistance, he challenged the authorities when positions of power were misused, and he attempted to appeal to the Danish King as the highest authority.55 Gundel’s actions contested the subjectivity assigned to him, and his fellow Greenlanders, by the colonial system and the dual legal arrangement. The colonial logic did not allow Greenlanders to cross the boundaries of their assigned roles as custom-bound subjects guided by their fear of public shame and their docile inclination toward harmony and compromise.

THE JURIDICAL EXPEDITION TO GREENLAND In 1950, the report based on the Juridical Expedition’s ﬁndings observed that a concern for the personality of the offender characterized Greenlandic legal tradition.56 The authors contrast this customary aspect 110 6 SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION with a typical western system based on standardized sanctions for various types of crime:

It is a consistent line in the Greenlandic court decisions that the preferred sanction imposed on the offender is the one best suited to keep him from future crime and the one that contains the smallest degree of isolation from the community.57

The members of the Juridical Expedition concluded that it was equally inadvisable to implement the draft for a penal code, discussed by the provincial councils in 1929, and the Danish penal code in Greenland. The idea that a tradition for individualized sanctions remained in Greenland guided the conclusion. According to this tradition, the primary function of the legal sanction was to restore peace in the community, rather than punish the individual. The members of the Juridical Expedition found this tendency to be in accordance with contemporary developments within the field of western criminal law. The authors dismissed the 1929 draft for a penal code in spite of the fact that the provincial councils in 1945, 1946, and 1947 made appeals to the Danish authorities for the implementation of this code. It appears that the members of the Juridical Expedition too readily accepted the idea of an uncontaminated custom-based legal tradition in Greenland. The legal procedures in this period, however, were not a simple continuation of a customary practice; rather, the system resulted from a complex ongoing transformative process in which the colonial state played a significant––and often dominant––role. Reflecting upon the Juridical Expedition, participant Agnete Weis Bentzon explains that Verner Goldschmidt found a fellow partisan in the aforementioned Knud Oldendow.58 Indeed the Juridical Expedition cited Oldendow’s statement in the report, deeming the 1929 draft “too heavy an armor” for the Greenlanders, and the conclusion complied with Oldendow’s statement. Despite their best intentions, it seems that the members of the Juridical Expedition more or less adopted the prevailing colonial ideology. Accordingly, the expedition’s report underestimated leading Greenlanders’ eagerness toward modernization of the field of law and order. The main author behind the penal code finally implemented in Greenland in 1954 was Verner Goldschmidt, and observers praised this code as the first culturally adjusted penal code in the world. The leading SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION 111 principle was, under inspiration from concurrent legal tendencies, a separation of the penal sanction from the crime.59 In Goldschmidt’s 1980 reflections on the penal code, he emphasized that he was seeking to codify the legal customs of the Greenlanders. Codifying the unwritten as such posed a paradox for Goldschmidt and he stated that in its attempt to codify unwritten law, the penal code was a failure. However, he found that the penal code was successful in balancing the need for legal reforms with consideration for Greenlandic customs. In spite of criticism, this perception of the Greenlandic penal code as humanely adjusted to the specificity of Greenlandic culture has proven quite durable.

SHAME AND CRIME:THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION In contrast to a widely accepted idea, “the customary Greenlandic legal culture” was actually a result of a complex trajectory of interaction and transformation which has had palpable consequences. Practically speaking, a closed correctional facility is still underway.60 Individuals convicted of serious crimes have therefore served, and still serve, their sentences in Denmark, about 4000 kilometers from Greenland. Gundel’s claims did not fit the colonial authorities’ perception of the Greenlandic identity. Gundel transcended his role by contesting the various court decisions and by ultimately appealing to what he perceived be the highest authority––the Danish King. The provincial governor’s reaction to Gundel’s complaints, “you ought to bear your shame in silence,” explains the confines of the cultural identity ascribed to Greenlanders. The logic of cultural preservation dictated strict divisions along ethnic lines, and the practices of law and order worked to manage, and often enforce, the differences between colonized and colonizers. The Greenlandic case provides an example of the interconnections between ethnography and governance prevalent in colonial projects. The way in which indigenous life-worlds were shaped and restricted when ethnographic knowledge became instrumental in the regulation of law and order within colonial contexts has generally received a great deal of attention from scholars.61 A good example of this is Nicholas Thomas’ study of British colonialism in Fiji where “what were thought to be traditional chiefly privileges were legally enshrined” and “flexibility and reciprocity” thereby often were suppressed.62 The scholarly activity within the field of colonial and imperial law has more than anything brought to light the multifaceted role of law in colonial contexts across time and space 112 6 SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION and identified how markers of difference, constituted along the lines of gender, ethnicity, culture, and race, formed law practices. The investigation of the cultural preservationist strategy employed by the Danish colonial administration within the field of law and order adds nuance to the general picture of brutal colonial penal systems. There is no doubt that the penal system in Greenland was remarkably lenient and even more so when compared to other colonial or non-colonial systems. The colonial authorities avoided the establishment of formalized procedures and sought to incorporate local traditions into the penal system. What appeared to be a logic of cultural preservation in fact worked to enforce and maintain the barriers between colonized and colonizer. Acknowledging this complicated interplay between ethnographic knowledge and colonial governance is crucial for an understanding of this particular version of colonial law and order.

NOTES 1. Hanne Petersen, Retspluralisme i praksis – grønlandske inspirationer (København: Djøf /Jurist- og Økonomforbundet, 2006a); David Callies, Peter Ørebech & Hanne Petersen, “Three case studies from Hawaii, Norway and Greenland.” In Peter Ørebech et al. (eds.) The role of customary law in sustainable development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 2. Finn Breinholt Larsen, Grønlandske retsforhold – fra sangkamp til ‘moderne ret’ (Aarhus: Institut for statskundskab Århus Universitet, 1980); Finn Breinholt Larsen, “Greenland Criminal Justice: The Adaptation of Western Law,” International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice 2 (1996); Finn Breinholt Larsen, “Interpersonal Violence Among Greenlandic Inuit,” in Henrik Garlik Jensen and Torben Agersnap, eds., Crime, Law and Justice in Greenland (Copenhagen: Nyt fra Samfundsvidenskaberne/The Northern Justice Society, 1996); Finn Breinholt Larsen, Kriminaliteten i Grønland: omfang, årsager og handlemuligheder (København: Den Grønlandske Retsvæsenskommission, 2003). 3. Verner Goldschmidt et al., Betænkning afgivet af den juridiske ekspedition til Grønland 1948–1949, 6 vol. (København, 1950); Verner Goldschmidt, “Fra uskreven til skreven kriminalret i Grønland,” Retfærd (1980). 4. Henrik Garlik Jensen, “Contemporary Realities,” in Jensen and Agersnap, eds., Crime, Law and Justice, 149. NOTES 113

5. Hans Egede, Det gamle Grønlands nye perlustration, eller Naturel-historie, og beskrivelse over det gamle Grønlands situation, luft, temperament og beskaffenhed (København, 1741), 68–69; Lars Dalager, Grønlandske Relationer, indeholdende Grønlændernes Liv og Levnet, deres Skikke og Vedtægter, samt Temperament og Superstitioner, tillige nogle korte Reflectioner over Missionen, sammenskrevne ved Friderichshaabs Colonie i Grønland Anno 1752 af Lars Dalager (København, 1752), 65–70; David Cranz, Historie von Grönland (Nürnberg, 1782), 212–237; Hinrich Johannes Rink, Om aarsagen til Grønlændernes og lignende af jagt levende, nationers materielle tilbagegang ved berøringen med Europæerne (København, 1862); Gustav Holm and Thomas Vilhelm Garde, Den danske Konebaads-expedition til Grønlands østkyst (København, Forlagsbureauet i Kjøbenhavn, 1887), 178–180; Wilhelm A. Graah, Undersøgelses-Reise til østkysten af Grønland: efter kongelig befaling udført i aarene 1828–1831 (København, 1932), 110–111. 6. In Knud Rasmussen’s movie of 1934, Palo’s wedding (Palos brudefærd)a traditional song contest is portrayed. 7. Larsen, Grønlandske retsforhold; Larsen, “Greenland Criminal Justice.” 8. Søren Rud, “Governance and Tradition in Nineteenth-Century Greenland,” Interventions 16, 4 (2014). 9. Verner Goldschmidt et al., Betænkning afgivet. 10. N. H. Frandsen, Nordgrønland 1790–1796. Inspektør B. J. Schultz’ indberetninger til direktionen for den Kongelige grønlandske Handel (København: Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie, 2010). 11. Finn Gad, Fire detailkomplekser i Grønlands historie: 1782–1808 (København: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 1974), 139–247. 12. To some degree, this arrangement resembles what Mahmood Mamdani identifies as the “bifurcated” colonial state, dividing its population into citizens (with legal rights under western standard) and colonized subjects (under local customary law). Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 109–138. 13. Peter Gundel (Gudrun Tølbøll, ed.), Jeg danser af glæde: dagbogsbreve 1923– 1930 (København: Det grønlandske Selskab, 2004); Kirsten Thisted, “Peter Gundel: dagbogsbreve til læge Jørgen Hvam 1923–1930,” Tidsskriftet Grønland (2004). 14. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv, Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929 A 01.02 19.70 6. 15. Grønlands styrelse. Beretninger og kundgørelser vedrørende kolonierne i Grønland for aarene 1909–1912 (København: J. H. Schultz, 1914). 16. Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger. 17. Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger. 114 6 SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION

18. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv, Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929 A 01.02 19.70 6. O. Bendixen (1913 (1–12)). Letter from the provincial governor of Southern Greenland to the colonial manager in Jakobshavn. 19. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv, Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929 A 01.02 19.70 6. Udskrift af retsprotokollen for den blandede domstol for Jakobshavns distrikt (1915). 20. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv, Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929 A 01.02 19.70 6. Udskrift af retsprotokollen for den blandede domstol for Jakobshavns distrikt (1916). 21. Venereal disease was a growing problem at the time. 22. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv, Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929 A 01.02 19.70 6. Letter from Peter Gundel to the provincial governor of Northern Greenland (1916). 23. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv. A 01.02 19.70 6, Nuuk: Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929. Letter from Peter Gundel to the provincial governor for North Greenland (1924). 24. Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger, and see Jørgen Fleischer, Politiet i Grønland 50 år. Politiit Kalallit Nunaanni ukiuni 50-ini (Nuuk, 2001). 25. Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger (1910). 26. Rigsarkivet. København: Arkivnummer 0030, Grønlands Styrelse. Hovedkontoret, Oversættelse af Nordgrønlands kommuneråds forhandlinger (Agto til Diskofjords kommuner) (1915 – 1916). 27. Grønlands Styrelse, Nordgrønlands kommuneråds forhandlinger. 28. Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger; Rigsarkivet, Arkivnummer: 0030, Harald Lindow, “Udkast til straffeanordning” (1914). 29. The conviction of a woman for delivering a child in secrecy and subsequently killing the child was the concrete occasion for the guardians’ concern. The guardians felt that the usual punishment (the whip) for this type of crime was out of touch with contemporary ideals. The woman was imprisoned––in a provisionally established cell (and had her hair cut off). The provincial governor approved this sanction (1910). Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger. 30. Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger (1910). 31. Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger og kundgørelser vedrørende kolonierne i Grønland (1914–1924). 32. For example, the case from Julianehåb mentioned above. 33. In this period, Greenlandic women traditionally wore their hair in a hairstyle that gathered the hair on the back of the head. Having the hair cut off NOTES 115

enabled everyone to see that a woman had been punished––this technique was used as a punishment for giving birth in secrecy. 34. Martin Chanock remarks that customary law is not (necessarily) a sign of continuity: Often it is better understood as the opposite, namely, transformation. The evocation of public shaming as a penal sanction provides a clear example of how ethnographic knowledge became instrumental in the field of law and order in colonial Greenland. In compliance with Chanock’s observation, it is evident that we must understand the colonial system’s use of public shame as a penal procedure in Greenland as transformation rather than continuity. Even though the fear of public shame can be presumed to have had great significance in precolonial Greenland, the various penal techniques of public shaming developed within the framework of institutions established by the colonial administration. Martin Chanock, Law, Custom, and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 4. 35. Carl Ryberg, “Strafferetsplejen i Grønland,” Nordisk Tidsskrift for Fængselsvæsen (1896), 178 (my emphasis). 36. Ryberg, “Strafferetsplejen,” 179–181. 37. Ryberg, “Strafferetsplejen,” 193. 38. Knud Oldendow, Træk af Grønlands politiske historie: grønlændernes egne samfundsorganer (København: G. E. C. Gad, 1936), 242–243. Mahmood Mamdani observes that colonial states’ invention of indirect rule, and the implicit utilization of customary law, developed in response to the need for control––with limited resources––of large populations scattered over vast territories (the so-called native question). Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, 16. Facing this challenge, colonial powers tapped into existing configura- tions of societal order by consolidating legal power in the hands of local authority figures––or (in the absence of existing authority figures) creating new ones. Rather than securing the continuation of the local customs, indirect rule launched a transformative process by which power was con- solidated locally, albeit comfortably, within the reach of the colonial administration. The discourses legitimizing the implicit division into culturally shaped categories with corresponding legal statuses. In this line of argument, the “natives” were better off with slow development as opposed to a rapid transformation into “pseudo-Europeans.” Mamdani, Citizen and Subject,5. 39. Christopher Fyfe, “Race, Empire and the Historians,” Race and Class (1992), 22. 40. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv, Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929 A 01.02 19.70 6. Letter from Peter Gundel to the provincial governor for North Greenland (1924). 116 6 SHAME AND CRIME: THE EFFECTS AND AFTERLIFE OF TRADITION

41. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv, Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929 A 01.02 19.70 6. Letter from Peter Gundel to the provincial governor for North Greenland (1924). 42. Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger (1910). 43. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv, Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929 A 01.02 19.70 6. Udskrift af retsprotokollen for den blandede domstol for Jakobshavns distrikt (1925). 44. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv, Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929 A 01.02 19.70 6. Afskrift af retsprotokollen for Jakobshavns syssselret (1927), Afskrift af retsprotokollen for Jakobshavns sysselret (1928). 45. In cases dealing with civil disputes or minor misconducts, the number of court members was limited to one European and one Greenlander. 46. Styrelsen af Grønland, Beretninger og kundgørelser vedrørende kolonierne i Grønland (1923–1927). Anordning om retsplejen i Grønland 1925, § 47. 47. Grønlands styrelse, Beretninger og kundgørelser vedrørende kolonierne i Grønland (1928–1932). Nordgrønlands landsråds forhandlinger på mødet i året 1929. 48. Rigsarkivet, Arkivnummer: 0030, Telegram from Knud Oldendow (landsfoged i Sydgrønland) to the Greenland board (1931). 49. Rigsarkivet, Arkivnummer: 0030, Telegram from Schultz-Lorentzen (det grønlandske lektorat) to the Greenland board (1931). 50. Knud Oldendow, Lov og Ret i Grønland (København: Det grønlandske Selskab, 1931), 70 (my emphasis). 51. Rud, Governance and Tradition. 52. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv, Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929 A 01.02 19.70 6. Letters from Peter Gundel to the King of Denmark and Greenland (1928). 53. Gundel and Tølbøll, Jeg danser, 270; Thisted, Peter Gundel. 54. Nunatta allagaateqarfia – Grønlands nationalarkiv, Inspektoratet for Nordgrønland, Blandede domstolesager 1910–1929 A 01.02 19.70 6. Letter from Jørgen Berthelsen to Peter Gundel (1929) (my emphasis). 55. In the letter Gundel wrote: “Your majesty King of Denmark and Greenland.” 56. Goldschmidt, Betænkning afgivet. 57. Goldschmidt, Betænkning afgivet: 6, 81. 58. At the time of the expedition, Agnete Weis Bentzon was married to Verner Goldschmidt. 59. A perpetrator’s penalty should aim at reforming the perpetrator’s indivi- duality rather than seek to achieve justice by attributing a certain penalty for the perpetration of a certain crime. Goldschmidt, “Fra uskreven”; Larsen, Greenland Criminal Justice. NOTES 117

60. Aside from minor adjustments, the penal code remained unchanged until 2010. 61. See, for example, Nicholas. B. Dirks, Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992), 7–9; Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 107–120; Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 57–76. 62. Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture, 108. CHAPTER 7

Toward a Postcolonial Greenland: Culture, Identity, and Colonial Legacy

In 2009, Greenland, albeit still within the Danish Realm, gained a higher level of autonomy when the Self-Government Act came into effect. This development has sparked debate over the nature of the past as well as the future relationship between Denmark and Greenland. When a newly elected Greenlandic self-government (Naalakkersuisut) in 2013 decided to establish a Reconciliation Commission, assigning it the task of investigating the effects and legacy of colonialism in Greenland, the debate increased in intensity. This chapter explores the outline of the historical development up to the present and reﬂects on the legacy of colonialism.

FROM SEALING TO FISHING:THE PUSH FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES The first half of the twentieth century in Greenland was marked by a series of burgeoning changes at the political, social, cultural, and economic levels. A shift from seal hunting to fishing—with wide-ranging consequences—was slowly emerging. Many factors contributed to this development; important among them being the declining price of blubber and fur on the world market, which caused a trade deficit and gave rise to political concerns in Denmark and Greenland. Increasingly vocal criticism of the state of affairs in Greenland fertilized the ground for new colonial reforms

© The Author(s) 2017 119 S. Rud, Colonialism in Greenland, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46158-8_7 120 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND aiming to engage the Greenlanders further in the management of local matters. Following well-established directives from the colonial administration, fishing was still an opportunity reserved for Greenlanders who were unfit for the seal hunt. Between 1900 and 1940, however, the importance of fishing grew in Greenland. This shift meant the colonial administration instituted a number of initiatives to investigate and experiment with this transition to fishing. It also notably constituted a break with the administrative line, which—as the preceding chapters demonstrate—had been narrowly focused on preserving traditional seal-hunting, both for its practical and cultural implications. The administrative powers in Copenhagen, however, displayed considerable skepticism toward the fishing initiatives and took measures to ensure that the activities did not work against the seal hunt.1 The slow but steady shift from sealing to fishing influenced an array of aspects of Greenland’s social world; gender roles, work habits, settlement, and cultural ideals came under reconstruction. Alongside the debate around identity (and the seal hunter as the embodiment of the Greenlandic ideal) were catechists who also were engaging in similar debates in the Greenlandic paper Atuagagdliutit. Later the altered labor market generated new identities related to the occupations in fishing, sheep-farming as well as waged labor in fields such as mining.2 The Danish movie Qivitoq of 1956 presented the social implications of the transition from sealing to fishing using a small settlement in Greenland as the background for its romantic narrative. In the movie the Greenlander Pavia is hesitantly changing his occupation to fishing. However, vulnerable as he is to the ridicule of the community, he requires the help of the local Danish manager. In reality, however, colonial authorities expressed reluctance toward the changes while many leading Greenlanders pushed for reforms. In 1931, the Greenlandic provincial councils advocated for allowing Greenlanders to apply for loans to finance the private purchase of fishing boats and proces- sing facilities. This was finally dismissed by the colonial authorities in 1938, with reference to a concern for the quality of products produced privately by Greenlanders. This political veto clearly indicated that the Danish authorities were against submitting control to the Greenlanders as well as their skepticism of the development of fishing on Greenlandic terms. Political developments toward greater Greenlandic self-awareness and the push for modernization of conditions in Greenland, however, were growing. FROM SEALING TO FISHING: THE PUSH FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES 121

The colonial situation dictated a strict divide between Danes and Greenlanders,whichmanifesteditselfinanumberofconcretediffer- encesinrelationtorightsandopportunitiesofthetwogroups.The most obvious differences related to political, economic, and social possibilities. Danes typically held superior job positions compared to the Greenlanders. Legally Danes were under Danish law whereas the Greenlanders were under a looser culturally adapted legal order in the absence of a standardized system. Greenlanders did not have the right to vote in elections for the Danish parliament where the real political authority over Greenland was situated. Colonial authorities controlled Greenlandic newspapers, and could thus exert influence over their contents. In his book in 1930, Mathias Storch (a Greenlandic priest and novelist) commented harshly on wage disparities between the two groups.3 He also forcefully criticized the colonial authorities for ignor- ing and manipulating provincial councils for their own benefit. He suggested a new structure with only one (national) council rather than two (provincial councils) and proposed that representatives from that council ought to participate in the Danish parliamentary negotiations concerning Greenland. Members of the provincial council for South Greenland had already proposed that the provincial councils should elect representatives for the Danish parliament; however, the Danish provincial governor Knud Oldendow refused to support the proposal on the grounds that he found the Greenlanders to be too immature for membership of the Danish parliament.4 Notably, in spite of his severe criticism of the Danish administration of Greenland, Mathias Storch in no way advocated severing the ties between Greenland and Denmark. On the contrary, he advocated for equal rights and opportunities across the ethnic divide. In general, in spite of good intentions, the Danish authorities exhibited great reluctance to delegate real influence, rights, and responsibility to Greenlanders. On the one hand, the first half of the twentieth century saw a development toward increased cultural maneuverability, political influence, and rights to Greenlanders; on the other, the Danish authorities’ actions were marked by a strong ambivalence toward this development. The Danish colonial project aimed to facilitate a balanced development in the interest of preserving the traditional culture in Greenland. The flipside of this “culture-preservationist” coin, was, however, a paternalistic limitation of opportunities for 122 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND

Greenlanders. Thus, the divide between Europeans and Greenlanders was still the divide between citizens with rights and colonial subjects, under the protection of the colonial authorities, but without actual rights.

