The other day I saw a video of someone extolling the virtues of Greenland’s living standards and free health and education systems over other ‘developed’ nations and I felt a stir of dissent. It is likely that most people probably think the living standard in Greenland is significantly lower than it actually is. Measured using …
Greenland has a difficult relationship with alcohol. Thirty years ago, Greenlanders drank more than twice as much alcohol as Danes, resulting in the typical social problems with alcohol abuse. To combat this, higher excises were brought in from the early 90s. Periodically, restrictions have included rationing and reduction in limits of duty free alcohol (at …
Greenland has eleven diagnosed cases of coronavirus, all in the capital, Nuuk. The first reported case was on March 16. Ten have now recovered, leaving one person still ill in home quarantine. One person in Greenland’s population of 56,000. One person in Nuuk’s population of almost 18,000. The Premier’s updated response yesterday was to extend …
Living in a remote place is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, we are by our remote nature, somewhat shielded from a contagious virus. On the other hand, once it arrives, remote communities with limited health care facilities at the best of times are likely to be unable to cope. Only on …
*Another startled Greenlandic resident – a tupilak from the Nuuk Art Museum One meets diverse and unexpected people in Greenland at diverse and unexpected times. Last summer, a friend invited my husband, son and I over for coffee and cake one Sunday afternoon. She had some foreign visitors, officials of some kind from the UK …
Walking along the street toward work in the morning darkness, I watched the seconds on my phone stopwatch slowly tick toward 8:15am. Only 45 seconds to go. I was ready to make the call. Careful to keep my footing on the icy pavement, I watched the seconds creep by…tick…tick…tick. But what was it I had …
Last week, my husband was out fishing on a fjord close to Nuuk. When he was ready to return home, he turned the key in the ignition and nothing happened. The engine had failed. There were no boats around. Being still close to Nuuk and fortunately within mobile reception, he called the police. Explaining the …
People say that no matter what the debate in the Greenlandic parliament, the politicians always end up talking about fish. Fishing dominates Greenland’s economy, accounting for about 90% of the revenue. This is a bad position to be in, in a changing climate, as the Government of Greenland well knows. And thus, they are looking …
Things got weird last week. Life is always weird in Greenland in one way or another, which is kind of nice generally. But last week they got weird in a bad way. First Trump said he wanted to buy Greenland. That was pretty funny. But while we were all laughing, Trump was getting cross. A …