Thisted, Kirsten, Blame, Shame, and Atonement: Greenlandic Responses to Racialized Discourses about Greenlanders and Danes. (2022) [PDF]

Thisted, Kirsten, Blame, Shame, and Atonement: Greenlandic Responses to Racialized Discourses about Greenlanders and Danes, Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies, 1.2 (2022)

Outside Greenland, many believe that the Greenlandic name for Greenland means “Land of the People.” However, the Greenlandic word for human being or person is inuk (plural: inuit), and Greenland is called Kalaallit Nunaat not Inuit Nunaat. Kalaallit is the West Greenlandic term for modern-day Greenlanders who trace their ancestry along two lines: to the Inuit in the West and the Scandinavians in the East. During the first half of the twentieth century, this mixed ancestry was an important argument for the Greenlandic claim for recognition and equality. This article examines a literary source, Pavia Petersen’s 1944 novel, Niuvertorutsip pania (The outpost manager’s daughter). The novel’s female protagonist, who is of mixed ancestry, is staged as a national symbol for modern Greenland, a country that appropriates European culture while remaining Greenlandic. After the end of the colonial period, the Inuit legacy and Greenlanders’ status as an Indigenous people became important drivers of the Greenlandic claim for independence. In present-day Greenlandic film and literature, Danes are often left out of the story entirely, delegitimizing much of society’s genetic and cultural legacy. Naturally, this poses a problem for the Greenlanders who not only number Europeans among their remote ancestors but also live with a dual identity, with one Danish and one Greenlandic parent. This article illustrates that the notion of “mixed-breed” or “half” Greenlanders is currently regarded with such ambivalent feelings because it accentuates unresolved tensions among the ethnic groups, including the continued dominance of the outdated (colonial) affective economies in Danish-Greenlandic relations.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.5070/C81258339

Thisted, Kirsten. Blame, Shame, and Atonement: Greenlandic Responses to Racialized Discourses about Greenlanders and Danes. (2022) [PDF]

Thisted, Kirsten. (2022). Blame, Shame, and Atonement: Greenlandic Responses to Racialized Discourses about Greenlanders and Danes. Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.5070/C81258339

Outside Greenland, many believe that the Greenlandic name for Greenland means “Land of the People.” However, the Greenlandic word for human being or person is inuk (plural: inuit), and Greenland is called Kalaallit Nunaat not Inuit Nunaat. Kalaallit is the West Greenlandic term for modern-day Greenlanders who trace their ancestry along two lines: to the Inuit in the West and the Scandinavians in the East. During the first half of the twentieth century, this mixed ancestry was an important argument for the Greenlandic claim for recognition and equality. This article examines a literary source, Pavia Petersen’s 1944 novel, Niuvertorutsip pania (The outpost manager’s daughter). The novel’s female protagonist, who is of mixed ancestry, is staged as a national symbol for modern Greenland, a country that appropriates European culture while remaining Greenlandic. After the end of the colonial period, the Inuit legacy and Greenlanders’ status as an Indigenous people became important drivers of the Greenlandic claim for independence. In present-day Greenlandic film and literature, Danes are often left out of the story entirely, delegitimizing much of society’s genetic and cultural legacy. Naturally, this poses a problem for the Greenlanders who not only number Europeans among their remote ancestors but also live with a dual identity, with one Danish and one Greenlandic parent. This article illustrates that the notion of “mixed-breed” or “half” Greenlanders is currently regarded with such ambivalent feelings because it accentuates unresolved tensions among the ethnic groups, including the continued dominance of the outdated (colonial) affective economies in Danish-Greenlandic relations.

PDF: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3f23v2bj

Rasmussen, Kim Su, and Eli Park Sorensen. ‘Minor Subjects/Minor Literature: Maja Lee Langvads Find Holger Danske and the Search for Danishness’. (2011) [PDF]

Rasmussen, Kim Su, and Eli Park Sorensen. ‘Minor Subjects/Minor Literature: Maja Lee Langvads Find Holger Danske and the Search for Danishness’. 비교문학 Journal of Korean Adoption Studies, vol. 54, 한국비교문학회, 2011, pp. 225–249.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339570857_Minor_Subjects_Minor_Literature_Maja_Lee_Langvad%27s_Find_Holger_Danske_and_the_Search_for_Danishness. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339570857_Minor_Subjects_Minor_Literature_Maja_Lee_Langvad%27s_Find_Holger_Danske_and_the_Search_for_Danishness.

