Saqqummersitaq

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.

For at afgøre om et monument bør bevares eller ej, må man diskutere, om det stadigvæk bidrager til fortællingen om et fælles vi, skriver lektor i kulturhistorie Ebbe Volquardsen.

Five and a half years after its first appearance as a printed book in 2014, the transdisciplinary anthology The Postcolonial North Atlantic: Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, edited by Professor Lill-Ann Körber (Aarhus Universitet) and Associate Professor Ebbe Volquardsen (Ilisimatusarfik), came out in an open-access second edition today. Stored on the document server of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the book can from now on be downloaded free of charge by anyone.

Whereas a new preface, written by the editors, has been added, the articles in the volume have not been changed or amended since the first edition, and thus reflect the state of the art of the first half of the 2010s. Yet, the texts remain relevant and topical in that they provide fundamental insight into negotiations of the postcolonial status of the North Atlantic nations, and into manifestations of their interconnected, often competing, histories in literature, language, politics, art, fashion, and public discourse. They invite to comparative investigations into the region’s past and present as seen from its diverse and distinct viewpoints, and to explorations of this part of the Nordic region from a joint critical postcolonial perspective.

It is the editors’ hope that The Postcolonial North Atlantic will find many curious new readers and re-readers among students, scholars, and the broader public; and we look forward to continued discussions and North Atlantic journeys.

Recognising the diverse roles that women have played in the history of the Arctic, both as colonisers and colonised, this article uses travel writing or Arctic biographies by women writers to explore female colonisation strategies within the context of Scandinavian colonialism. Inspired by Maria Lugone’s use of the concept of “coloniality of gender” (2008) the article investigates how gendered coloniality is produced and mediated through travel writing by women in the Arctic. While Lugones’ critique primarily addresses the racism and violence inherent in modern/colonial gender systems, the analysis uses her understanding of coloniality as a lived experience of Eurocentric domination in order to illuminate the gendered nature of complicity by white, elite women. Using the work of Emilie Demantt (1873-1958), later Demantt-Hatt, and Isobel Wylie Hutchison (1889-1982) the article analyses both ‘Nordic’ and ‘transnational’ female strategies of colonisation as they are performed and articulated through biographical writing. Both in form and content, these texts demonstrate the many ways in which global and imperial power intersected with local hierarchies and systems of knowledge as part of multiple and concurring representations of reality over time.