Publications

Letters from Greenland was part of a series of 'letters' or updates about the COVID-19 situation in the Nordic countries in 2020. Fellow authors were Andrew Newby (Finland), Peter de Souza (Sweden – works in Norway), Henrik Halkier (Denmark), Rebecca Stirzaker (Norway), Elisabeth Holm (Faroe Islands) and Ingibjorg Agustsdottir (Iceland). During the 'corona year' 2020 the updates were collected and shared regularly via the Facebook group Nordic Horizons. Nordic Horizons is an informal group of Scottish professionals who want to raise the standard of knowledge and debate about life and policy in the Nordic nations. The group facebook page has 2.900 followers and acts as a repository for information, presentations, digital media of the meetings of the group and posts of members. See www.nordichorizons.org for more details.

The Nordic Studies Online as a part of the digi-loikka project aims to create a digital learning platform about the Nordics. This project is a joint-initiative of several scholars from the University of Helsinki (Department of Cultures/Centre for Nordic Studies), University of Gdansk (Scandinavian Studies) and Aarhus University (Department of History), and also cooperates with the ReNEW research hub and with the online platform, nordics.info.

Blok P makes a great read for people that want to know about more than polar bears and the melting ice cap when it comes to Greenland. The book includes many positive and life affirming messages to those of us that think living in 1960s housing, in any country, was pure torture. The memories collected for this project are both nostalgic and happy - about things such as running water, having a bathtub, forming new friendships and communities and having access to Nuuk’s shops and pubs. On the more serious side, the book is a useful reflection on the role of architecture in the historical and ongoing physical and social violence of Nordic colonialism. But, most of all, the book is an essential reminder about the most important part of the Arctic - the people – and how they actively and continuously adapt and reimagine their worlds. With or without polar bears.

This article is dedicated to the complex web of gender and colonial relationships in biographical writing. The author's main focus is on publications by two women of high society who traveled through the colonial North in the early 20th century, Danish Emilie Demant-Hatt (1873-1958) and Scottish Isobel Wylie Hutchison (1889-1982). An analysis of these textual and visual works allows us to see how they made a contribution to the colonial project, while undermining it at the same time, and how colonial femininity combines obedience and disobedience.

The new research project "The Art of Nordic Colonialism: Writing Transcultural Histories", is funded by the Danish Carlsberg Foundation, and brings together researchers, curators, and artists working on art and visual culture related to Nordic colonial projects in the Caribbean, West Africa, India, Greenland, Iceland, and Sápmi. Organised by the Nuuk Art Museum and hosted by Department of Cultural and Social History at the University of Greenland, the research group held a public one-day conference at the University of Greenland during “Nuuk Nordisk Kulturfestival” 2019.

Artists took actively part in imperialist projects from the 17th century and onwards, either as participants in colonial expeditions, as »tourists« and travelers, or as onlookers from home. At the same time, colonized subjects used aesthetic practices in their resistance to colonial rule. The conference inaugurated a collective examination and discussion of the role colonialism has had on the creation and reception of art and art histories across the Nordic countries and their former colonies from the 1600s up until the present. Responding to three artworks from the Nuuk Art Museum's collection, first and second year students from the Department of Cultural and Social History presented individual "think pieces" on the connections between visual art and colonial history in Greenland to an international audience.