Publications

On 14 June 2022, an agreement between Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark, together with Greenland, resolved the long-standing dispute over the sovereignty of Hans Island (which is known as Tartupaluk in Greenlandic) by creating a land boundary. We discuss the Whiskey War-ordeal and the recent bargaining solution.

According to the narratives transmitted through media and political discourse, climate change reduces the ice coverage in the Arctic and enhances shipping and other forms of maritime activities. Especially, expectations of an increasing level of transit shipping between Asian, especially Chinese, ports and ports in Europe and North America is dominant. Evidence, however, tells that the numbers of transit shipping through the Arctic Ocean are very limited, and dominated by European shipping companies. For Greenland, political expectations have also been high, since Greenland has been seen as "strategically" situated in relation to new shipping routes in the Arctic, But, again, the actual development has been moderate and not related to international transits but conditions in Greenland itself.

The study of memory cultures often foregrounds the recovery of denied historical truths, with the recognition that social and cultural norms not only shape canonical versions of the past, but continue to be complicit in legitimised forms of forgetting and erasure. This article investigates the intersections between personal archives and other forms of cultural expression in acts of collective memoralization and forgetting. Using the personal archives of Josephine Diebitsch-Peary, the research introduces the concept of coloniality to studying Arctic memory cultures by examining the role of gender in the context of Arctic exploration. The article concludes that an understanding of the coloniality of knowledge and its connections to epistemic violence is crucial to the study of memory and historical legacy in the Arctic.

Around the Greenlandic and Antarctic coastlines, sediment plumes associated with glaciers are signi!cant sources of lithogenic material to the ocean. These plumes contain elevated concentrations of a range of trace metals, especially in particle bound phases, but it is not clear how these particles affect dissolved (<0.2 μm) metal distributions in the ocean. Here we show, using transects in 8 glacier fjords, trends in the distribution of dissolved iron, cobalt, nickel and copper (dFe, dCo, dNi, dCu). Following rapid dFe loss close to glacier out"ows, dFe concentrations in particular showed strong similarities between different fjords. Similar dFe concentrations were also observed between seasons/years when Nuup Kangerlua (SW Greenland) was revisited in spring, mid- and late-summer. Dissolved Cu, dCo and dNi concentrations were more variable and showed different gradients with salinity depending on the fjord, season and year. The lack of consistent trends for dCu and dNi largely re"ects less pronounced differences contrasting the concentration of in"owing shelf waters with fresher glacially-modi!ed waters. Particles also made only small contributions to total dissolvable Cu (dCu constituted 83 ± 28% of total dissolvable Cu) and Ni (dNi constituted 86 ± 28% of total dissolvable Ni) within glacier plumes. For comparison, dFe was a lower fraction of total dissolvable Fe; 3.5 ± 4.8%. High concentrations of total dissolvable Fe in some inner-fjord environments, up to 77 μM in Ameralik (SW Greenland), may drive enhanced removal of scavenged type elements, such as Co. Further variability may have been driven by local bedrock mineralogy, which could explain high concentrations of dNi (25–29 nM) and dCo (6–7 nM) in one coastal region of west Greenland (Kangaatsiaq). Our results suggest that dissolved trace element distributions in glacier fjords are in"uenced by a range of factors including: freshwater concentrations, local geology, drawdown by scavenging and primary production, saline in"ow, and sediment dynamics. Considering the lack of apparent seasonality in dFe concentrations, we suggest that "uxes of some trace elements may scale proportionately to fjord overturning rather than directly to freshwater discharge "ux.