{"id":1837,"date":"2019-08-31T14:36:58","date_gmt":"2019-08-31T14:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/?p=1837"},"modified":"2019-08-31T14:39:21","modified_gmt":"2019-08-31T14:39:21","slug":"whats-this-thing-about-greenland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2019\/08\/31\/whats-this-thing-about-greenland\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s this thing about Greenland?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Greenland and Denmark are separate nations, but are still linked by for example Queen Margrethe the 2nd. (Free image from Pixabay<\/a>, no copyright.)<\/p><\/div>\n

Although this is an apolitical blog, it\u2019s hard to ignore that there has been a lot of talk about Denmark this month \u2013 or rather about Greenland. Without going into politics (which I\u2019ll leave for others), I thought this might be a decent moment to re-highlight the Danish-Greenlandic connections a bit. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

In 2019, Gr\u00f8nland<\/strong> and Danmark<\/strong> are wholly separate lande<\/strong> (countries), with different governments, flag <\/strong>(flags), sprog <\/strong>(languages), dr\u00f8mme <\/strong>(dreams)\u2026 Together with F\u00e6r\u00f8erne<\/strong> (the Faroe Islands), they make up Rigsf\u00e6llesskabet<\/strong> \u2013 the Danish \u201dCommonwealth\u201d. Within this group, little Denmark is still the \u201dbig brother\u201d with responsibility for things like the military. Many people in Gr\u00f8nland<\/strong> (and F\u00e6r\u00f8erne<\/strong>) want full selvst\u00e6ndighed<\/strong> (independence). Other people wish to stay under the Danish \u201dumbrella\u201d (and keep the bloktilskud<\/strong> \u2013 block grant \u2013 an annual payment from Copenhagen).<\/p>\n

The connections between Scandinavia and Greenland go back to vikingetiden <\/strong>(the Viking Age, 9-11-th<\/span> century), where vikinger<\/strong> such as Erik den R\u00f8de<\/strong> (Eric the Red) sailed west from Iceland and settled in an \u201dunknown\u201d island. To attract Vikings to the settlement, Erik coined the name Green-land \u2013 which sounds funny, considering how white the ice-capped island typically looks on a map! \ud83d\ude42 But the Viking settlers did find a lot of green fields in the south (at a time when summers were particularly hot). Of course, native gr\u00f8nl\u00e6ndere<\/strong> (greenlanders) were already in the country (which they called Kalaallit Nunaat \u2013 the land of the Greenlanders).<\/p>\n

When Kalmarunionen<\/strong> \u2013 a union of Nordic countries \u2013 was created in 1397, the Vikings had disappeared from Greenland. Since the island had been considered Norwegian territory (Erik the Red and many of the other Viking settlers were Norwegian), Greenland too was lumped into the union, which was ruled from Copenhagen. Even after the Kalmar Union broke apart (in 1523), Greenland remained a part of the Danish realm.<\/p>\n

For centuries, Greenland was a Danish colony, and many Danish citizens moved to the island \u2013 like Hans Egede (1686-1758), a famous missionary. Likewise, many Greenlanders also moved to Denmark to make a living. Those past centuries are not the proudest moment of Danish history, since Greenlanders were often not treated very well or respectfully. Fortunately, with the 2009 selvstyre <\/strong>(home rule), Greenland is no longer a colony, and Greenlanders are busy creating their own future.<\/p>\n

In Greenland, some people talk about replacing Danish with English as their second language. But there are still many Danish-speaking people living and working in Greenland \u2013 and many Greenlandic-speaking people living and working in Denmark. So, for the moment, it would make sense for Danish-learners to know a little bit about the country of Greenland also. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Although this is an apolitical blog, it\u2019s hard to ignore that there has been a lot of talk about Denmark this month \u2013 or rather about Greenland. Without going into politics (which I\u2019ll leave for others), I thought this might be a decent moment to re-highlight the Danish-Greenlandic connections a bit. \ud83d\ude42 In 2019, Gr\u00f8nland…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":1839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[362636,510706,510705,362652,362639,3508],"class_list":["post-1837","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-greenland","tag-greenlanders","tag-kalmarunionen","tag-rigsfaellesskabet","tag-selvstyre","tag-vikings"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1837"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1844,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions\/1844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}