VISIONS OF A MODERN GREENLAND:THE SECOND HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The reluctant attitude of the Danish authorities was deeply rooted in the historical context of the colonial project in Greenland. The system had been centered on Greenlandic traditions and the administrative actors were slow to realize that changes were inevitable. The Second World War was the catalyst for development in several ways.5 During the war while Denmark was occupied by Germany, Danish administration in Greenland was ruled by Danish ofﬁcials in the United States and Greenland. American troops were, however, stationed in Greenland during the war, and the complicated situation generated a disruption of the established practices. While the Danish administration attempted to uphold established administrative lines, the presence of American soldiers as well as products suddenly made available to Greenlanders exerted a huge inﬂu- ence on undermining the agenda of preserving the Greenlanders’ culture. The events also convinced observers that Greenland could become less dependent on the decision-making authority exerted by Denmark, and lent credibility to those who wanted more responsibility for Greenlanders. After the war, a new agenda was clear. The UN system became the forum for a critique of the colonial powers, and the Danish authorities soon realized that the conditions in Greenland had to change. As noted by Frede P. Jensen: “In 1946, when the United Nations began collecting reports on non-self-governing territories (former colonies), Danish authorities had to face the issue of what status Greenland actually had.”6 In 1946, Denmark, as one of the administrators of a non-self-governing area, began sending annual reports to the UN system on the conditions in Greenland. In light of this uncomfortable role as a colonial power in an ideological climate strongly opposed to colonialism, the Danish authorities came up with a plan which, rather than granting independence to Greenland, aimed to amend its status as a colony and to integrate Greenland into the VISIONS OF A MODERN GREENLAND: THE SECOND HALF ... 123

Danish realm. Following a referendum in Denmark, this was realized in 1953. Greenlanders were not asked to vote on their own country’s continued connection with Denmark.7 On the verge of this official decolonization of Greenland, the Danish government established a commission with the task of devising a total plan for the modernization of Greenland. The members of the commission included Greenlanders; however, the Greenlandic members constituted a numerical minority and the Danish authorities opted not to include prominent and outspoken Greenlandic politicians and public figures, such as Augo Lynge and Frederik Lynge. The results were outlined in a plan entitled G-50 (Greenland-1950) which determined a new political line constituting a decisive break with the policies of cultural preservation of the (official) colonial period. This political line was continued with the G-60 commission’s recommendations, which, to a large degree, mimicked the ideology of G-50. The G-60 commission included greater involvement of the Danish state as an investor, since private business initiatives had failed to provide the dynamic input initially envisioned. The transformative vision of G-50, and later G-60, outlined a new Greenland as a modern welfare country based on fishing as the primary source of income. The longstanding restrictive protection of the country was finally lifted, and private companies were allowed to establish business activities in Greenland. The monopoly of the Royal Greenlandic Trading Company to deliver supplies to the entire country was, however, maintained. At the political level, the changes included the merger of the two provincial councils, and generally a move in the direction of a transfer of more administrative and political power from Denmark to Greenland. The development entailed rapid changes in the patterns of settlement, the social world, and lifestyles in Greenland. The modernization of towns, housing, sanitation, and the infrastructure was mainly carried out by Danish workers. The plan gave rise to policies that aimed to concentrate the population in towns rather than small settlements and to improve schools and health-care systems. Among the Greenlandic politicians of that period, there seems to have been widespread initial consent to the lines of modernization carried out. In spite of initial support for the modernization plan among Greenlandic politicians, developments eventually generated critique. Many Greenlanders felt as if they were spectators in the abrupt move from the paternalistic politics of cultural protection to rapid modernization; the Danes were still running matters and the 124 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND

Greenlanders were still treated as subordinates. The Greenlandic historian Jens Heinrich noted recently that:

The distribution of roles in this process of modernization entailed just as before the modernization process that Danes were supervisors and guides and the Greenlanders were to be supervised and guided. Moreover, it was up to Denmark to assess when/whether Greenland had achieved the sought- after maturity. The unequal terms manifested themselves in lower wages, poorer education, and more obstacles in the way to superior positions for Greenlanders. The ordinary Greenlander [ ...] was disregarded without any real inﬂuence on the events. Apathy, drinking and rootlessness became commonplace for many in connection with the settlement concentration, the unequal wages and the overall hasty social development.8

As was perhaps inevitable, the modernization process and the continued inequality between Danes and Greenlanders (not least vis-à-vis job positions) eventually sparked criticism in Greenland and in Denmark.

THE REAPPEARANCE OF ETHNOGRAPHIC DISCOURSE The 1960s brought increasing criticism of Greenland’s development. One element which gave rise to debate was discriminatory practices related to wages. Greenlanders were paid 25 percent less by the Danish state than Danes employed in the same positions.9 In 1958, Greenlanders who had resided more than ten years in Denmark became eligible to earn the same wages as Danes.10 This policy proved to be inexpedient since it encouraged lengthy stays in Denmark and made well-educated Greenlanders less inclined to return to Greenland. Clearly discriminatory, the policy also became a target of sharp critique. In 1962, Jørgen C. F. Olsen, a Greenlandic politician, stated in a press release: “The 25 percent reduction in wages represents a serious discrimination which is reminiscent of discrimination based on skin color. It is an insult toward all Greenlanders. It must be removed and it will be removed.”11 But in 1964 a new wage- system, based exclusively on the place of birth, was instigated.12 The unchanged discrimination gave rise to widespread criticism. Olsen maintained his critique of the discrimination, in 1966, stating: “I constantly ﬁght for economic equality, also in terms of wages. Greenlanders, who are Danish citizens, must be treated equally.”13 THE REAPPEARANCE OF ETHNOGRAPHIC DISCOURSE 125

In Denmark, and particularly in Copenhagen, a generation of politically active Greenlanders emerged with claims for equality which resonated sharply with the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist currents, widespread especially among Danish youth.14 In 1964, Greenlandic students in Denmark formed a society (Unge Grønlænderes Råd) (Council of Young Greenlanders) which over the course of the following years became increasingly engaged in a political struggle for equality. Those involved in culture and art became increasingly political. At the front of the wave was the rock band Sume which released their first album in 1973. Their songs with Greenlandic lyrics were deeply critical of the Danish policies in Greenland. Increasingly aggressive critiques emerged against the modernization policies, characterizing the development as a process of Danification rather than modernization. This growing aversion to the perceived Danification brought about a renewed interest in the Inuit traditions and the communality with other indigenous peoples of the Arctic, especially the Inuit in Alaska, Canada, and Siberia. As journalist and writer Tupaarnaq Rosing Olsen stated:

This new contact with our tribal kin sparked the search for our own identity. We were in a Realm with Denmark which is a European country. In spite of the fact that Greenland had undergone development under strong Danish inﬂuence, during which we learned the Danish language and established family ties, there were still massive differences culturally, in mindset and lifestyle. This caused us to orient ourselves towards the tribal kin in the West with whom we have a shared community of language, culture and conduct, to grow strong. In order to overcome common challenges the ICC [the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, later the Inuit Circumpolar Council] was formed in 1977 and the organization has since achieved noticeable results.15

During the 1970s, there was a resurgence of interest in regaining and re-attaching importance to Inuit traditions. Quite contrary to the colonial critique of the first half of the twentieth century which called for modernization and equality between Danes and Greenlanders, the new critique recast the Inuit culture as the frame for identity in Greenland. This growing tendency to evoke Inuit tradition as a source of identity drew on existing ethnographic work. Knud Rasmussen’s fifth Thule Expedition of 1920 stands out in this context as an ethnographical achievement, which created awareness of the cultural bonds among Inuit communities in the circumpolar area. As Kirsten Thisted points 126 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND out: “No other Arctic expedition can measure up to the fifth Thule, when it comes to its influence on the world’s view on Inuit as well as Inuits’ understanding of themselves.”16 The fifth Thule expedition and Knud Rasmussen, in particular, were instrumental in the establishment of the Inuit collection in the Danish National Museum. He was also a leading proponent of Greenland and the Inuit culture in Denmark and abroad. Shortly before the fifth Thule expedition, Eskimology was established as a scientific discipline at the University of Copenhagen. Ironically, the Inuit identity which became a resource in a struggle for recognition was intimately linked with the colonial period’s emphasis on the Greenlandic tradition. The link between the ethnographic discourse so essential for the colonial project and the reemergence of the “traditional” Inuit identity as a powerful maker of identity in the struggle against inequality is evident. However, as Kirsten Thisted notes, in relation to present-day Greenlandic identity:

The old notion of “fatal impact”: indicating that so-called indigenous peoples are doomed to destruction in the encounter with the white man, sticks to the discourse [ ...] The problem is that the narrative [of the vulnerable Inuit culture] is based on a number of the features that the Greenlanders themselves praise as distinctive characteristics of being Greenlandic. One of the most important tasks for the new Greenland is to solve this Gordian knot and establish self-images which correspond to ambitions of education, prosperity and independence.17

During the 1970s several political parties were established in Greenland in a political process which culminated in the Greenland Home Rule Act in 1979. The Greenland Home Rule Act delegated further responsibility to Greenland and constituted the consolidation of the political inﬂuence of a generation of strong Greenlandic politicians in Jonathan Motzfeldt, Moses Olsen, and Lars-Emil Johansen. Skepticism surrounding the referendum concerning membership of the EEC in 1972 (the European Union)—where a clear majority of the Greenlanders voted no, but with Greenland still subsequently joining the EEC with Denmark in 1973— fueled demands for a greater degree of political autonomy. After the Home Rule Act, Greenland became the ﬁrst country to leave the EEC (today the EU) in 1985, following a referendum. COLONIALISM AS THE EVIL TWIN OF MODERNITY? 127

