The article examines two novels, Astrid Saalbach’s Der hvor du ikke vil hen (2021) and Iben Mondrup’s Tabita (2020) as part of Danish memory culture about Greenland and as part of a current process of reconciliation between Denmark and Greenland. The article demonstrates how the authors, with different literary techniques, invite the readers to participate in a collective work of remembrance that challenges the established narrative about the relationship.
While Saalbach transforms private memories and family history into national history, Mondrup lifts traumatic personal memories into the public space, where past stories of dysfunctional Greenlandic families become a collective
narrative of dysfunctional relations between the Danish colonial power and the colonized Greenlanders. The article’s hypothesis is that the Danes have begun a process of mourning around the loss of (their identity-giving narrative of)
Greenland, and that such memory work is necessary if Denmark is to avoid stagnating in “post-colonial melancholy” and, together with Greenland, develop relations under new conditions