Ivenäs, Sabina. ‘White Like Me: Whiteness in Scandinavian Transnational Adoption Literature’. (2017) [PDF]

Ivenäs, Sabina. ‘White Like Me: Whiteness in Scandinavian Transnational Adoption Literature’. Scandinavian Studies, vol. 89, no. 2, [Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, University of Illinois Press], 2017, pp. 240–265.

From introduction:  This paper problematizes the concept of whiteness by applying it in the context of the Scandinavian transnational/transracial adoptee. What is unique about the Scandinavian transracial adoptee is that theyalmost exclusively grow up and live in white segregated middle- class environments  (Hübinette  2007).  Nevertheless,  Scandinavian  trans-racial  adoptees  blend  in  seamlessly  with  white  Scandinavian  society  in  terms  of  language,  culture,  and  behavior.  at  the  same  time,  in  contrast to transracial adoptees in more diverse countries such as the such as the United  States,  Canada,  France,  Australia,  and  the  Netherlands,  the  Scandinavian transracial adoptee non-white body becomes extremely concrete (Hübinette 2007, 117). In this paper, which conducts a critical reading of Scandinavian transnational adoption autofiction, I consider how Scandinavian transracial adoptees negotiate the fact that they, as non-white  individuals  are  raised  in,  and  thereby  indoctrinated  into,  the whiteness norm. In line with Dyer’s perspective on how whiteness is studied within white Western culture, this paper sets out to explore how self-representation of whiteness is depicted in Scandinavian trans-national adoptee autofiction. How do the Scandinavian transnational/transracial adoptees represent themselves as white in literary texts?

doi:10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0240.

PDF: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0240.

Bundsgaard, Mads Tobias. ‘Vilje og antisemitisme i Lykke-Per’. (2015) [PDF]

Bundsgaard, Mads Tobias. ‘Vilje og antisemitisme i Lykke-Per’. Rambam. Tidsskrift for jødisk kultur og forskning, vol. 24, no. 1, 1, 2015.

Antisemitism in Lucky Per This article examines Henrik Pontoppidan’s novel Lucky Per (Danish: Lykke-Per) by bringing two perspectives into focus: a Jewish and an anti-Semitic. The article begins with a count of all the animal characteristics that are used to describe the characters in the novel. The count makes it clear, that Jews and non-Jews are equally described as possessing these animal characteristics. The argument that the author is anti-Semite biased is in this way disproved. Further, the article documents the anti-Semitism that is present in the time-span of the novel (1864-1905) in Copenhagen and in Berlin. That is, the raw, the mild and the structural anti-Semitism. The novel is seen as a well-informed portrayal of the period. The clerical family of Sidenius and the secular Jewish family of Salomon are the main foci of the analysis; especially the son Per Sidenius (Lucky Per) and the daughter Jakobe. The anti-Semitism, as it is described in the novel, is compared to historical literature throughout the article. In relation to the time of publication of the novel, the article accepts the general racial attitudes of the population, and the progress of the Jewish character Jakobe is interpreted as a Nietzschean act of will. The article ends by concluding that the author of the novel wants to prove that, in spite of everything, a Jewish woman is capable of forcing her way through an anti-Semitic society.

https://tidsskrift.dk/rambam/article/view/26932.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/rambam/article/view/26932.

Lunde, Arne, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. ‘Helga Crane’s Copenhagen: Denmark, Colonialism, and Transnational Identity in Nella Larsen’s “Quicksand”’. (2008) [PDF]

Lunde, Arne, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. ‘Helga Crane’s Copenhagen: Denmark, Colonialism, and Transnational Identity in Nella Larsen’s “Quicksand”’. Comparative Literature, vol. 60, no. 3, [Duke University Press, University of Oregon], 2008, pp. 228–243.

PDF: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40279414.

Ipsen, Pernille. ‘“Plant Ikke Upas-Træet Om Vor Bolig”: Colonial Haunting, Race, and Interracial Marriage in Hans Christian Andersen’s Mulatten (1840)’. (2016) [PDF]

Ipsen, Pernille. ‘“Plant Ikke Upas-Træet Om Vor Bolig”: Colonial Haunting, Race, and Interracial Marriage in Hans Christian Andersen’s Mulatten (1840)’. Scandinavian Studies, vol. 88, no. 2, Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, University of Illinois Press, 2016, pp. 129–158.

doi:10.5406/scanstud.88.2.0129.

PDF: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/scanstud.88.2.0129.