In ancient times, writing was magic.
It was a shamanic act - a tool of power that shaped reality. To write something down was to make it real, permanent - to alter consciousness and history alike. As one might say, writing and magic are the same thing. The moment a story is written, it stops being just an idea - it becomes truth, even when it’s not. That’s the power we’ve given the written word, and that power, in Greenland, has not always worked in our favor.
When Others Wrote Our Story
For centuries, Inuit voices have been drowned out by those who wrote our stories for us. Anthropologists, missionaries, colonial governors, and scientists put pen to paper and decided who we were. And once it was written - it stuck.
The myth of the Norse - that the Vikings were here first, that Inuit were just latecomers from the north - has lingered in books, films, museums. Never mind that our presence across the Arctic predates these stories. Never mind that the Kennewick Man case in the US showed just how far science was willing to go to erase Indigenous presence in favor of more "acceptable" narratives. We’ve lived that here too. How many books, documentaries, or papers about “Greenland” include our voice - really include it?
Modern Greenland - A Nation of Readers Without Writers?
Fast forward to today - a Greenland that has technically governed itself for more than 40 years. But what has changed, really?
Yes, we write now. We teach writing. We have books, newspapers, blogs. But are we writing ourselves back in, or are we echoing the colonial voices that came before us?
Look at our political class. Many of them come from teacher schools. Intellectuals. Writers. Storytellers of a different kind. They’ve spent decades setting the tone for how we talk, how we think, how we argue. And most of them ended up in politics - why? Do they think they know better than the rest of us? Or is it just about the salary and the power?
When our language was officially rewritten in schools, it confused entire generations. Sure, the new orthography made more sense - but what did we lose? We lost the fluidity of the old tongue. We lost the ability to understand each other between generations. We lost the soul of our mother tongue - the way humans used to speak to one another.
Profit Over People
Greenland’s economy still revolves around fishing - as if the cod and shrimp would last forever. And it’s not the old communal fishing, either. It’s industrial. It’s about exports. It’s about profit. We haven’t built new income paths. We haven’t invested in sustainable industries or future-proof manufacturing. Meanwhile, we speak of pollution - but act like it’s someone else’s problem.
We’ve industrialized our politics, our language, our society - but we’ve barely modernized our spirit. And at the heart of this is writing. The words we use shape how we think. They shape laws, they shape identities, they shape what is considered true or false. And in Greenland, many of those words still come from a western mindset - even when written by our own.
The Broken Tongue of the Next Generation
Watch YouTube. Listen to the influencers. Hear how the younger generation struggles to speak fluent Greenlandic. Some don’t even try. Others mix in broken Danish or English. It’s not their fault - it’s the result of decades of cultural confusion and language engineering, often done with good intentions, but without care for consequences.
When we were young, we all spoke fluently. We could comment on what we heard on the radio, mimic politicians’ speeches, debate them around the dinner table. Now? Language has become stiff, official, almost foreign. It was changed - not evolved. Rewritten for the sake of politics. And so the soul of our people - which lived in that language - was cracked in the process.
How Do We Save the Coming Generations?
We start by telling our stories - not just in words, but in our words. We stop echoing colonial structures and start re-rooting in Inuit logic, values, and fluency.
- We encourage youth to speak their native tongue without shame.
- We archive the old Greenlandic before it vanishes completely - not just as “heritage,” but as living knowledge.
- We hold politicians accountable not only for what they do, but how they speak.
- We promote books, music, films, blogs that sound like us - not like Copenhagen.
- We create new income paths: digital art, film, music, Arctic tech, tourism that respects nature and Inuit values - not just extractive industries.
- And most importantly, we remember that every written word is a spell - and ask, what kind of world are we conjuring?
Writing can heal. It can also harm. It can open doors - or seal them shut. So let us write carefully, truthfully, and with our own voice.
Because if we don’t - someone else will.