Now that the deal on Greenland has fallen into place, and you can once again drink your morning coffee without scanning for aircraft carriers both in the Øresund and in Nuuk harbour, there may be room for a little thought experiment, on a quiet Wednesday like this, when nobody is in a hurry.
Other, of course, than considering whether an equestrian statue should be raised on Ridebanen, the old Christiansborg riding ground, right next to Christian IX and preferably half a metre taller, of Lars Løkke for the sentence that saved the Realm and will echo through Eternity - "We agree to disagree."
Working group.
Invasion and collapse of the Western order - averted.
Nicely done, Lars. 🙂
But back to the future, now that the deal has landed, everyone has been declared a winner, and, according to the White House, it has eternal life.
Imagine that it began quite quietly from here, with a small group of Americans in the airport at Kangerlussuaq, standing there with their suitcases and their traumas and explaining that they could not take it anymore, that they were persecuted - not by a regime or a militia, but by something far worse - by capitalism itself, by a health insurance with a deductible, by the rent in Brooklyn and by an inequality that had settled so deep that it now sat in the nervous system.
Of course we would take them in, because that is what we do, and if anyone should be in doubt, Institut for Menneskerettigheder, the Danish human rights institute, had a 212-page report ready explaining that structural economic inequality must in certain cases be recognised as systematic persecution - while DR, the Danish public broadcaster, made a warm feature about Tyler from Ohio, who for the first time in his life had gone to the doctor without checking his bank account first, and who now stood by the fjord with tears in his eyes and said that he could finally breathe.
Then came the next ones, and then the next ones again, because once you have opened the door to those fleeing inequality, it is hard to explain why it should close, and a decade later there were a hundred thousand Americans in a country of just over 56,000 inhabitants.
It was, as the Experts ™ were quick to point out, a question of demography and not of culture, and an enrichment of Greenland besides.
The municipality set up a Centre for Diversity, whose first task was to map the minorities, and when the numbers came in, it turned out that the minority was the Greenlanders.
There was no template for that.
Integration went the way integration goes. The Greenlanders learned to tip twenty percent at the café in Nuuk, Thanksgiving went onto the school timetable for the sake of inclusion, and the turkey was flown in, because seal meat had gradually become a little problematic. The Fourth of July arrived with fireworks over the ice fjord in Ilulissat, and the municipality hired a cultural mediator to help the old hunters understand that it was not directed against them.
Foreign flags were hoisted in every street and alley and hung out of the windows, and demands were raised that the school morning song be replaced with the Pledge of Allegiance.
In year three an old hunter on the quay in Nuuk told P1, the national radio channel, that this no longer felt like his country, and afterwards a lecturer explained in the studio that insecurity is often down to a lack of exposure, whereupon the municipality offered him a course. Followed up by the notice that he was moving along the edge of the law if statements like that were repeated.
And because we are a society under the rule of law, it all went by the book. You cannot vote for Inatsisartut, Greenland's parliament, without Danish citizenship, so Folketinget, the Danish parliament, granted them citizenship in neat, proper bills, the way one does, and nobody asked questions - for who asks questions about paperwork.
At the election the Greenlandic Freedom Party won an absolute majority, the head of Naalakkersuisut, the Greenlandic government, came from Texas, and a referendum was held under the Self-Government Act, exactly as it prescribes, first on independence and then on admission as state number 51. Democratic. Lawful. Unassailable.
And it is here, I think, that we would have found the words again.
Colonisation. Annexation through the back door. A people who became strangers in their own land without having moved a metre. The university would hold conferences, and the same culture editors who for half a century have called that sort of thing national romanticism would write long, moved op-eds about Rigsfællesskabet, the Unity of the Realm, and about Erfalasorput, the Greenlandic flag, which suddenly hung in their profile pictures. They would also write about the scaffolding - the inner order, the meal, the faith, the way of carrying the Law - which the newcomers had brought along in their suitcases and never had any intention of unpacking.
The same old hunter, who still sat on the quay and still said the same sentence, nobody would send on a course anymore.
They would give him a prize.
Now, that is not what is happening in Europe...
Nobody has voted Denmark into another country. But notice how easily the words came, the moment it was the Greenlanders' land at stake, and how heavy the very same words become in the mouth when the question comes home.
That a place has a faith, an order and a view of Man that does not automatically move along just because people move in is obvious up by the ice fjord.
Down here it has become something you say quietly, if you say it at all.
We have not lost the ability to see it.
We have lost the right to say it about ourselves.
A people has the right to remain itself.
Also when that people is us.
❤️🔥🪽
