When people in Denmark think of Greenlanders, they often fall back on a tired, damaging stereotype - the drunk Greenlander, loitering around Copenhagen. It's a narrow lens, and it has hurt generations of us who grew up carrying the weight of someone else's assumptions.
I noticed the difference when I moved to Sweden in the 90s. Swedes, while distant in their knowledge of Greenland, didn’t hold the same loaded image. They had their own challenges, worse in some ways, but the prejudice wasn’t the same. And perhaps because they had the Sami - a native people who, like us, are deeply tied to nature - there was a kind of quiet, indirect understanding.
Back home as kids, we had TV through bootlegged cassettes with Swedish subtitles. That’s how we learned the language. But real-life Sweden was harder than subtitles. It took time, but eventually I found friends, learned the culture, and adapted. That said, this story isn't about Sweden - it’s about the weight we carried long before.
The Boarding School Years
In the 70s, I was shipped to Denmark with 50 other Greenlandic kids to attend a boarding school specifically for us. We were completely isolated from Danish society. The older students had already picked up bad habits from the year before - they taught us where to get cannabis, alcohol, and how to hide it all. It was never part of our northern culture. I later realized how trauma and hallucinogens don’t mix well. We needed guidance, not exile. We were thrown into an arena with no tools - no mentors, no shield.
The Struggle for Acceptance
The hostility from Danish society was the biggest shock. It wasn't always overt, but it was constant. We had to be twice as good to be half as accepted. In music, in school - in life - we were never good enough in their eyes. High school was where it all hit hardest. I was already writing musicals and had a reputation among my peers for being a creator. But the Greenlandic musicians from Nuuk, who would later join famous bands like G-60 and Rasmus Lyberth’s band, looked down on me. They only spoke Danish and acted like they weren’t Greenlandic. That rejection cut deeper than the Danish one.
I tried to join the school band. No explanation why they wouldn’t let me. My music teacher already had his bias. He saw me once rehearsing with two girls who sang beautifully. But nothing I did was enough. Even my late-50s Gibson guitar wasn’t "good enough" because it had a custom paint job. I wasn’t a brand snob - someone had gifted me that guitar because they believed in me. Later, I burned it. It carried too many bad memories.
Alone with the Music
No matter how good we were, we were still just "drunken natives" in their eyes. Even the Greenlandic girls distanced themselves, ashamed to be seen as "savages." I kept making music alone. I wrote hundreds of songs - from pain, from trauma, from the isolation. I kept them to myself. Any time I shared something, I was slapped down with, "You Greenlanders can't be this good."
The tracks on my channel and the streaming platforms - most are demos from back then. Even after not touching an instrument for over 30 years, I still remembered them. Thanks to my Atari ST 1040fm and Cubase, I saved everything in MIDI. That’s how much it mattered.
Breaking Through and Being Shut Out
Even when I got close to joining big names like Pretty Maids, the same skepticism returned: "You can’t be in a hard rock band as a Greenlander." (Not from the band - they were professional, fair - but from the people around.) Then I got hit by a parasite infection that ruined my hand. That ended my music career for over three decades.
The Return
But now, I’m back - re-recording everything. The deniers have gone silent. They act like they don’t know me. Maybe it hurts to watch someone they dismissed shine while their own careers fade. So I leaned in - exaggerated the output. Released nearly 20 albums, over 10 EPs, countless singles. I even removed many of them. Still not enough. Never good enough.
Not even my own people are in the listener stats - Greenland is barely on the map. That’s the bitter irony: I proved them all wrong, and still, they find new excuses. After all, I’m only a Greenlander.
Pride in Identity
But maybe that’s exactly why I do this.
Because being only a Greenlander is already more than enough.
I am a very proud Greenlander. I speak the language fluently and still carry the original dialect of the 70s. It’s in my voice, my identity, and my music - and no one can take that away from me.