Greenland, my greenland-accessing greenlandic history, identity and nation-building through its nation-branding strategy, a tourist website and 247 comments

Abstract

In 2012, Visit Greenland, the Greenlandic national tourist organisation, conducted a survey on Danish prejudices towards Greenland and Greenlanders. The survey, linked to an ambivalent nation-building strategy that pitched Greenland as ‘the pioneering nation’, was aimed both at challenging and reconciling subnational relations within the Danish realm. Central to the Danish representational history ofGreenland is a split between viewing Greenland/Greenlanders as lost subjects in a modernising project and holistic subjects in a tradition-bound society. The holistic image caters also to a wider tourist audiencemore concerned with preserving whales than with accepting the sustainable visions of indigenous modernity that are currently being articulated by Greenlanders. Contemporary Greenlandic nation branding is a response to these internal and external dichotomies.