To u r i s m , C u lt u r e
and
Business
I s su e 45 • 2021
A BOY FROM BÍLDUDALUR BECOMES GREENLAND’S TOURIST CHIEF Hjörtur Smárason is new the tourist chief of Greenland, where everything is huge. One by one, chains of the past are being broken and Greenlanders are on the path to independence
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reenland is Iceland’s closest neighbour, across the ocean from the Westfjords. The shortest distance between Iceland and Greenland is less than 300 kilometres, between Scoresby Sound and the Westf jords. Greenland is Kalaallisut, in Kalaallit Nunaat, the Inuit mother-tongue. As the world’s largest island, it is 2.1 million square kilometres — larger that Great Britain, Italy, Spain and France combined. Some 81% of Greenland is glaciers and 19% landmass, about 400,000 square kilometres. It’s part of the North-American continent but its government and culture are European. Greenlanders live mostly in the southwest where the weather is mildest. The distance between Kapp Morris Jesup in the high north and Hvarf in the south is 2,650 km. Its coastline is just over 44,000 km—larger than the Earth’s circumference. Greenland is huge! On a path to independence Greenland is part of Denmark. However, the nation is on a path to independence.
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Hjörtur Smárason
It got its home-r u le in 1979 and autonomy in 2008. Nuuk – Góðvon in Icelandic or Good-Hope – is its capital, with 18,000 inhabitants. Greenland ceded from the European Union in 1983, which shrank in area by some 53%. There are 56,000 Greenlanders, of whom 20% are Danes. It is highly possible that the same will happen to Greenland as it did to Iceland when it was on the pathway to independence some 100 years ago. The Danes there became patriotic Icelanders. In due course, people will not talk of 20% Danes, rather 100% Greenlanders. That is this author’s prediction.
The new Tourist Chief Greenland’s new tourist chief is the Icelander, Hjörtur Smárason. Hjörtur Smárason is born and bred in Bíldurdalur, in Iceland’s Westfjords. Bíldudalur’s sister-town in Greenland is Kulusuk on the east coast. Born in 1975, he now lives in Nuuk with his wife Inga Rós Antóníusdóttir and their two youngest children. At the age of 14, the young Hjörtur travelled to Kulusuk in a student exchange programme and spent time there. He fell in love with the land and its people. He became passionate about Greenland. Now he is serving Greenland and its people.
The goal is to increase tourist numbers—a lot A fter cent uries of isolation under Danish rule, Greenlanders are opening up to the outside world and proclaiming, “Greenland is open for business.” Before covid, some 100,000 tourists visited in 2019 and the goal is to increase that number, by a lot. Their simple slogan is, “Visit Greenland”.
Land of opportunities Hjörtur arrived in Greenland in April 2021. The country was closed due to the covid-pandemic, so he had to get a special permit. It was reopened on the 1st October, after the tourist season. Hjörtur says that the 2022 season is promising. “Greenland is a country of opportunities, and the prospects are good as people hunger more and
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