Some pics from Jyllands Posten of the second day:
https://jyllands-posten.dk/indland/...-dronningen-paa-jubilaeumsbesoeg-i-groenland/
QMII is today in the capital of Nuuk.
Here she will commemorate the 100 the anniversary of the first DRF visit to Greenland, that at the time was predominantly and hunter-gatherer society, albeit deeply Christian. With a population of 10-15.000 at the most.
She is also attending the inauguration of the new bishop of Greenland. That takes place in Hans Egede Church in Nuuk.
Now Hans Egede is the man who is directly responsible for Greenland being Christian, deeply Christian in fact and I'd say de facto 100 % Lutheran.
He was Danish-Norwegian and he and his sons went to Greenland around the mid 1700's to spread Christianity there - and with remarkable success!
At the time Greenland was very isolated. The odd whale hunters came up there and so did the occasional ship collecting fur and Narwhal tusks and that was pretty much the only European contact the Greenlanders had. Until it was decided in Copenhagen that now we really needed to take official control of Greenland, with a proper administration and that included Christening the natives. (*)
So off Hans Egede went with his sons and they stayed there for many years. In line with most of the most successful missionaries they learned the language and learned about the culture and how to live and indeed survive in Greenland. He also had the Bible translated to Greenlandic (two of his sons were linguists) so the missionary work took place in Greenlandic rather than Danish or Norwegian. Ironically that helped preserving the Greenlandic language from being replaced with Danish, because the basic community sang psalms in Greenlandic and the priests had to learn Greenlandic in order to tell the Gospel.
But back to Hans Egede, his missionary work replaced the shamanistic religion, but did not replace the culture, which with some modification absorbed Christianity. And in a world where life is very much on the edge, Christianity grew very strong and that's how it is today. Christianity is much stronger than in Denmark.
However, to a good deal of the Greenlanders Hans Egede is also a symbol of Danish colonialism. Because Danish control, genuine control that is, only returned to Greenland at the time Hans Egede went there. And even as late as the 1930's there was a dispute in the League of Nations between DK and Norway about control over North-East Greenland.
I don't think you can call Greenland a colony as such, it never produced a surplus and was never settled by many Danes or exploited for real. It was more a kind of protectorate that eventually got home rule.
The most damaging time for Greenland, in regards to it's culture and Danish dominance was during the 50's and 60's, and done with the best intentions.
Now, Greenland really needed to enter the 20th century! That included more or less removing children by force, taking them to Denmark where they were to be given a modern education enabling them to become the future businessmen and administrators in Greenland - that unsurprisingly failed miserably! The children didn't embrace Danish culture and the modern world, they missed their parents and family terribly. The poor critters.
- The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...
In Greenland itself the transition from a hunter-gatherer society or a more urbanized modern society caused a lot of problems as well. Done within a generation it was a culture revolution that could easily match the one in China at the same time - with similar calamities. A lot of the huge social problems in Greenland today stems from that period, because social issues tend to be passed on from parent to child...
Anyway, to many Greenlanders Hans Egede is seen as the symbol of the - what shall we call it - oppression of the traditional Greenlandic lifestyle. And not least of Danish dominance.
To many, especially young, Greenlanders, it s fashionable to seek their roots. That includes traditional tattoos, seeking up traditional cultural customs and wanting independence.
Of course the Greenland they seek doesn't exist anymore. Greenland is Internet and mobile phones, with a talent-drain to Denmark in particular and mixed genes. Quite a few Greenlanders physically resemble Danes more than Greenlanders.
In contrast we have those Greenlanders who see Hans Egede as the founder of Greenland as a genuine nation and as the one who introduced Christianity, which means something there.
Many Greenlanders have no desire to part with Denmark, knowing perfectly well that USA and China are ready to take over...
They also realize that the population in Greenland is way below critical (**) for a truly independent nation to work. There are simply not enough educated Greenlanders around for the multitude of tasks needed to run a state and to build up and maintain an independent economy - even if that includes a massive influx of foreign workers. Which would also become a problem...
The public sentiment in Denmark is very unsentimental: If Greenland want independence they can have it. But we, the Danes, won't pay for it.
The same thing applies to the Faeroe Islands. They were told very clearly that DK would help support their independence financially for four years, then they were on their own.
(*) The last Norse colonists in Greenland left or died no later that during the 1300's. Killed off or replaced by the Greenlanders who migrated in from the north, eventually taking over the whole island, and eradicating the very few indigenous groups who were already there.
From memory: The Greenlanders belongs to a migration group who came in from Siberia around 2.000 years ago. They were knonw to be more aggressive than the tribes they encountered on their way across northern Canada, which they marched across in a little as 1.000 years, before reaching Greenland, just around the year 1000. About the same time that the Nordic settlers arrived in the south.
That was during a warm spell, but the climate turned colder, benefiting the extremely well-adapted Greenlanders, but at the disadvantage of the Nordic settlers. There were reports of skirmishes, but no reinforcements came in from Scandinavia, where the three main countries there were busy establishing themselves as states and kingdoms.
So apart from the odd whaler and fur-traders there were no Europeans in Greenland between 1350 or so and 1725 or so.
But nominally Norway, and that really means Denmark claimed sovereignty over Greenland during these centuries.
(**) I read an estimation once saying that the critical level for an independent state to function is around 250.000 people. Most being at least reasonably well educated.