COLONIALISM AS THE EVIL TWIN OF MODERNITY? In the context of Greenland, the modernization politics of the postcolonial period of the 1950s and 1960s have ironically come to symbolize the destructive power of colonialism. The period has become emblematic of the colonial aspects of the Danish-Greenlandic past and has often overshadowed the colonial policies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which are crucial in understanding the colonial period and its legacy. In some scholarly work the modernization period has also become emblematic of colonialism. Jens Dahl notes that “the Greenlandic situation after 1953 must also be analyzed within the overall frame of the colonial system.”18 Dahl follows Axel Kjær Sørensen, who states:

If colonization means to create an area abroad in the image of the mother country, it is an irony of history that the effort to end colonial status by means of integration with Denmark meant the introduction of all things Danish on an unprecedented scale. Never in the past had so much Danish been introduced in so short a time.19

Or as Lars Jensen writes:

The Danish colonization of Greenland was actually most comprehensive after the formal end of colonial rule in 1953 and at the beginning of the realization of the modernization plans G50 and G60. It is worth noting that the Greenlandic reconciliation commission primarily addressesthisperiodforitsdestructive nature against what one could call a Greenlandic rooted self-esteem.20

Accordingly, in popular as well as scientific accounts, the actual colonial period is often placed in the modernization period—after 1953—elevating it paradoxically to be the dominating symbol of colonial influence in Greenland. However, I find it important to view the modernization period in light of the preceding culture preservation policies and the administrative directives based on traditions which characterized the nineteenth-century and twentieth-century colonial project. While Lars Jensen rightly points out it is indeed important to note that the Reconciliation Commission primarily addresses the modernization period, this should, more than anything, call for reflection over the narrative of colonialism in Greenland. In Frederick Cooper’s reading of the field of colonial studies, he notes a shift in attention from modernization in the 1950s into the 1970s to modernity in the 1980s and 1990s.21 His concern is that the prevailing 128 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND tendency in recent studies to treat “colonization as an ugly reflection of modernity” obscures the understanding of complex historical processes.22 Further, Cooper notes the tendency within postcolonial scholarship to attack euro-centrism, which has established an opposition between universal humane values, which appear as connected to western epistemology, on one side, and an alternative modernity renouncing these values, on the other.23 In Cooper’s words:

To some postcolonial theorists, the goal has been no less than to overthrow the place of reason and progress as the beacons of humanity, insisting that the claims to universality that emerged from Enlightenment obscure the way colonialism imposed not just its exploitative power but its ability to determine the terms—democracy, liberalism, rationality—by which political life the world over would be conducted from then on.24

In this manner, post-Enlightenment rationalism became the enemy. The result was that previously colonized people would identify themselves in opposition to modernity in order not to appear as copies of the western original. However, as Cooper writes: “[I]t is not so clear what anyone should do next, once one has located colonialism as post-Enlightenment rationality’s evil twin.”25 An unreﬂective critique of the modernization era and the colonial legacy entails the risk of restricting rather than liberating the space for identity. A narrow juxtaposition of tradition vs. development overlooks the complicated colonial trajectory of Greenlandic tradition and offers only restricted maneuverability. It also ignores the role that leading Greenlanders played in the efforts to modernize the conditions in Greenland and accordingly their struggle for equality. To paraphrase, or perhaps contradict, Axel Kjær Sørensen: colonization does not (exclusively) mean to shape an area abroad in the image of the mother country. In fact, the maintenance of difference between the mother country and the colony—or between the colonizers and the colonized—was at the heart of most colonial projects.

SHAME,PRIDE, AND THE COLONIAL PAST The image of the modernization period as emblematic of destructive colonialism in Greenland has the capacity to evoke strong emotions. The history of emotion and affect, as a separate field of research, has grown in recent years.26 Many studies have built on the notion that emotions should be SHAME, PRIDE, AND THE COLONIAL PAST 129 viewed as collective, socially shared phenomena rather than individual experiences.27 This insight has turned attention to the ramification of emotions in various social settings. In her book, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed draws attention to shame as an example of how “[ ...]emotions work to shape the ‘surfaces’ of individual and collective bodies.”28 Ahmed analyzes (white) Australia’s expressions of shame over their past treatment of indigenous Australians.29 She notes that shame is crucial not only to the process of reconciliation but also because “shame can bring ‘the nation’ into existence as a felt community.”30 This aspect of shame seems to be significant in relation to understanding the Danish- Greenlandic past. Shame can be viewed as an important component in the emotional practices related to dealing with the colonial past: practices which are intimately linked with cultural images of the present. This is evident in the statements (from 2014) made by then-Prime Minister of Greenland, Aleqa Hammond, in connection with the establishment of the Reconciliation Commission. Hammond said that the Naalakkersuisut [the Greenlandic government] were aware

[ ...] of the fact that many social problems exist among the Greenlandic people. These problems did not arise by themselves. We as a people are responsible for many problems. Yet there are other quite serious problems and effects which are direct consequences of the colonial period and derived from this including a long list of subjects [ ...]whereweﬁnd taboos which we need to deal with respectfully. The reconciliation commission constitutes recognition of this.31

Aleqa Hammond’s identiﬁcation of taboos indicates that Greenland’srela- tionship with its colonial past is marked by shame. The social problems and their connection with the colonial past bring forward the feeling of shame in Greenland as well as in Denmark: Greenland fails to live up to the normative ideal of a successful nation, and Denmark is faced with its inconvenient colonial past and moreover the nation’s failure as a colonizer. However as Kladakis suggests, shame as rooted in the complicated colonial past works differently on Danes and Greenlanders.32 The Danes can choose to take the shame upon them and thereby enter into a community of those who have recognized the injustices of the past. As noted by Ahmed:

Those who witness the past injustice through feeling ‘national shame’ are aligned with each other as ‘well-meaning individuals’; if you feel shame, you are ‘in’ the nation, a nation that means well.33 130 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND

Otherwise put, the productive emotional alignment in a national community of shame over the colonial past can offer the Danes a “positive” nation-building strategy, particularly where events can be identiﬁed and articulated. In 1951, the Danish authorities sent 22 Greenlandic children to Denmark and subsequently placed many of them, after their lengthy stay in Denmark, in residential institutions in Godthåb (today Nuuk) and Egedesminde (today Aasiaat). The aim behind “modernizing” these children was to empower them to be cultural leaders upon their return to their home environment. Danish authorities cooperated with the organizations Save the Children and the Red Cross throughout the project. In spite of its good intentions, the program had palpable disastrous consequences for the children who lost their cultural roots and contact with their families. In 2010, Save the Children and the Red Cross both apologized for their participation in the program. In 2015, Save the Children extended the initial apology, given in a news program on Danish radio, with an ofﬁcial and personal apology to the surviving four participants of the so-called “experiment.”34 The General Secretary of Save the Children, Jonas Keiding Lindholm stated:

Seen from a present perspective the initiative can only be characterized as inappropriate, damaging for the children involved and in violation of the children’s fundamental rights. This is why we now offer an ofﬁcial apology to Greenland and the involved families. [ ...] Today Save the Children will never enter into a cooperation of this nature with the authorities. It is a mystery to us; how this could have appeared to be suitable.35

In this case and so many others, the acceptance of shame on the part of those who perpetrated a transgression can thus include a distancing from the tragic events of the past: “we were not there then,” so “we cannot be responsible.”36 In this instance, the apology is uttered from a position where the organization’s participation in the injustice (of the past) constitutes a mystery. The fate of the 22 children is a strong symbol of destructive Danish colonialism, and accordingly often described as a shameful fact that Danes seek to hide away.37 However, the tragic history of these 22 children (along with the story of the forced relocation of the population of Thule, when the US expanded the military base, and the story of Greenlanders in Danish prisons) has not been forgotten. SHAME, PRIDE, AND THE COLONIAL PAST 131

In 2010, the movie Eksperimentet (the experiment), which delves into thefateofthe22children,premiered. A Danish reviewer was disappointed with the movie, not least because the movie failed to “make an impression and leave him in a state of anger and shame over the fact that Denmark, we, once acted in this manner.”38 If “feeling ‘national shame’” aligns Danes with each other in “a nation that means well,” then perhaps the tragic fate of the 22childrenserves(alongwithother iconic events) as a purely symbolic point in this emotional practice. Situating the events “safely in the past” canallowDanestofeelshame without directly feeling responsible.39 Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen distanced himself from the unsettling fact of the children’s fate in a similar way. When he was confronted (by Juliane Henningsen, one of the Greenlandic members of the Danish parliament), with the question of whether or not the government would apologize for the injustices, he answered:

History cannot be changed. The government regards the colonial period as a closed part of our shared history. We must be pleased with the fact that times have changed.40

Lars Løkke Rasmussen clearly had sealed off the events from the present in an attempt to avoid the question of apologies. Indeed, one might characterize his response as a sort of “self-absolution.” In Ahmed’s analysis of the politics of apology in response to the question of the Stolen Generations in Australia, distancing is not the only strategy she identifies.41 Refusal to apologize is another strategy, exemplified by the Australian Prime Minister John Howard who “refused to apologize, preferring the word ‘regret’.”42 At the official political level, Denmark has been firm and consistent in its dismissive attitude toward any Greenlandic wish for apologies. Then Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen gave a clear signal in 2008, when he addressed the issue of a potential general apology for the colonial project during a visit to Greenland:

Denmark and Danes have nothing to feel shame over in relation to Greenland. On the contrary: Denmark has made a great effort to develop the Greenlandic society. We take pride in this effort and it could serve as a model for others.43 132 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND

With this statement Fogh Rasmussen reinvents such feelings of shame and guilt—so often connected to colonial pasts—into pride. Other similar messages have intimated that the Danes have been such benevolent colonizers that the rest of the world could learn from their example. It would appear that Denmark is able to mobilize the colonial past in Greenland in at least two nation-building strategies. In one version, iconic events, which function symbolically as powerful images of colonial oppression, work to align Danes in shameful recognition of the colonial past. In the other version, the Danish-Greenlandic past is used as a resource for national pride, and the Danish engagement in Greenland could “serve as a model for others.” Greenlanders, on the other hand, seem to have less room for mobilizing shame and pride.44 Aleqa Hammond’s identiﬁcation of taboos in connection with the colonial past is indicative of the Greenlandic need to come to terms with the legacy of colonialism. Seen in this light, the Reconciliation Commission can be perceived as part of an attempt seeking to counter the shame related to the social problems rooted in the colonial legacy.

