Greenland (Denmark) / All works
Novel
Ukiut 300-nngornerat
Not translated into English
Augo Lynge · 1931
Synopsis
Three hundred years on: in Grønlandshavn, in 2021, on the eve of the tricentenary of Hans Egede's arrival, the fisherman Frederiksen, who has come from the South, meets his old schoolmate Jensen, a prosperous farmer of cattle, horses and a thousand sheep. From Sunday visit to council meeting, the novel discovers a modern country, turned towards the outside world, which lives from fishing and farming, where Greenlanders have kept their language and their culture; a detective plot carries the narrative from the villages to the ice sheet.
Context
Published in 1931, the book is the second novel of Greenlandic literature, after that of Mathias Storch, published in 1914. Den Store Danske reads in it the political programme of its author, an advocate of modernisation, of learning Danish and of an end to the country's isolation; Robert Thomsen, in the Arctic Yearbook of 2021, sees in it an optimistic and modernist vision of a Greenland that has become a Danish county, where traditional culture barely survives. Translated into Danish in 1989, it appeared in French in 2016 from the Presses de l'Université du Québec.
Who it is for
A science-fiction novel told like an investigation, readable in French; no English translation has been found.
Prizes and reception
In his preface to the French edition, Per Kunuk Lynge compares the author's clairvoyance to that of an Inuit shaman.