Mapping Ultima Thule. Agata Lubowicka

Om billedet af Grønland i dansk litteratur,” Kosmorama, Vol. 49, No. 232 (2003), p. 63.

22 Drawing on Said’s concept of Orientalism, Danish literary scholar Hans Hauge has coined the notion of “Northientalism” or “Northism” [Danish: nordientalisme/nordisme], which he defines as the othering by Scandinavians of the peoples of Asian origin (i.e. Finns, Sami and Greenlanders) in order to produce an opposite against which to define their own identity. Hans Hauge, Post-Danmark. Politik og æstetik hinsides det nationale (København: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2003), p. 146. For a discussion of the Other as opposed to the peoples living in Nordic countries, see Kirsten Hastrup, “Nordboerne og de andre,” in: Den nordiske verden, ed. Kirsten Hastrup (København: Gyldendal, 1992), pp. 205–231.

23 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation (London & New York: Routledge, 1992) p. 111.

24 Saga o Grenlandczykach i Saga o Eryku Rudym, ed. Anna Waśko (Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka, 2006), p. 33; Hans Christian Gulløv, “Kulturmøder i Nord,” in: Grønlands forhistorie, eds. Hans Christian Gulløv et al. (København: Gyldendal, 2004), p. 211. The term “Greenlanders” was adopted in the 18th century by missionary Hans Egede to refer to the Inuit he encountered, which implies that he might not have realised they were a people of Eskimo origin and not the descendants of the Old Norse settlers. Mads Fægteborg, “Hans Egede,” in: Grønland – en refleksiv udfordring. Mission, kolonisation og udforskning, ed. Ole Høiris (Århus: Århus Universitetsforlag, 2009), p. 53.

25 Lesley Wylie, Colonial Tropes and Postcolonial Tricks: Rewriting the Tropics in the Novela de la Selva (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), p. 96.

26 A similar mechanism is also at work in Western literature on the Sami, as noticed by Maria Sibińska. Maria Sibińska, Marginalitet og myte i moderne nordnorsk lyrikk (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2002), pp. 15–16, footnote 14.

27 Hanne Thomsen, “Ægte grønlændere og nye grønlændere – om forskellige opfattelser af grønlandskhed,” Den Jyske Historiker, No. 81 (1998), pp. 28–30.

28 Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 29.

29 The best known of such depictions include accounts authored by Hans Egede: Omstændelig og Udførlig Relation ang. den grønlandske Missions Begyndelse og Fortsættelse (1738) and Det gamle Grønlands nye Perlustration eller Naturel-Historie, og Beskrivelse over det gamle Grønlands Situation, Luft, Temperament og Beskaffenhed (1741), and the writings of his son Poul (1708–1789): Continuation af Relationerne betreffende den grønlandske Missions Tilstand og Beskaffenhed forfattet i Form af en Journal fra anno 1734 til 1740 (1741) and Efterretninger om Grønland, uddragne af en Journal holden fra 1721 til 1788. These descriptions concerned the known areas of the Danish colony, while the territories situated north of the remotest colony (i.e. Uummannaq in 1763, and after the founding of Upernavik, the Tasiusaq trading station) still formed a terra incognita, and despite an interest in them which these texts express, the language in which the areas are referred to is conjectural and speculative. Poul Egede, “Efterretninger om Grønland uddragne af en journal holden fra 1721 til 1788,” ed. Mads Lidegaard, Det Grønlandske Selskabs Skrifter, No. 29 (1988), p. 64; Henrik Christopher Glahn, “Glahns anmærkninger. 1700-tallets grønlændere – et nærbillede,” ed. Mads Lidegaard, Det Grønlandske Selskabs Skrifter, No. 30 (1991), pp. 19, 35.

30 Such critiques were voiced primarily by the educated Danish elite, who knew about the conditions of life in Greenland. Criticism of colonial rule, instances of which appeared as early as in the diaries of Henrik Christopher Glahn (1738–1804) and accounts of other missionaries in the first half of the 19th century, such as Johan Christian Wilhelm Funch (1802–1867), was thus in fact no novelty at that time.

31 Thomsen, “Ægte grønlændere og nye grønlændere,” p. 30.

32 Johan Christian Wilhelm Funch, Syv Aar i Nordgrønland (Viborg 1840), Preface (n.p.).

33 Erik Gant, “Den excentriske eskimo,” Tidsskriftet Grønland, Vol. 44, No. 5 (1996), p. 177.

34 Besides the accounts by Hans and Poul Egede, notable examples include first and foremost Historie von Grönland (1765) by David Crantz, Anmærkninger over de tre første bøger af Hr. David Crantzes Historie om Grønland (1771) by Henrik Christopher Glahn and Tredie Continuation af Relationerne betreffende den grønlandske Missions Tilstand og Beskaffenhed forfattet i Form af en Journal fra Anno 1739 til 1743 (1744) by Niels Rasch Egede.

35 In the introduction to his Efterretninger om Grønland, Poul Egede describes Greenlanders as “fellow humans” of Europeans. Egede, “Efterretninger om Grønland,” p. 12. Danish literary scholar Karen Langgård argues that in the texts by Egede and his sons (as well as by Moravian missionaries), Greenlanders exhibit a considerable subjective agency in cultural encounters with missionaries. Karen Langgård, “John Ross and Fr. Blackley: European Discourses about Inuit and Danes in Greenland 1700–1850,” in: Northbound: Travels, Images, Encounters 1700–1830, ed. Karen Klitgaard Povlsen (Århus: Århus University Press, 2007), p. 309.

36 “Efterretninger om Grønland” by Poul Egede and Historie von Grönland by David Crantz also contain such letters. Dated in 1756, a letter included in Egede’s account, attributed to Poul the Greenlander and re-printed by Fridtjof Nansen in his book on Greenlanders entitled Eskimoliv (English edition: Eskimo Life, 1893), is now believed to have been written by Poul Egede himself, following the popular European convention of producing imitations of travel literature in which European authors used non-European narrators to criticise the developments in their own countries. Inge Kleivan, “Poul Egede,” in: Grønland – en refleksiv udfordring. Mission, kolonisation og udforskning, ed. Ole Høiris (Århus: Århus Universitetsforlag, 2009) pp. 104, 122.

37 In this respect, Hans and Poul Egede’s first accounts are far more ambivalent about, for example, eating foods made by Greenlanders, their standards of hygiene and the smells in their homes.

38 For example, Glahn compares the pleasure of looking at icebergs to that of contemplating the monuments of antiquity in Italy. Glahn, “Glahns anmærkninger,” p. 37.

39 Fægteborg, “Hans Egede,” p. 42; Kleivan, “Poul Egede,” pp. 105–107.

40 Hinrich Johannes Rink, Om Grønlands Indland og Muligheden af at berejse Samme (København: G.E.C. Gad 1875), pp. 1–2, 9.

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