Everything in Greenland happens on Facebook. Everything. Political debate, school notifications, lost and found, business advertising, property rentals, private buying and selling. There is a Facebook group for just about any organisation, business, hobby, or interest you could care to think of, the vast majority of which do not have a website. If you want to find out what is happening in Greenland, Facebook is it.
I live in the capital, Nuuk, and one of the most interesting Facebook groups related to Nuuk is ‘Køb – Salg – Bytte – Nuuk’, which means ‘Buy – Sell – Trade – Nuuk’. At the time of writing there were almost 25,000 members. This is almost half the population of Greenland. Only 16,000 people live in Nuuk.
I check ‘Buy – Sell – Trade – Nuuk’ regularly, mainly for entertainment. Here are some of the things I have seen advertised: kids toys and clothes, shotguns, whale blubber, iphones, underwear, boats, furniture, dried fish, ceramic plates with Greenlandic scenes, seal heads, fidget spinners, pot plants, narwhal meat. The narwhal post had a price per kilo and a photo of the recently dispatched animals lying bleeding on the ice.
The ‘seal heads wanted’ post was intriguing. Someone in Denmark wanted suppliers of Greenlandic seal heads with undamaged skulls, for educational purposes. Don’t ask me! The post came with a gruesome photo of a skinned seal head. One of the replies translated as:
“In Greenland we shoot them in the head, so good luck with getting intact skulls”.
Facebook has never been so fascinating.