POLITICS,LANGUAGE, AND RECONCILIATION Following a referendum, self-government was introduced in Greenland in 2009. With the introduction of self-rule, the limited sovereignty of the Home Rule Act from 1979 was expanded. The 2013 election in Greenland led to the formation of a government coalition between the recently established Partii Inuit, and the well-established parties Atassut and Siumut. Prior to their return to government in 2013, the Siumut Party had been relegated to the role of opposition after 30 years in office, with shifting coalitions. The issue of politics and the Greenlandic language have had an uneasy union. The establishment of Partii Iniut was emblematic for a wave of nationalist sentiments in Greenland. Its rhetoric was aimed at disparaging what leading figures perceived to be Danish dominance rooted in the colonial past. Emphasizing language as an important parameter in relation to identity and equal opportunity, Partii Inuit insisted on using the Greenlandic language exclusively and raised strong concerns about the fact that some members of the Greenlandic parliament (Inatsisartut) did not speak Greenlandic. The question of language has been a recurring theme in relation to Greenlandic identity from early on.45 An optimistic outlook to potential revenues from future hyper-industrial projects and resource extraction provided the nation with what THE RECONCILIATION COMMISSION 133 appeared to be hope for a realistic alternative to its financial dependency on Denmark. Debates about language were interwoven with debates over Danish influence and the suppression of Greenlandic culture and the procedures concerning the taxation of potential industrial projects/ resource extraction. Narratives of the colonial era clearly worked to fuel political mobilization in this context. The nationalist wave found a strong proponent and symbol in Prime Minister Aleqa Hammond, leader of the Siumut Party. Not shy at provoking debate, she stated: “I do not like that we must depend on the block grant [from Denmark]. We haven’t asked Denmark to come and colonize us and come here and plant the flag.”46 Asked by the interviewer about the best thing she had learned from Denmark, she replied: “Well, their steak with onions and brown gravy.”47 During her leadership Hammond consistently presented full independence (as an achievable reality in her lifetime) fueled by the vision of future revenues from resource extraction and hyper-industrial projects. Her bold statements provoked equally strong responses. In his newpaper blog, Søren Espersen, a member of the Danish Peoples’ Party, described what he perceived to be great Danish benevolence toward Greenland, expressing his outrage at the words of the Greenlandic Prime Minister:

And then, would you believe, then comes the “thank you” of the ofﬁcial Greenland: scorn and ridicule to Denmark—delivered by a mean prime minister of Greenland’s government, Aleqa Hammond, who hates Denmark and who takes every opportunity to smear Denmark. A woman who has deluded herself into believing she is Nelson Mandela, and “will die in freedom”. Who has been impudent enough to state that “the only positive thing she has gained from Denmark is brown gravy [ ...]” A prime minister working every day to ruin the relationship to Denmark. How long must we, friends of the Danish Realm, put up with this?48

Espersen’s emotional response reﬂects the strength of the narrative of the Danish-Greenlandic past in relation to the Danish identity.

THE RECONCILIATION COMMISSION It was under Hammond’s leadership that the government coalition established the Reconciliation Commission tasked to investigate the effects of colonialism in Greenland. Faced with the question of the Greenlandic need for reconciliation, the Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt 134 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND dismissed the idea that Denmark should engage with the process of reconciliation in Greenland, stating that: “We do not have a need for reconciliation, but I fully respect that this discussion preoccupies the Greenlandic people. We will follow the discussion closely from here.”49 Danish historian Thorkild Kjærgaard and others ﬁercely critiqued the establishment of the commission, while yet others welcomed the initiative and regretted the reluctant attitude of the Danish government to that end.50 In spite of the harsh critique of the Greenlandic attitude, the Reconciliation Commission was established and started its activities in 2014. As stated in the government coalition agreement: “In order to distance our country from colonization, it is necessary that reconciliation and forgiveness take place. A plan of action will be developed in this regard.”51 The introduction to the mandate of the Reconciliation Commission states:

Greenland is a former colony, which, following the constitutional amendment in 1953, became a part of the Danish Realm. Greenland has since developed itself to become a self-ruling country. The development of the Greenlandic community is to a large degree marked by a mindset which ﬂows directly from the history of colonization. It has affected the people and the development of the community. [ ...]52

The mandate stipulates: “The commission will launch activities aiming to uncover cultural and social challenges giving rise to tension following from the colonial legacy.”53 The commission aimed to address two ﬁelds: (1) internal sociological problems; and (2) historical development and cultural interaction between Denmark and Greenland.54 In the political and public climate of 2013–2014, questions related to the colonial legacy and a potential independent future were not surprisingly at the top of the agenda. In 2016, the political climate is somewhat different. First, faced with a series of allegations of abuse of power and privileges, Aleqa Hammond resigned in 2014, and the situation resulted in a new election. Partii Inuit was not reelected and the new Siumut leader Kim Kielsen became the leader of a new government coalition (consisting of Siumut, Atassut and Demokraatit (Kalaallit Nunaata Partiia Liberaliusoq)). Kielsen’s rhetoric regarding Denmark has been more subtle than his predecessor’s. Second, the prospect of a future with large revenues from oil, minerals, and hyper-industrial projects has gradually diminished and been replaced INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF IDENTITY 135 with a more pessimistic outlook. A 2014 report, Til gavn for Grønland [For the beneﬁt of Greenland], established that the potential for revenues had been severely overestimated. The report concluded that an independent future for Greenland, based on a rapid build-up of extrac- tive industry could result in a: “[ ...] quick decline of Greenlandic culture, language, political control, as seen in other Inuit areas [ ...].”55 The report dealt a serious blow to the dreams of economic independence from Denmark.

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF IDENTITY Today, Greenlandic politicians face important issues related to the country’s industrial potential. As the melting ice increases geographical acces- sibility in the Arctic, Greenland is becoming increasingly attractive to companies involved in oil, mining, and energy-intensive production. However, the potential exploitation of Greenland’s presumably rich natural resources entails complex negotiations between the wish for economic growth and consideration of the traditional way of life. On the one hand, such development might generate sufﬁcient revenues to liberate Greenland further from its dependence on economic subsidies from Denmark; on the other, some suspect that such development threatens the basis for what is perceived to be the traditional Greenlandic lifestyle. Accordingly, debate on these issues in Greenland, Denmark, and inter- nationally includes the question of Greenlandic and Inuit culture and tradition. On the issue of oil, a paradoxical and ambiguous situation is apparent. Greenland has allowed the potential exploitation of the very resources which are responsible in part for creating climate change, while at the same time experiencing the effects of climate change. In 2009, Aqqaluk Lynge, the Greenlandic president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), representing the Inuit in Canada, Alaska, Siberia, and Greenland, stated in a speech at the University of Edinburgh:

When Inuit experience changes to the ice, as we are now due to the ﬁrst effects of climate change, this is more than “just” a change in ice conditions and climate; it is a change in our basic environment and indeed, our universe. Perhaps this concept can help you to imagine that Inuit traditions are being severely tested by the changing Arctic environment.56 136 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND

In 2011, the ICC issued a declaration on resource exploitation in Inuit Nunaat (the Inuit areas in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Siberia) emphasizing the need for a balance between exploiting natural resources and the protection of traditional lifestyles. Part of the Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource Development Principles in Inuit Nunaat 2011 states: “Inuit culture is both well rooted and dynamic. Inuit are committed to ensuring that resource development projects must be planned and implemented in such a way as to support and enhance Inuit culture.”57 It has been suggested that “a tension between state and development logic on the one side and culture preservation logic, represented by the ICC, on the other has become apparent.”58 This tension could also be conceptualized as a tension between Greenland (as the strongest and most state-like actor) and the Inuit groups in the rest of the circumpolar region. As Mark Nuttall’s straightforward formulation indicates:

In a sense, Alaska and Canadian Inuit are arguing for the right to continue to be cold, whereas Greenland is literally warming to the idea of less snow and ice.59

Signs of political division among Inuit groups can indeed be found. In June 2010, Mary Simon, president of the Canadian Inuit organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, criticized Greenland’s aggressive oil exploration policies.60 After the Scottish company Cairn was given permission to drill for oil in Bafﬁn Bay, ICC president Aqqaluk Lynge warned the Greenlandic government about the potential effects of a blowout.61 Perhaps more than anything the tension between development and culture preservation speaks of the differences of the historical trajectories for the Inuit communities in Greenland and the other Inuit groups in the Arctic. Gry Søbye has conceptualized two identities in relation to Greenlandic identity which make reference to Inuit Nunaat (land of the Inuit) or Kalallit Nunaat (land of the Greenlanders)—in other words, Greenland as one of several areas in a pan-Inuit community or Greenland as a semi-autonomous state-actor with ties to the Danish Realm.62 As noted by Søbye, Greenlandic politicians are able to invoke these identities strategically.63 Greenland’s position as a political and strategic player is for obvious reasons different from Inuit groups elsewhere and Greenland’s interests might differ substantially. VULNERABILITY AND COLONIAL LEGACY 137

In Denmark, attitudes toward Greenland’s possible oil, gas. and mineral boom have been focused on the prospect of huge revenues and the potential for Greenland’s complete autonomy. Commentators have also voiced concerns over the environmental aspects, and the Greenlandic politicians’ ability to control the situation. Reflecting on a Greenlandic future with oil revenues, commentator Lars Trier Mogensen wrote: “The country [Greenland] will depend completely on oil exploitation and thereby fall into the category of ‘petro regimes’ together with corrupt, twisted and more or less authoritarian regimes.”64 Former Greenlandic Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist dismissed the critique and stated that it was regrettable that one of the largest newspapers in Denmark had tried to influence its readers with claims based on prejudice rather than facts.65 Kuupik Kleist vigorously defended the country’s right to develop into a more industrialized nation: “We claim our right to economic development, and we claim our right to be independent from former colonial powers.”66 Kleist and other leading figures in Greenland have reacted strongly against the portrayal of Greenlanders as a helpless people unable to handle the complexities of resource exploitation.67 Describing the view that Danes continue to view Greenlanders as unequal to the task, he stated: “It seems like now, gradually, the peoples of the Arctic are taking over powers and then suddenly it becomes much more dangerous, risky and whatever else you might come up with [ ...]It’s not the fault of Greenland that the ice is melting.”68

VULNERABILITY AND COLONIAL LEGACY In her PhD dissertation, Lill Rasted Bjørst argues that the Arctic is often represented as a signpost for the effects of climate change.69 The inhabitants tend to ﬁgure only as a manifest testimony of how their traditional lifestyle is challenged by the melting of the ice. Bjørst argues that, in contrast, Greenlanders have a nuanced view on the changing climate, allowing for the recognition of its positive as well as negative aspects.70 In a similar vein, Arctic anthropologist Frank Sejersen in his book, Rethinking Greenland and the Arctic in the era of Climate Change, deals with the way in which major changes in the Arctic region, caused partly by climate change, are being articulated in relation to the peoples of the region.71 He observes that anthropological studies of the Arctic have been dominated by a discourse which understands the indigenous peoples of the North as severely affected by the climate changes. However, they 138 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND are not perceived to be contributing to the shaping of the future. Thus, while indigenous peoples of the North are perceived to be stakeholders and political rights-holders, Sejersen emphasizes their role as “future- makers” with inﬂuence and ability to act in addition to reacting.72 The shift away from adaption and resilience is also a shift to a role which allows people to take part in the changes. Rather than see them as static and perpetually doomed to adapt to the shifting environment, they must be seen as future makers.

