Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.08.2009, Page 38

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12 — 2009 Flight provided by Air Iceland.
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Travel | Greenland
Politics, Culture and Driving in Circles
A shallow glimpse at life in Nuuk
“People are very private here. You need
a local to gain their trust,” Piitaaraq ex-
plained in an attempt to quell my dis-
appointment upon being shunned by a
dozen individual locals I had attempted
to speak with. “You need a man – I’m the
man.”
Nuuk is an enigmatic place. There’s a
cultural dichotomy in play that is natural
and common place for those Greenland-
ers and Danes who live there but seems
so isolating and exclusionary for visitors
not familiar with that reality. Requiring
a native to gain the trust of those with
whom I wished to speak meant that I
look
1) too Danish or
2) too foreign
for Greenlanders to want to speak with
me. Just as I look too Danish to visit a
lengthy list of bars I was given, scrawled
in pen under the header: “don’t go!”
THE POLITICS OF CULTURE
There’s a push and pull in Nuuk between
the Greenlanders and the Danes, with
the former trying to secure their inde-
pendence from the latter in any way they
can. Even the once Danish street names
have recently been changed to Greenlan-
dic ones, something that some Green-
landic locals find confusing, according
to Piitaaraq, a 29-year-old Nuuk local and
employee of Nuuk Tourism who played
host to the Grapevine during our time in
Greenland’s capital. “The old politicians
are getting on in age and are thinking ‘I
want people to remember my name,’” he
said. “But I think it’s rushed.”
At the time of our visit in the first
week of June, Greenland was undergo-
ing an election to put in place the gov-
ernment that would be the first national
party to have control over judicial affairs,
policing, and natural resources before
June 21st (the cut-off date decided upon
by the Danish government). This histor-
ic event seemed to affect everything we
experienced while in Nuuk. The streets
were decorated with signs of the change,
with election posters covering every elec-
tric pole, lamppost and bus shelter early
in the week, and spread over the concrete
and strewn through the ditches post-
election.
The elections and the debate over
Greenland’s ability to adopt responsi-
bilities that had previously been tended
to by the Danish ruling parties was on
everybody’s minds, and everybody had
an opinion on the matter. Most of those
who would speak their minds, through
the trusted local Piitaaraq, seemed scep-
tical, having endured years of political
scandal – misappropriation of funds
and sex scandals, specifically – but oth-
ers were optimistic that the young and
educated politicians of the victorious
Inuit Ataqatigiit party would be capable
of fostering real and positive change for
the nation. As Theresa, director of Nuuk
Tourism stated, “a lot of politicians had a
vision but they didn’t have the education
to back it up. Now there’s a lot of young
people, educated people, and that’s a
good thing.”
HOME IS WHERE 1% OF THE
POPULATION IS
Upon arriving in Nuuk, the housing
is likely to be the first thing that leaps
out at you. Idealized visions of colour-
ful fishing cottages along the shore are
immediately replaced with the reality
of monstrous and expansive blocks of
apartments, decaying façades and rusted
balconies, dominating the city. Those
quaint Crayola-colour wooden homes
do exist, making for a picturesque walk
around the old harbour, but direct your
gaze away from the sea and the real Nuuk
hits you with great force.
One of the apartments, Blok P, houses
more than 1% of Greenland’s population.
Now, Greenland happens to be the most
sparsely populated nation per square
kilometre in the world, but that statistic
is still impressive. The long rectangu-
lar building appears to be somewhat of
an optical illusion if viewed from one of
its ends, as is seems to cover an impos-
sibly long expanse of land in the centre
of Nuuk, consecutive columns of rusted,
laundry-strewn balconies disappearing
into the horizon. It’s depressingly im-
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