My SoMe feed started buzzing with Danish resource economists discussing the information put forward in Danish Public Broadcasting’s (DR) recent documentary “Greenland’s White Gold.” The documentary purported that Denmark had earned 54 billion Euro from cryolite mined in Greenland since 1854.

The discussion I followed, led by an economist, focused on trying to explain some resource and macroeconomics to viewers who had questions about the numbers, including the difference between turnover (the numbers used in the documentary) and income, the benefits and costs of resource extraction to communities, firms, and nations.

The documentary challenges the idea that all DK does is support GL with the block grant, without much in return. That’s a valid challenge. The idea that extraction may have benefitted DK and the firms involved more than the local communities in Greenland experiencing the mining impacts (however minimal they may have been – I do not know the particulars) does not fit with their mindset of Greenland either as a financial drain or as a pristine Arctic wilderness. The Americans had their role at the mine in WWII as well, mining and keeping the minerals from the Germans.

If you want a fictionalized version of what this sort of impact might mean to Greenland if such an enterprise developed today, check out the final season of Borgen (Borgen: The Power and the Glory on Netflix) which imagines what would happen if Greenland found vast oil deposits (which so far, they have not and most indications now are that they will not). It’s an interesting re-watch for sure.

On the Greenlandic side, the numbers shared with their community leaders were probably higher than actual Danish, US or other gains because they were told about the sales revenues from the cryolite, not the economic net income or impact. Some context was provided, but 130 years of mineral extraction generating 400b DKK in revenues is a lot to think about for the 56,000 Greenlanders finally making their own decisions about mineral extractions for the first time following the self determination act of 2009. The mine went to Eclipse mining in 2021. The international company out of Australia is working to recover many other valuable Rare Earth Elements at the site (Ivigtût Project).

The timing for this documentary could not have been worse, either. The turbulent DK-GL relations that the US administration is trying to exploit in the coming vote (Mar 11) were further stirred up, especially given the purported high level of Greenlandic slant given to the documentary and calculations.

But I can’t tell you more about the details, because I only had watched about 5 minutes of it when DR (Denmark’s public broadcasting company) pulled the documentary from the air and their head issued a public apology. That’s also why there’s no link here.

Where does this leave us with poetry? There are plenty of choices that might highlight the scars of mining and / or colonization, but I’ll focus on what most of Greenland still holds in trust for the world: wild things. But take care: ice is NOT quiet (listen here). 

Wendell Berry
The Peace of Wild Things


When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

For more on Wendell Berry and a recording of him reading the poem, see here

Cover image credit: Cryolite mine ivgtut greenland (1940) Yona Donation, http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/history/h_greenld.html