The focus we obtain from concepts like anticipation and navigation veers our climate change-related research away from studying climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation, and so forth, and redirects our research towards a more integrative approach, where climate change can never be considered alone or understood as being detached from human aspiration, desire and anticipation.73

The narrative Sejersen is addressing resonates deeply with the colonial narrative of the Greenlanders’ vulnerability. Contemporary discourses appear to be strongly related to the ethnographic discourse of the nineteenth-century and twentieth-century colonial era in which the Greenlanders were perceived to be vulnerable to any changes in their social world. The idea of Greenlanders’ vulnerability underpinned colonial policies, aiming to protect them against modernization and control their exposure to dangerous western modernity. These discourses of vulnerability and adaptability in relation to Inuit and climate change have deep historical roots. Bjørst notes that late nineteenth-century, popular ethnographic descriptions of Inuit depict them as subjects of their natural environment “with no other possibility than to adapt to the degree that they are able.”74 Moreover, “already at this point, discourses were established within which in relation to the natural environment and the climate Inuit had no alternatives to passive adaption.”75 Bjørst brieﬂy notes that these discourses are related to the colonial policies of the nineteenth century.76 Much in this book sub- stantiates Bjørst’s claim: the ethnographic discourse underpinning the colonial administrative line in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was indeed overlaid with tenacious notions of cultural and biological vulnerability. In general, the Arctic and the people inhabiting the area have become a showcase for the effects of climate change. In Greenland this is especially VULNERABILITY AND COLONIAL LEGACY 139 true for the hunters (especially from the Thule area). As Sejersen notes, many Greenlanders “point at the northern hunters as being the most vulnerable or as being those who are most knowledgeable about climate change.”77 On Visit Greenland’s website (the national tourist council for Greenland), the following is stated about climate change:

Greenland is no longer a major hunting society, but the hunting traditions are still maintained throughout the country, especially in the hunting districts in North and East Greenland. The hunters from North Greenland say today, however, that climate change has already led to short periods with much thinner ice or no ice at all in the winter and generally more unstable weather. This may prove to be a major problem for the hunting culture in certain Greenlandic towns and settlements because the local population’s culture and existence depend on the ice for hunting and capturing prey, as well as for transport.78

The hunters of East Greenland and North Greenland are emblematic of the hunting tradition now threatened by the changes. In her book, Thule på tidens rand [Thule on the edge of time], Kirsten Hastrup evokes strong images of the melting sea-ice in her recounting of ﬁeldwork in the area. During a dog-sled trip the driver is forced to drag the sled over cracks in the sea-ice.79 As Hastrup notes, the ice is not only necessary for hunting but also for transport (on dog-sleds) between settlements in the area. The sea-ice is undoubtedly essential to the hunting culture in the Thule area and its disappearance constitutes a great challenge for this and similar communities. As Hastrup writes:

In these years comprehensive changes are at work in Greenland; there are political as well as climate changes, which naturally are interdependent in the view of people in their situation. For the people still living as hunters, the situation is dramatic. When the ice melts, it affects all of society—not just in the shape of less prey for most but also in the form of a meltdown of community itself. All the Arctic people experience it and describe how deeply it affects their lives that the very foundation of their social relations is dissolving.80 Ice and community are two sides of the same story, and even though no Greenlanders will die of starvation, they are severely affected.81

There is no reason to doubt the impact of climate change on the hunting community. It is worth considering that less than 2 percent of the Greenlandic population live in the Thule area and now only a very small 140 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND fraction of Greenlanders report hunting as their full-time profession.82 But the impact of climate change in Thule seems to represent the impact of climate change across Greenland. The strong narratives of ice melting away under the hunters’ dog-sleds are so forceful that they take center- stage in relation to Greenland and climate change. In the context of this book, the role assigned to the northern hunters (of the Thule area) is noteworthy. Hastrup notes that the hunter community is “stuck between past and present.”83 Thule is specifically emblematic of the traditional Greenlandic lifestyle; at times this symbol seems to blur the vision of realities in contemporary Greenland. Paradoxically the important anti-colonial struggle of the 1960s and 1970s has to some degree generated a denial of the colonial past (before the 1950s), not least because of the similarities between the discourse of traditional Inuit identity (important for the 1960s and 1970s) and the ethnographic discourse (rooted in the nineteenth century), on the other hand. Relatedly, the notion of cultural vulnerability that was pervasive in many contexts in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, seems to manifest itself in a new way in the present. To make Greenland more postcolonial would entail a wholehearted and unflinching engagement with the legacy of colonialism.

NOTES 1. Vinnie Andersen, Fra fangst til ﬁskeri. Erhvervsskiftet og dets betydning for husstandsstruktur og bosættelse i Sydprøvens distrikt i Sydvestgrønland 1900– 1940, Master’s thesis, University of Copenhagen (1993). 2. Karen Langgård, “Grønlandsk etnisk-national identitet i slutningen af 1800-tallet og begyndelsen af 1900-tallet,” in Ole Høiris and Ole Marquardt, eds., Fra vild til verdensborger: grønlandsk identitet fra kolonitiden til nutidens globalitet (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2011). 3. Mathias Storch, Strejﬂys Over Grønland (København: Levin & Munksgaard, 1930). 4. Tupaarnaq Rosing Olsen, I Skyggen af kajakkerne: Grønlands politiske historie 1939–1979 (Nuuk: Atuagkat, 2005), 27. 5. Jens Heinrich, Eske Brun og det moderne Grønlands tilblivelse (Nuuk: Forlaget Atuagkat, 2012). 6. Frede P. Jensen, “The Greenland issue in the UN, 1945–1950,” in Erik Beukel, Frede P. Jensen and Jens Elo Rytter, Phasing Out the Colonial Status of Greenland 1945–1954: A Historical Study (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010), 167. NOTES 141

7. See, for example, Lars Jensen, Danmark: rigsfællesskab, tropekolonier og den postkoloniale arv (København: Hans Reitzels Forlag, 2012), 148–177. 8. Jens Heinrich, “Forsoningskommissionen og fortiden som koloni,” (Online journal) Baggrund http://baggrund.com/une-belle-robe-demoiselle-dhon neur/, accessed May 10, 2016. 9. Olsen, I Skyggen af,70–72. 10. Olsen, I Skyggen af, 71. 11. Olsen, I Skyggen af, 72. 12. Olsen, I Skyggen af, 120–125. 13. Olsen, I Skyggen af, 72. 14. Olsen, I Skyggen af, 112–116. 15. Olsen, I Skyggen af, 207. 16. Kirsten Thisted, “Knud Rasmussen,” in Ole Høiris, ed., Grønland en reﬂek- siv udfordring (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2009), 243. 17. Kirsten Thisted, “Nationbuilding-Nationbranding. Identitetspositioner og tilhørsforhold under det selvstyrende Grønland.” In Ole Høiris and Ole Marquardt (eds.) Fra vild til verdensborger (Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2011), 632–633. 18. Jens Dahl, Arktisk Selvstyre: Historien bag og rammerne for Det Grønlandske Hjemmestyre (København: Akademisk forlag, 1986), 18. 19. Axel Kjær Sørensen, Denmark-Greenland in the Twentieth Century, (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2008), 111. 20. Lars Jensen, “Forsoningskommission og selvransagelse –‘never the twain shall meet’,” (Online journal) Baggrund http://baggrund.com/forsonings kommission-og-selvransagelse/, accessed May 10, 2016. 21. Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 53. 22. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 54. 23. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). 24. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 15. 25. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 54. 26. Karen Vallgårda, “Følelseshistorie – Teoretiske brudﬂader og udfordringer,” Kulturstudier 4, 2 (2013). 27. Vallgårda, “Følelseshistorie”; Ute Frevert, Emotions in History – Lost and Found (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2011); Jan Plamper, The History of Emotions: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). 28. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics,1. 29. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 101–121. 142 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND

30. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 101. 31. Aleqa Hammond, January 20, 2014 in Sermitsiaq. 32. Katrine Kladakis, “Grønlandsk Skam—Dansk Skam. Skammens Strategier i Danske Fremstillinger af Grønland,” in Maja Bissenbakker Frederiksen and Michael Nebeling Petersen, eds. I Affekt. Skam, frygt og jubel som analysestrateg, Varia nr. 9. Center for Kønsforskning, INSS, Københavns Universitet (2012). 33. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 10. 34. Website for Red Barnet, accessed May 7, 2016, https://www.redbarnet. dk/Nyhed.aspx?ID=25&NewsId=2455&PID=54, my translation. 35. Website for Red Barnet, accessed May 7, 2016, https://www.redbarnet. dk/Nyhed.aspx?ID=25&NewsId=2455&PID=54, my translation. 36. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 118. 37. See, for example, “Grønland opfordrer til undersøgelse,” September 9, 2009, Information. 38. Kladakis, “Grønlandsk Skam,” 39. 39. Lars Jensen, “Forsoningskommission og selvransagelse –’never the twain shall meet’” baggrund.com, December 21, 2014. 40. Quoted from Berlingske, August 19, 2009. 41. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 101–121. These removals of children were conducted predominantly in the period between 1905 and 1969––a comprehensive discussion of the number of removed children has unfolded, the “Bringing them Home” Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (1997) estimates that around 100,000 children were removed. 42. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 119––his successor Kevin Ruud ﬁnally gave this apology in February 13, 2008. 43. Anders Fogh Rasmussen (2208) quoted from Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa webpage accessed May 7, 2016, http://knr.gl/en/node/133850. 44. Kladakis, “Grønlandsk Skam.” 45. Karen Langgård, “Magt og demokrati – og sprog,” in Gorm Winther, ed., Demokrati og magt i Grønland (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2003); Olsen, I Skyggen af, 160–162. 46. Aleqa Hammond in Information, November 18, 2013. 47. Aleqa Hammond in Information, November 18, 2013. 48. Søren Espersen in Jyllands Posten (Blog) February 18, 2014. 49. Quoted from Information, April 4, 2015. 50. See, for example, Information, April 4, 2015; Lars Jensen, “Forsoningskommission og selvransagelse –‘never the twain shall meet’” bag grund.com, December 21, 2014. 51. Et samlet land – Et samlet folk Koalitionsaftale 2013–2017 (2013). 52. http://saammaatta.gl/da/Om-os/Kommissorium,accessedMay10,2016. NOTES 143

