Abstract
This chapter shows how an idealized perception of Greenlandic culture was forged throughout the colonial period. 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 century gained the opportunity to come face-to-face with the precolonial past in Greenland and to study and construct the Greenlanders’ otherness in the intersection of past and present. Accordingly the chapter 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.
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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).
- 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 = shaman) 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).
- 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.
- 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.
Bibliography
Crantz, David. Historie von Grönland, enthaltend die Beschreibung des Landes und der Einwohner, u. insbesondere die Geschichte der dortigen Mission der Evangelischen BrÜder zu Neu-Herrnhut und Lichtenfels. Frankfurt: Barby, 1765.
Dalager, Lars. 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: Trykt hos Ludolph Henrich Lillies Enke, 1752.
Egede, Hans. Det gamle Grønlands nye perlustration eller natural-historie. København: Johan Christoph Groth, 1741.
Malaurie, Jean. The last kings of Thule. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982 (1976).
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Rud, S. (2017). Ethnography, Time, and the Idealization of Tradition. In: Colonialism in Greenland. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46158-8_2
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