I was watching an episode of "Inside the World's Toughest Prisons" in my university flat - a programme which travels to all four corners of the Earth to find some, well, tough prisons. Most of the prisons had gangs, drugs, and other corruption which made them "tough", until the programme stopped off in "Nuuk". A place I had never even heard of.
Raphael Rowe, the host of the show, talked about Greenland's homicide rate being double that of USA's, and yet the prisoners being allowed to leave for dates with a loved one. Weird. "This must be quite a mysterious place then" I muttered to my flatmate.
Whilst being sat there, my curiosity sparked off on a tangent. Nuuk? Is that like, a big place? Somewhere lots of trade happens? What kind of people live there? Blah, blah, blah, you get the jist. So, let's take a look at the place, shall we?
To begin with, it's easier to look at Greenland as a whole, because in a sense, the country's history is also Nuuk's history, as it's such a small populace anyway (57,000).
The country was first thought to have been inhabited by way of Northern Canada between 2500-800BC by Paleo-Eskimo people. There's a also a history of Norse colonisation dating back to the 10th century, but the Viking settlers colonies were eventually wiped out by the Little Ice Age - too cold even for hardened axemen. Ironically, Erik the Red, a man exiled from Norway who led an expedition to the island in 985AD, named the desolate icy wasteland "Greenland" to encourage people over from Iceland to live there, subsequently resulting in their cold harsh deaths. Never listen to an exiled man, he has probably been exiled for good reason.
Since the Vikings perished, Inuits have retained there since 1200. The 3 main groups of the Inuit people are the Kalaallit's (West Greenland), Tunumiit's (East Greenland), and Inughuit's (North Greenland). 89% of the population today is Greenlandic Inuit, with the majority of the rest being Greenlandic Scandinavians. The Inuits were much better equipped to live in such harsh environments thanks to their ability to hunt fish, shrimp, seals, walrus and even whales. This has been the case right up until today, where the fishing communities in towns like Nuuk continue to thrive, so much so that in the capital of Nuuk, fishing trade takes up 90% of the economy.
Nowadays, 18,500 Greenlandic Inuits live in Denmark, meaning that the harsh environment and tough economic conditions are/were too much for some natives, leading to their departure. With the difficult repercussions of independence in a growing capitalist world, what is a town like Nuuk doing to combat a demise? Thankfully, they are being proactive in their approach.
Nuuk is an example of a place catching up with the demands and consequences of a capitalist, Westernised world. Not to say these are negative consequences, but they are consequences nonetheless. In 1979, Greenland decided to become politically independent of Danish rule, which was a giant leap of faith to become self-sustaning, and a power within the global fishery markets. Although its economy has been growing, they still rely on heavy subsidies from the Danish Government to function properly. Rather interestingly, 83% of Greenland's exports are traded with Denmark, possibly suggesting that the financial support from the EU country leads to the domination of Greenland's fishing market. To this day, they are still not fully economically independent.
Like many other areas of the world that deal with tough socio-economic conditions that require them to diversify, tourism is a certified "way out". Greenland has a landscape relatively untouched by humans, allowing certain wildlife to live freely as nature intended. The native Musk Ox has attracted expeditionists due to their rarity and peculiar look - not to mention their extreme resilience to severe weather conditions. Other animals like Whales (Humpback, Minke, Fin, even Blue), Reindeer, and Polar Bears attract people to witness their beauty in one of the most desolate places imaginable.
Such nature tourism has led to the tourism industry in Greenland growing by ~20% per year since 2015, and it will prove to be one of the main factors that helps the country prosper.
Greenland has also become efficient in the mining of gold, zinc, and anorthosite (used to produce aluminium) which has attracted attention from other countries' prospectors. The Greenlandic government are committed to prioritising their environment before anything else, so auctioning off rights to mine in their country is not top of the agenda. Of course, another capitalist demand that they are struggling to fend off. The volume of uranium under the ground is also a point of focus for governments globally, which the Greenlandic government see as a diplomatic edge which they need to be wary of, because a lack of caution when mining it could spell catastrophe. But the potential is there, and when Greenland becomes wholly independent from Denmark, the minerals laying under the enormous island could create a strong basis for them to grow. The U.S. Air Base in Thule on Greenland may be a cause for concern, as they've always been known for poaching the natural resources from countries, so watch out. I'm probably exaggerating, mind you.
All considered, it's going to be intriguing to see how such an abnormal place to the normative Westernised world will cope in decades to come. Will they become independent in my lifetime? Who knows, but hopefully we'll be seeing them prosper with the odds stacked against them. One thing is clear, it isn't going to happen with just fishing...
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