Greenlandic Literature: Its Traditions, Changes, and Trends

This article deals with the origin of Greenlandic written literature and its development into modern Native poetry and prose. Greenlanders inherited abundant oral traditions from their ancestors, but between 1721, when recent colonization began, and 1861, when the first Native newspaper was issued, there was no independent writing. In this newspaper, small articles written by Greenlanders were presented to a Greenland-wide public. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the first novels were published. This article demonstrates how modern Greenlandic literature has been affected over the past 100 years by European influences. The author, a Greenlander by birth and former school director for Greenland, illustrates how the development of society is mirrored in both prose and poetry, and concludes that the urge to write about Greenland is currently bearing fruit, especially in the field of ethnic literature.