Pre-talk: Martin Breum on Greenland today
ONLY FOR THE DIAMOND CLUB - Exclusive lecture with Greenland expert Martin Breum on Greenland as part of the Arctic and the literary voices as part of society.
We are aware of Greenland like never before. The climate crisis is taking its toll and glaciers are melting away before the eyes of the Greenlanders. The former president of the world's most powerful nation proposed to buy the entire country and with it, the 57,000 people who live there. In the Netflix series Borgen, Greenland's political situation was brought into focus weekly in the spring for more than half a million viewers. The majority of Greenlanders support the idea of independence, and a few years ago, the country got an independence minister for the first time.
It is the tumultuous political development that one of Denmark's leading Greenland experts, Martin Breum, will highlight in this talk before the Greenlandic writer Niviaq Korneliussen goes on the International Authors' Stage in the Queen's Hall. It becomes a framework for the entire political reality from which Korneliussen writes in her award-winning novels.
What if Greenland breaks free?
Martin Breum has written several books on the development in Greenland, i.a. Greenland and the American connection and If Greenland breaks free, where, as it is written in the description of the book, he tries to answer the questions:
"What if Greenland breaks free? What happens if 98 percent of the kingdom's territory secedes and becomes an independent nation? How will it affect Denmark and the Danes? Our thoughts about ourselves and where we come from? What will this mean for the 57,000 people who live in Greenland – and for Greenland?”
In the same book, Breum interviews Korneliussen and describes how she is portrayed as a leading star of the new generation and how her books place her in the middle of the heated debate on independence.
Martin Breum
Martin Breum is one of the country's leading voices when it comes to following developments in the Arctic. He has written several books on Greenland - i.a. If Greenland breaks free on the country's desire for independence and Denmark's post-colonial superpower dreams. Breum has previously participated in the library's talk series Arctic Imagination, which sheds light on the development of the Arctic as a powerful symbol, a mythological, inspiring landscape and a geopolitical factor, and was one of the first to help breathe life into the project.
Arctic Imagination: Niviaq Korneliussen (GL) in conversation with Bernhard Ellefsen (NO)
In 2021, Niviaq Korneliussen became the first Greenlandic author to receive the Nordic Council's Literature Prize and thus positioned herself as one of the most interesting Arctic voices today.
