Arctic Imagination: Niviaq Korneliussen (GL) in conversation with Bernhard Ellefsen (NO)

The event is part of the talk series Arctic Imagination, which focuses on an Arctic in rapid change through international conversations between Nordic authors. Niviaq Korneliussen's prize-winning novel Flower Valley describes precisely a modern Greenland in great change, where - as one reviewer described it - "Facebook and Barnaby take up as much space as the iceberg and the midnight sun."

The stories about the relationship between Denmark and Greenland are also changing. The power relations in the Arctic are changing significantly in these years, which is why modern, nuanced descriptions of Arctic areas such as Greenland are so important. They create insight and inspiration across national borders at a time when the Arctic is discussed extensively in popular TV series as well as geopolitics.

Light in the dark

It is both intense and touching reading when Korneliussen writes about Greenland today. She describes a society where you try your hand at love, you try your hand at friendship, but all of that lies in the shadow of a depressingly long series of suicides, where no family is untouched.

"Your grandmother found you in one of the rooms in her house when she came home," she writes in Flower Valley. "The furniture in the room has been removed, the blood has been washed off, but the wall has absorbed a lot of it, and she thinks about that at night".

It is a raw insight into the lives of Greenlanders in a post-colonial society full of trauma that runs through everyday life. But there is light in the darkness, and in the midst of the trauma and suicides, you find love and zest for life. It is a light that Korneliussen expresses in her literature, and which she emphasised in her speech when she received the Nordic Council's Literature Prize: "So thank you to all of you young people I have met on my way. Thank you for being so loving, so talented and so beautiful. Thank you for persevering and thank you for being there.”

Participants

Niviaq Korneliussen

Niviaq Korneliussen debuted in 2014 with the novel HOMO sapienne, which seriously brought themes such as homosexuality and identity into Greenlandic contemporary literature. In 2020, she published her second novel Flower Valley and with it established herself as one of the most prominent literary voices in Greenland today. This became quite clear when in 2021 she was awarded the Nordic Council's Literature Prize for the same book. It is the first time that the prestigious award has gone to a Greenlandic author. The jury described Korneliussen's writing style as both beautiful and painfully raw.

Bernhard Ellefsen

Bernhard Ellefsen is a literary critic and book manager for the Norwegian weekly newspaper Morgenbladet. He has written the literary critical essay books Imot døden (2018) and Det som går tapt (2022). The latter deals with nature and the landscape in Nordic literature.

Arctic Imagination

Arctic Imagination has been created in collaboration between the Royal Danish Library and a number of participants in Canada such as the Sphere festival, the National Arts Centre and the Canadian Museum and Nature. Arctic Imagination focuses on an Arctic in change and crisis, an Arctic with disappearing ice, as a powerful symbol, a mythological, inspiring landscape and a geopolitical factor. Here, the world's most pressing problems are discussed by authors, artists and experts who have had the problems very close.