“Half of our lives is about ice”: How ice is perceived in Greenland

What is it about?

In Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), people live close to massive ice places, whose continuous melting is driving environmental changes worldwide. To better understand in what ways living with these places shapes how they are perceived and how the shrinking of the ice, accelerated by anthropogenic climate change, is experienced locally, this paper explores ice place words in Arctic Danish. To lay the foundation, the paper provides a detailed contrastive study of two meanings of the conceptual building block 'is' (‘ice’); one for its meaning in Arctic Danish and one for its meaning in Denmark-Danish. The analysis suggests that Arctic Danish’s linguistically encoded worldviews have been shaped by being in the physical environment of Kalaallit Nunaat and in contact with Kalaallisut (Greenlandic). Semantic analysis of the ice place words 'indlandsisen' (lit. ‘the inland ice’) and 'havisen' (‘the sea ice’) is then carried out, together with an exploration of the related climate change script that addresses concerns about the melting of ice. The study reveals how practices central to Inuit livelihoods are closely tied to the ice places, and how not only the places but also these cultural anchors of how people engage with the land are perceived as threatened.

Featured Image

Photo by Piitannguaq Egede on Unsplash

Photo by Piitannguaq Egede on Unsplash

Why is it important?

In a political landscape where Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) as “a piece of ice” and sought to frame it in terms of territory and strategic interests, local perspectives on place matter more than ever. My article explores how people in Kalaallit Nunaat talk about and understand ice locally, showing that what may appear as simply “ice” from the outside can carry complex meanings, histories, and relationships to place.