Modernity and periphery: The sexual modernisation of Greenland

• Main Author: Rydström, Jens
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Gender Studies; Arctic; Greenland; Rasmussen; greenlander*; greenlandic; inuit
• Online Access: https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/1764528

The paper will argue that the centre-periphery dynamics of the modernisation of sexuality is more complex and difficult to grasp than is usually shown in queer studies and gay history. Existing historiography on the emerging of a modern gay and lesbian identity has failed to study the links between different sites for the emergence of a gay and lesbian subculture. The contacts between Greenland and German and Danish missionaries, from the eighteenth century onward, profoundly influenced Inuit concepts of sexuality by imposing Christian norms of sexual restraint. The accelerating colonial domination of Greenland culminated in a conscious effort to “modernise” Greenlandic society from the 1950s onward. Danish presence in Greenland increased from a handful of merchants and colonial officers to a substantial population of construction workers, economists, teachers, and bureaucrats. Did the colonisation of Greenland also influence Danish discourses on masculinity and sexuality? For metropolitan Danes, Greenland represents an idea of hyper-masculine adventure and extreme hardship. The diaries and travelogues by Danish explorer and national hero Knud Rasmussen are impregnated with his admiration for the arctic seal hunters he befriended during his extended stay in northernmost Greenland, and the Crown Prince Frederik’s sleigh rides over the inland ice rendered him huge popularity both in Greenland and in Denmark. Images of the weather-bitten prince travelling between the extreme outposts of his future realm was a symbolic rendering of Danish masculinity in the Arctic. Many sources testify that Greenlanders traditionally had an open and relaxed attitude to sexuality. There were no explicit condemnations of same-sex sexuality, but childlessness in women was regarded as a tragedy, and in the tales, women who did not want to marry were severely punished. The only folklore concerning same-sex sexuality concerns women who act as men and penetrate younger women. Indeed, if sexuality was not a taboo subject, it was highly ...