Introduction

Militarization and Globalization

Mia Bennett and Bert De Jonghe

Much has been published about the history of Greenland—or Kalaallit Nunaat, meaning Land of Greenlanders or Land of the People in Greenlandic (Kaae 2006). However, it is the authors’ intention to weave together a more diverse array of studies and stories in order to drift through a history of Greenland or, more ambitiously, several histories (Eigen 2020). Such an approach helps reveal Greenland as a palimpsest and encourages the reader to perceive Greenland as a complex and interconnected cultural and geographical space rather than as a remote, barren, and sparsely populated periphery. One point of entry to Greenlandic histories is the topic of Greenland’s airspace, air routes, and airports—collectively referred to as “aeroscape”—in relation to local communities, urbanization, and nation-building. While modern airports anticipate “the city of the future,” according to Dutch architect Constant Nieuwenhuys (Dümpelmann and Waldheim 2016, 16), in Greenland, they may anticipate an independent nation.

Greenland’s aviation infrastructure

In less than half a century, transportation in Greenland has shifted from boats and dog teams to a heavy dependence on airplanes and helicopters. In 2019, flag carrier Air Greenland carried 438,000 passengers (Air Greenland 2020), nearly eight times the country’s population of 56,400. For comparison, in the US in 2019, all airlines carried 926 million passengers, less than three times the population (Bureau of Transportation Statistics 2020). With 80 percent of Greenland’s landmass covered by ice, most of the population lives in settlements concentrated on the thin margin of the west coast, with a handful on the more inaccessible

The US Air Force providing fuel for Kangerlussuaq Airport, 1951.

east coast, too. Waters are mainly navigable from late summer through early fall, while the eastern villages have extremely limited ground access. Compounded by the fact that no two of its eighteen towns or sixty settlements are connected by road, air traffic has become “the sole year-round lifeline for commercial transport and inner-community passenger travel” (Sheppard and White 2017, 280).

Inseparable from Greenlandic airports’ logistical role is their social one. The country’s fourteen airports serve as places for locals to gather for a hot meal or meet friends and relatives in transit. Despite 9/11 transforming many airports around the world into sterile sites of security theater (Hall 2015), Greenland’s airports have managed to maintain their social functions. The buzzy ambience of Greenland’s airports is common across the remote Arctic where, in place of roads and highways, airports serve as friendly gathering spots bearing little resemblance to the soulless terminals in cities to the south that speed passengers through to their

destinations (Schaberg 2011). Airports are particularly relevant to Greenland’s socioeconomic fabric in the locations where they were built by the US during World War II. While these sites were suitable for long-range jets, they initially bore little relevance for Greenlanders. New towns sprang up to support American defense operations in Kangerlussuaq, Narsarsuaq, and Kulusuk. These towns—each of which has no more than a few hundred residents—now depend on airports not only as lifelines to the outside world, but for their own internal social and economic functioning, too.

Greenland’s aviation infrastructure is poised to change dramatically in the coming years. In the 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the protagonist boards an Airbus A330 direct from New York to the capital of Nuuk. Such a scene is currently confined to the realm of fiction, for Nuuk’s short runway can handle only Dash 8 prop planes. Yet this cinematic fantasy may become reality as early as 2023 if the government’s plan to move the country’s main airport hub from Kangerlussuaq to the capital is realized on time. As part of its pursuit to achieve independence from Denmark and to decrease reliance on the annual block grant it provides, which equals DKK 3.6 billion (US$546 million, equal to 55 percent of government revenue and 20 percent of GDP), the government of Greenland is seeking to attract international flows of capital and people. Airports, with their potential to attract investment and tourists and symbolize the arrival of a “modern” nation, form key sites for realizing a vision of a more independent and globally integrated Greenland. In 2016, Greenland’s former prime minister Kim Kielsen remarked that airport expansion “will lead to better and less expensive transport opportunities for our people, while also improving conditions for the development of tourism, commerce, and industry in general” (Naalakkersuisut 2016). Two years later, Greenland’s parliament, Inatsisartut, voted (18-9, with two abstentions) to spend DKK 2.1 billion (US$277 million) to renovate existing airports in Nuuk (pop. 17,635) and the UNESCO World Heritage destination of Ilulissat (pop. 4,670) and

On Kulusuk island, Kulusuk Airport’s gravel runway is the

46 only visible infrastructure as seen from outer space. Inventing Greenland