53. http://saammaatta.gl/da/Om-os/Kommissorium/Kommissoriet, accessed May 10, 2016. 54. http://saammaatta.gl/da/Om-os/Kommissorium/Kommissoriet, accessed May 10, 2016. 55. Udvalget for samfundsgavnlig udnyttelse af Grønlands naturressourcer, Til gavn for Grønland (Ilisimatusarfik/University of Greenland and University of Copenhagen, 2014), 23. One member of the commission behind the rapport, Gudmundur Alfredsson Professor in “Polar Law” at Akureyri Universitet (Island) and Ilisimatusarfik (Greenland) expressed his dissenting opinion: “it borders on the absurd to claim that independence would result in undermining traditional culture, such as hunting and fishing; this goes against history in Greenland and in other colonial situations.” Udvalget for, Til gavn for Grønland, 48. 56. Aqqaluk Lynge, “Strengthening Culture Through Change: Will Climate Change Strengthen or Destroy Us?” address at the University of Edinburgh, October 20, 2009. 57. ICC, Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource Development Principles in Inuit Nunaat (2011). 58. Jeppe Strandsbjerg, “De oprindelige folk udfordrer den traditionelle statstænkning i diskussionen om Nordpolen,” in Jyllands-Posten, April 7, 2011. 59. Mark Nuttall, “Climate Change and the Warming Politics of Autonomy in Greenland,” Indigenous Affairs (2008): 295. 60. Mary Simon, in Chris Windeyer, “Inuit Divided over Oil Drilling off Greenland,” Nunatsiaqonline, June 24, 2010. 61. Aqqaluk Lynge, “Grønland kan ikke overskue olieefterforskning,” Ingeniøren, June 17, 2010. 62. Gry Søbye, “To Be or Not to Be Indigenous: Defining People and Sovereignty in Greenland After Self-Government,” in Karen Langgård and Kenneth Pedersen, eds., Modernization and Heritage: How to Combine the Two in Inuit Societies (Nuuk: Forlaget Atuagkat, 2013). 63. Søbye, “To Be or Not to Be Indigenous.” 64. Lars Trier Mogensen, “Fremtiden tegner sort for Grønland,” in Politiken, August 26, 2010. 65. Kuupik Kleist, “Grønlands fremtid: Danmark er formørket af oliefeber,” in Politiken, September 1, 2010. 66. Kuupik Kleist in Sylvia Pfeifer and Christopher Thompsom, “The Struggle for Greenland’s Oil,” Financial Times, August 26, 2011. 67. Henrik Leth, “Greenpeace er formynderisk,” in Weekendavisen, September 10, 2010; Kleist, “Grønlands fremtid”; Kleist, “The Struggle for”; Kuupik Kleist in Gloria Galloway, “Greenland’s Inuit Premier Defends Oil and Gas Drilling,” in Globe and Mail, February 23, 2011. 144 7 TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL GREENLAND

68. Kuupik Kleist, in Gloria Galloway, “Greenland’s Inuit Premier.” 69. Lill Rasted Bjørst, “Arktiske diskurser og klimaforandringer i Grønland. Fire (post)humanistiske klimastudier” (Ph.D. dissertation, Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2011). 70. Bjørst, “Arktiske diskurser.” 71. Frank Sejersen, Rethinking Greenland and the Arctic in the Era of Climate Change (London and New York: Routledge, 2015). 72. Sejersen, Rethinking Greenland,3. 73. Sejersen, Rethinking Greenland, 221. 74. Bjørst, “Arktiske diskurser,” 21. 75. Bjørst, “Arktiske diskurser,” 21. 76. Bjørst, “Arktiske diskurser,” 67–68. 77. Sejersen, Rethinking Greenland, 224 (with reference to Bjørst, “Arktiske diskurser”). 78. Website, Visit Greenland: http://www.greenland.com/en/about-green land/culture-spirit/hunting-culture/, accessed May 10, 2016. 79. Kirsten Hastrup, Thule På Tidens Rand (København: Lindhardt & Ringhof, 2015), 171–174. 80. Igor Krupnik et al., eds., Siku: Knowing Our Ice: Documenting Inuit Sea Ice Knowledge and Use (New York: Springer, 2010). 81. Hastrup, Thule, 163–164. 82. Thisted, “Nationbuilding – Nationbranding,” 599–600. 83. Hastrup, Thule, 18. CHAPTER 8

Afterword

In one of Copenhagen’s city squares stands a monument celebrating Greenlandic culture. It consists of three separate sculptures depicting male and female Greenlandic cultural ideals. Two of the sculptures portray women engaged in “traditional” activities: preparing fish and seal, and fishing for the small ammasat fish. The third sculpture, the centerpiece, shows a Greenlandic man with a kayak. There is a poignancy to the many ways this monument represents an idealized version of Greenlandic culture endorsed by colonial policies, especially those that took hold in the nineteenth century. The sculptures, crafted just before the Second World War, tell the tale of traditions built around hunting—especially seal hunting—as the most essential cultural feature. The square where the monument is located also happens to be a popular hangout for socially marginalized Greenlanders in Copenhagen, setting one image in relief against another: on the one hand, the idealized frozen images of Greenlanders in harmonious symbiosis with their natural environment; on the other, socially marginalized Greenlanders lingering around a monument that bears little resemblance to their current reality. In Danish media, film, and literature, Greenland and Greenlanders are often depicted as one of two stereotypes: noble or primitive people; or lost and rudderless in the modern world. In both roles they are trapped in their culture, unable to escape and enter a world in which they are participants. These contemporary stereotypes seem to be rooted in a perception of

Greenlandic culture that grew throughout the colonial period, and found its most elaborate form in the second half of the nineteenth century. As noted by Kirsten Thisted, Greenlandic youth seem to be taking part in a new phase of branding Greenland as a nation. In their version, Greenlandic identity is not oriented toward a stereotypical version of Greenlandic tradition but rather toward an open global identity.1 One of the events Thisted uses to demonstrate this evolution is a Danish television show, in which a choir consisting of members with Greenlandic heritage, led by pop singer Julie Berthelsen, competes with other choirs. During the competition, which Berthelsen’s choir ends up winning, the stereotypical image of Greenlandic identity is challenged in several ways. By intermixing Greenlandic elements with a diversity of other influences, the choir competition constitutes an “opening in the ethnicity-based understanding of nation which, with very few exceptions, has dominated the Greenlandic discourse.”2 Greenlandic youth are accordingly inserting themselves in a rebranding of Greenlandic identity which works both inwardly and out- wardly—in relation to Greenlandic self-identity and in relation to Danish images of Greenland and Greenlandic identity. As Thisted notes, however, it seems that the rebranding tendencies represent cautious openings in a field of well-established cultural images. The dialogue must be pushed even further and several important questions must be answered. To what degree does the unattainable ideal of an authentic, traditional, and static Greenlandic culture, as symbolized by the monument on the square, still play a role as a resource for identity? How are images of Danish and Greenlandic pasts evoked in relation to present- day identity? How can a more nuanced understanding of the colonial past contribute to the opening of identities? To most Danes, the great majority of Greenlanders living in Denmark who are living “ordinary” lives, are out of sight whereas the socially marginalized Greenlanders feature as a distinct group in the public space. On a symbolic level the scenario on the square in Copenhagen raises the issue of the uneasy relationship between modernization and tradition as it relates to Greenland today. The enduring images depicted of Greenlanders as either living in a static state of aboriginality or as marginalized and without direction in the modern world do little to foster understanding of the challenges they are grappling with in the contemporary world. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, an ethnographic discourse was established which underpinned the colonial policies and provided the colonial administrators with a resource in relation to reforms of the NOTES 147 colony. Paradoxically, in the 1960s and 1970s, when Greenland was in the middle of an abrupt modernization process, the ethnographic descriptions of Inuit tradition became an important resource for identity and critique in the Greenlandic struggle for recognition and rights. The modernization policies of the postcolonial phase became emblematic symbols of the colonial destruction of the Greenlandic culture. However, the cultural image based on tradition combined with a hostile attitude toward modernization entails the risk of establishing identities that confine Greenlanders to a limited space. A narrow understanding of colonialism does not capture the specificity of the colonial project in Greenland, and accordingly does not allow space for a nuanced understanding of the past and present relationship between Denmark and Greenland. All colonial projects found a particular form while sharing certain features such as the pervasive maintenance of difference between colonizer and colonized. The particularity of this colonial project and the history of colonization in Greenland is more than the history of abuses and cultural destruction, and a turn toward “precolonial tradition” is not the only remedy for social rootlessness. A more nuanced understanding of the colonial project in Greenland is a precondition for the opening of representations and self-representations in Greenland as well as Denmark. The specificity of the colonial project in Greenland is as important to recognize as the obviously colonial nature of the Danish dominance in Greenland.

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A B Admixture Beard, George Miller, 82–84 See also Storch, Mathias and neurasthenia (see Neurasthenia) Ahmed, Sara, 129, 131 See also Arctic neurasthenia See also shame Bentzon, Agnete Weis, 110 Ammassalik, 10, 21, 24–26 and juridical expedition (see Juridical See also East Greenlanders; Holm, Expedition) Gustav; Thomas Vilhelm; Bertelsen, Alfred, 79, 82–90 Wilhelm August; Women’s and kayak anxity (see Kayak anxiety) boat expedition and kayak dizziness (see Kayak Anderson, Warwick, 74, 84, dizziness) 89–90 and kayak fear (see Kayak fear) Angakkut, 18, 40 Berthelsen, Julie, 146 See also shamans Berthelsen, Jørgen, 107, 109 Anthropology, 14, 34–35 Berthelsen, Rasmus, 61–63 See also Ethnographic Bjørst, Lill Rasted, 137–138 discourse; Blanding (mixture), 57–58, 61–63, Ethnographic 66–76 knowledge and colonial governmentality Arctic neurasthenia, 83–87 (see Colonial governmentality) Arnold, David, 74 and governance (see Governance) Atassut, 132, 134 Boarding house, 55, 63–66 Atuagagdliutit, 120 See also Admixture; Blanding Authentic/Inauthentic, 23–25, Brill, A. A., 78 34–35, 146 See also Kayak dizziness; Kayak fear; See also Blanding Kayak anxiety Avangnâmioq, 99, 107 Broberg, Johan, 45–46

