{"id":156329,"date":"2026-08-31T14:07:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T14:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/156329\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T14:07:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T14:07:22","slug":"rethinking-greenlandic-cartographic-heritage-arctictoday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/156329\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking Greenlandic cartographic heritage – ArcticToday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Kristen Pope, Arctic Focus
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAugust 31, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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Growing up in Maniitsoq, Greenland, Frederik Fuuja Larsen recalls sitting in his public school classroom and watching his teacher unfurl a retractable ceiling-mounted map in geography class.<\/p>\n

The map revealed a massive depiction of Denmark, with Greenland in a tiny corner. Larsen and his classmates spent their school days learning about cities and towns in Denmark and other places, but not those in East or North Greenland.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is how we, my generation, grew up with mapping and learning about maps,\u201d Larsen said. \u201cIt was about Europe, about Denmark, England, and France, and not about Greenland. But fortunately, that has now changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Larsen is now Deputy Director, Museum Manager, and Curator at the Greenland National Museum & Archives<\/a> in Nuuk. Last summer, he shared his schoolroom story in his welcome speech to open the museum\u2019s special exhibition, MAPPING NUNAAT \u2013 Rethinking Greenlandic Cartographic Heritage.<\/p>\n

The exhibit, which was on display at the museum in Nuuk from May through September 2025, explores the concepts behind maps, emphasizing that they are not neutral tools or impartial representations. It is now available virtually<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Photograph of Ammassalik maps. Credit: Greenland National Museum and Archives<\/p>\n

\u201cMaps have shaped how the world is seen\u2014and owned. Maps shape how we understand, claim, and control space,\u201d the exhibit text notes.<\/p>\n

The project is a collaboration between Larsen and fellow co-creators Pierre Singarav\u00e9lou, a professor at Universit\u00e9 Paris 1 Panth\u00e9on-Sorbonne, and Fabrice Argoun\u00e8s, an assistant professor at Universit\u00e9 Rouen Normandie and Universit\u00e9 de Li\u00e8ge, along with a broader team of contributors.<\/p>\n

Focusing on Greenland and the Arctic, the exhibit explores Western cartography and topics such as colonial renaming, the erasure of Indigenous place names and knowledge, \u201cblank spaces\u201d on maps, and the creation of an illusion of \u201cempty\u201d lands.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe history of Arctic cartography is also a history of power. For centuries, European maps were shaped by various forms of borealism, presenting Greenland as empty space \u2014 terra incognita, a territory to be conquered, named, and claimed for the benefit of Danish colonial power, or of British, French, and American actors,\u201d said Singarav\u00e9lou and Argoun\u00e8s, in a joint statement to Arctic Focus.<\/p>\n

The exhibit, which was on display at the museum in Nuuk from May through September 2025, explores the concepts behind maps, emphasizing that they are not neutral tools or impartial representations. It is now available virtually<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"The exhibit explores Western cartography and tops such as colonial renaming, the erasure of Indigenous place names and knowledge. Credit: Greenland National Museum and Archives<\/p>\n

These naming traditions provide people with tools for navigation and also share key information to help them understand places and travel safely through them. However, in many cases, these meaningful names were replaced by Western names of monarchs or even ship crew members.<\/p>\n

\u201cInuit geographical knowledge, remarkable in its richness and accuracy, was marginalized, rendered invisible, reduced to mere curiosity or exotica, or simply ignored,\u201d said Singarav\u00e9lou and Argoun\u00e8s. \u201c<\/p>\n

While renaming places was common, many maps also depicted vast \u201cblank spaces,\u201d which the exhibit\u2019s authors say can reflect \u201cboth ignorance and imperial desire.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the exhibit text, \u201cThese cartographic voids depicted lands as empty and unclaimed, ready to be named, explored, and appropriated.\u201d<\/p>\n

These map voids also depict European projections of Arctic geography as cold, white, and unsuitable for human habitation. Strategic omissions, such as removing Thule Air Base from depictions of Northern Greenland during the Cold War, also occurred.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis exhibition aims to restore another history of the region: that of a living, sophisticated Greenlandic cartography, deeply rooted in a relationship to territory that Western scientific tools have long struggled to grasp and acknowledge,\u201d said Singarav\u00e9lou and Argoun\u00e8s.<\/p>\n

MAPPING NUNAAT\u2019s displays include Inuit cartographic items that commonly use skins, driftwood, and other materials, rather than the scrolls or sheets of paper commonly used in Western cartography.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"A displayed map made of seal skin and wood. Credit: Greenland National Museum and Archives<\/p>\n

The exhibit includes Ammassalik wooden maps, which are now curated by the Greenland National Museum and Archives after being repatriated from the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. These sculpted wood maps are tactile, tracing the outline of Eastern Greenland\u2019s coast. Created in the 1880s by Kunit fra Umivik, they are important items of Greenland\u2019s heritage and pride.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese objects, which mark their 140th anniversary in 2025, are not exotic curiosities: they are masterpieces of world cartography, combining topographic precision, narrative memory, and oral transmission,\u201d said Singarav\u00e9lou and Argoun\u00e8s.<\/p>\n

The exhibit also includes several alternative cartographies that challenge dominant narratives.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaps can be reclaimed as tools of resistance and reappropriation,\u201d Larsen said.<\/p>\n

One such map displayed in the exhibition and created by American cartographer Richard Edes Harrison in the 1940s, centers around the North Pole and shows the Arctic and its geopolitical importance.<\/p>\n

Another inclusion was a surrealist map with features named \u201cGeneral Electric Co. Ice Cap\u201d and \u201cPan American Airways Corp Ice Cap,\u201d as well as counterfactual maps showcasing the potential cartography if the Inuit had colonized Europeans.<\/p>\n

The exhibit also discusses cultural boundaries and how Inuit communities can transcend national borders, as well as the Atlas of Indigenous Peoples of Canada, which was created with Indigenous Elders and many other stakeholders to prioritize Indigenous knowledge.<\/p>\n

Together, the pieces invite viewers to reconsider who maps are made for, whose perspectives they reflect, and how geography can shape power, identity, and belonging.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published by Arctic Focus<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kristen Pope, Arctic Focus August 31, 2026 Growing up in Maniitsoq, Greenland, Frederik Fuuja Larsen recalls sitting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[9462,57],"class_list":["post-156329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-greenland","tag-cartography","tag-greenland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117190515351621642","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}