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A blue whale is caught in Nuuk in 1962 and so a big party.

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Ad for Greenlandic tin souvenirs (of all things) in an old journal from Sisimiut.

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First page from an old Sisimiut journal. Where the author discusses how Danish liability offices are concerned for business privatization in Greenland. Because it does not fit in with “the path one envisions for Greenland”, ie expanding  ”too quickly.” Hm. Also note the bizarre old orthography with â for aa and some odd spellings.

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Fun news. Narsarsuaq Museum bought a collection of photos on ebay from an American soldier who was stationed at Kangerlussuaq in World War II and they include one of Marlene Dietrich on her visit to the airbase.

Greenland’s World War II history is odd and a bit bad as far as imperialism, as it was in the rest of the Realm. After Denmark was occupied Eske Brun, the Danish ‘governor’ of Greenland, declared Greenland seceded from Denmark and worked with the Danish ambassador to the USA, Henrik Kauffmann, who signed an agreement allowing American troops to be placed in Greenland. There were good things that came from it - reliable food and other resources which Greenland would have previously received from Denmark that would be cut off, and the American troops stopped the Germans creating monitoring stations in the east. But after the war and with the start of the Cold War this meant the US had a mostly unrestricted right to set up bases where it wanted and at the high point there were about 15 US bases in Greenland. As everywhere there are military bases but especially of foreign military, there were many ‘mild’ cases of exploitation of the land, Greenlandic workers and so on, and of course there was the hydrogen bomb plane disaster at Thule. Besides that there is the argument to be made against militarism, abuse and the risking of a foreign nation in a war it is not involved in, and Denmark’s abuse of the US presence making Greenland highly strategic, allowing Denmark to advance in world politics (notably NATO) without ever using that authority to benefit Greenland. After the fall of the Soviet Union all but the base in Thule have closed and the US still cites the World War II agreement as its ‘right’ for keeping the base whenever objection arises.

But anyway it is good the museum can collect some daily life photos of this time period.

Mere juletid narrestreger. All Danish children are told Santa lives in Greenland. Obviously there are problems here what with encouraging the thought that Greenland is this perfect natural paradise vacant of people but I am sucked into the holiday cosiness. There are no good advent calendar things anymore.

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Old view of Inspektorbakken, 1978.

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Sigurður Guðmundsson. Compositional, musical, mental and photographic harmony.

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Nuuk from above from  the 70z.

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Hans Egede, the ever-present colonialist, watches over Nuuk.

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takingtigermountain:

Fridtjof Nansen & company on the coast of Greenland, 1888