C Designation protocol, 43–45 Campbell, Brad, 82 See also Colonial governmentality; Catechist, 18, 38, 59–63, 66, 69, Blanding 99, 120 Catechist College, 18, 59, 62, 99 See also Colonial governmentality; E Blanding East Coast, 4, 12, 15–16, 21–27, 62 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 94 See also East Greenlanders Chanock, Martin, 115 East Greenlanders, 24–26 Chatterjee, Partha, 49 See also Holm, Gustav; Garde, – Cohn, Bernard, 9, 34 35 Vilhelm; Graah, Wilhelm – Colonial governmentality, 49 51, 66 August; Women’s boat Colonial manager (kolonibestyrer), 17, expedition 38, 43, 52, 64, 107, 113 Egede, Hans, 2, 27 – Consumption, 22, 76, 80 85 Elite, 5, 55, 59–63, 65, 67 – and coffee, 16, 22, 76, 80 83 See also Admixture – and tobacco, 16, 22, 76, 80 83 Eskimo-Orientalism, 9, 11, 17 Cooper, Frederick, 55, 64, 66, Espersen, Søren, 133 – 127 128 Ethnographic discourse, 1, 12, 17, 21, Council of Young Greenlanders (Unge 28, 34–35, 37, 40, 44, 50–51, 55, Grønlænderes råd), 125 60–61, 68, 78–79, 96–98, Crantz, David, 17, 27 111–112, 124–126, 138, 140, 146 Crozier, Anna, 86, 94 Ethnographic knowledge, 12, 14, 21, See also Neurasthenia; Arctic 29, 35, 44, 46 neurasthenia Crime, 40, 44, 95–112 Customs and rules, 16, 18–20, 50, 96, F 111, 115 Fabian, Johannes, 14–15, 27 and retraditionalization (see See also Denial of coevalness Retraditionalization) Fanon, Frantz, 73 See also tradition Fienup-Riordan, Ann, 9, 11, 14, 17 and eskimo-orientalism (see Eskimo-orientalism) – – D Fishing, 22 23, 119 123 Dahl, Jens, 127 Forchhammer, Søren, 43 Dalager, Lars, 17, 2 Foucault, Michel, 53, 61, 66, 70, 74 Danification, 125 Daugaard-Jensen, Jens, 107 G Decolonization, 98, 123 G-50 and G-60, 123 and danification, 125 See also Danification; Denial of coevalness, 14, 27 Decolonization; See also Fabian, Johannes Modernization INDEX 167

Gad, Finn, 98 Hansen, K. G., 80 Garde, Thomas Vilhelm, 21–24 and kayak dizziness/fear/anxiety Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke, 82, 87 (see Kayak dizziness/fear/ See also Neurasthenia anxiety) Godthåb (Nuuk), 10, 22–23, 38–40, Hastrup, Kirsten, 139–140 59–60, 75, 99–100, 130 Hedtoft, Hans, 98 Goldschmidt, Verner, 96, 110–111 Holm, Gustav, 21–24, 27 See also Juridical Expedition See also East Greenlanders; Holm, Governance, 1, 4, 6, 34, 44, 56, 68, Gustav; Garde, Vilhelm; Graah, 70–71, 91, 96–98, 111–112 Wilhelm August; Women’s and colonial governmentality boat–expedition (see Colonial governmentality) Hunters, 4–5, 19–23, 36–38, 40, See also Admixture; Blanding 42–47, 50, 57, 63, 69 Governmentality, 53, 66 See also Ethnographic discourse; and colonial governmentality Ethnographic knowledge; (see Colonial Governmentality) Colonial governmentality See also Governance Hvam, Jørgen, 108–109 Graah, Wilhelm August, 15–16, Hysteria, 77–78, 90 21–22, 24, 58 See also Ethnographic discourse; Ethnographic knowledge I Greenlander Home, 63–64 ICC [Inuit Circumpolar Conference, See also Boarding house later Inuit Circumpolar A Greenlander’s dream (En Council], 125, 135–136 grønlænders drøm), 66 Identity, 1, 5–6, 11, 55–56, 62, Greenland Home Rule Act, 2, 126, 132 66–67, 69, 82, 111, 119–120, Grønlænderhjemmet, 63–66, see 125–126, 128, 132–133, Boarding house; Greenlander 135–136, 140, 146–147 Home Inatsisartut, 132 Guardians (Paarsisut), 38, 101, 103, 114 See also Paarsisut Gundel, Peter, 95, 97–103, 105–109, 111 J Jakobshavn (Ilulissat), 59–60, 75, H 99–102, 106 Hammond, Aleqa, 129, 132–134 Janssen, C. E., 38, 62 Hansen, Hans, 46 Janssen, Louise, 99 Hansen, Johannes “Hansêrak”, 62–63 Jensen, Frede P., 122 See also East Greenlanders; Holm, Jensen, Henrik Garlik, 96 Gustav; Garde, Vilhelm; Graah, Jensen, Lars, 3, 11, 127 Wilhjelm August; Women’s Johansen, Lars Emil, 126 boat–expedition Julianehåb (Qaqortoq), 75, 103 168 INDEX

Juridical Expedition, 95–96, 98, M 109–110 Malaurie, Jean, 27–28 See also Law and order; Legal order Mamdani, Mahmood, 113, 115 Marriage, 2, 17, 43, 55–57 Medicine, 73–76, 80, 82, 91 – K Meldorf, Gustav, 80 82 – – Kayak, 19, 21–23, 39, 44–45, 48–49, Missionary, 13, 15, 17 18, 23 24, – 61, 65, 76–77, 79–90 36 38, 60, 70, 99 – Kayak dizziness/fear/anxiety, 76–77, Mixed courts of justice, 99 100, 79–90 102, 107 – – Kennedy, Dane, 86, 93 Mixture, 57, 59, 61 63, 66 67 – – Kielsen, Kim, 134 Modernization, 2, 4, 5 6, 36 37, 59, – Kjærgaard, Thorkild, 134 103 104, 108, 110, 120, – – Kleinschmidt, Samuel, 18–21, 25, 123 125, 127 128, 138 38, 40 Motzfeldt, Jonathan, 126 Kleist, Kuupik, 137 Municipal councils, 48, 100, – Kraepelin, Emil, 86 102 103, 106 Mylius-Erichsen, Ludvig, 26–27

L Larsen, Finn Breinholt, 96 N Law and order, 5, 41, 48, 95–98, Naalakkersuisut, 119, 129 100–101, 104, 108–112 Nangiarneq, 77, 79, 90 and dishonoring penal techniques, See also Kayak dizziness/fear/ 103–104 anxiety See also Legal order Neurasthenia, 77, 80–87, 89–90 Legacy, 1–3, 5, 119, 127–128, 132, Nexø, Sniff Andersen, 77 134, 137, 140 See also identity Legal order, 43, 121 O See also Law and order Oldendow, Knud, 107–108, 110, 121 Lindow, Harald, 103–105 Olsen, Moses, 126 and penal code (see Penal code) Olsen, Tupaarnaq Rosing, 125 Literary Expedition, 26 Orientalism, 9, 11–12, 17 Local Boards, 4, 37, 39–40, 42–43, 45, 48–50, 63, 100–101 See also Colonial governmentality; Governance P Lynge, Aqqaluk, 135–136 Paarsisoq/Paarsisut, 38–40, 48–49, 101 Lynge, Augo, 123 Partii Inuit, 132, 134 Lynge, Frederik, 123 Peary, Robert, 78 Lynge, Inge, 77–79 Penal code, 96, 98, 103, 105–111 INDEX 169

Penal system, 5, 95, 102–104, Rønsager, Mette, 91–92 107–108, 112 Royal Greenland Trading Petersen, Hanne, 96 Company, 22, 36, 45, 57–58, Petterson, Christina, 69–70 64–66, 70 Pibloqtoq, 77, 90 Ryberg, Carl, 104 Polar-Eskimos, 25–27, 78 Pontoppidan, Knud, 81–83, 85–87 Prakash, Gyan, 91 S Provincial governor, 10, 38, 64, Said, Edward W., 9, 11 – 100 103, 105, 107, 109, Schultz–Lorentzen, Christian 111, 121 Wilhelm, 107 Provincial councils, 100, 103, Scott, David, 49, 66 – 105, 107 108, 110, Self-Government Act, 2, 119 – 120 121, 123 Sejersen, Frank, 137–139 – Punishment, 40 41, 97, 100, Seiding, Inge Høst, 56 – 103 104, 106, 114 Shamans, 13, 17–18, 40 – and public shaming, 100, 104 105, Shame, 5, 44, 46, 50, 79, – 114 115 98, 104–105, 108–109, 111, 115 Siumut, 132–133, 134 Smith, Helle Thorning, 133–134 Q Søbye, Gry, 137 Qivittoq, 77, 79, 90 Sørensen, Axel Kjær, 127–128 Stauning, Thorvald, 3, 67 Steinmetz, George, 12, 33, 37 R Stoler, Ann Laura, 55, 64, 66 – Race, 4, 17, 75, 77–78, 82, 84–85, Stone Age, 27 28 – 87–90, 112 Storch, Mathias, 66 67, 121 Raibmon, Paige, 34–36 Syssel courts, 107 Rasmussen, Anders Fogh, 131–132 Sysselmand, 107 Rasmussen, Knud, 27, 66–67, 125–126 Rasmussen, Lars Løkke, 131 T Reconciliation commission, 3, 127, Thalbitzer, William, 25 129, 132–134 Thisted, Kirsten, 11, 125–126, 146 Repartition, 43, 45–47 Thomas, Nicholas, 4, 49–50, 74, 111 Retraditionalization, 12 Thuesen, Søren, 60–61, 69 Rink, Hinrich Johannes, 17–19, 21, Thule, 2, 10, 15, 24–28, 31, 78, 98, 25, 27, 38, 40–41, 43, 45, 125–126, 130, 139–140 48–49, 65 Time-portals, 14–15, 78, 98 170 INDEX

Tradition, 1, 4–6, 9, 12, Vulnerability, 5, 68, 73, 76–77, 14–15, 17–19, 21–28, 33–41, 79–80, 90, 104, 120, 126, 46–47, 49–51, 55, 59–61, 63–66, 137–140 75–76, 77–81, 92, 95–98, 108–112, 120–122, 125–126, – – – 127 128, 135 140, 145 147 W West Greenlanders, 2, 16, 25, 27 U Wilhjelm, Henrik, 69 Umiaq (Women’s boat), 21, 63, 66 Women’s boat (Umiaq), 20–22, 44, 46–47, 62–63, 66 V Women’s boat-expedition, 21–22, 62 Vaughan, Megan, 74 See also Garde; Holm