A Correct Admixture: The Ambiguous Project of Civilising in Nineteenth-Century Greenland

Extract

In 1879, the Danish Ministry of Domestic Affairs approved a proposal to construct a building in Copenhagen that was meant to function as a boarding house for Greenlanders while they were being educated in the metropole. The building, “Grønlænderhjemmet”, was used as a boarding house for Greenlanders in Denmark from 1880 until 1896, when the practice of sending Greenlandic men to Denmark for educational purposes came to a halt. While in use, “Grønlænderhjemmet” functioned as an instrument for the colonial administration, and the boarding house embodied a central aspect of the colonial administration's strategy for civilising Greenlanders: to control the civilising process in order to ensure that Greenlanders did not loose their connection with their Inuit background.