The Depopulation of Greenland

Will the last one to leave turn out the Northern lights?
BY Jonathan V. Last
May 17, 2010

A few weeks ago, Palle Christiansen, Greenland’s minister of finance warned that his country was facing an existential threat from immigration. Yet unlike the far-right politicians of Europe who take up this theme, Christiansen was not fretting over foreigners coming to his country’s shores, but about fellow citizens leaving.

For the past three decades, Greenland has been growing increasingly prosperous and inching away from its colonial sovereign, Denmark, toward full independence. But prosperity has also led more and more educated young Greenlanders to take up opportunities elsewhere. Greenland’s encounter with globalization is a case study in how unpredictable the forces of modernity can be. On the one hand, globalization offers the tantalizing prospect that Greenland will soon be able to afford independence. On the other hand, it presents the unsettling possibility that Greenland as it has existed for the last century will simply cease to be. the rest image by Nick Russill