Greenland in Children’s Literature in Danish

Abstract

As children’s literature shapes child readers’ view of the world, Danish children’s literature depict Greenland and life in Greenland for Danish children. This article examines the image of Greenland that meets the (child) reader in Danish children’s literature through a comparative analysis. The focal point is the portrayal of Greenland in the tale Pigen som søgte havets mor [The Girl who sought
the Mother of the Sea] with the subtitle Eventyr fra Grønland [Fairy Tale from Greenland] (1972) by Jørn Riel and in the graphic novel Ivalu (2019) by Morten Dürr and Lars Horneman. The analysis highlights the representations of Greenland through an investigation of the fictional worlds, the characters, the plot and the narrator. The result of the analysis is a close correspondence between the paradigm that prevails in the fictional worlds and that which prevails in the context of the works, i.e. the understanding of the arrangement of reality that is valid in a Danish context. In conclusion, the two children’s literary works are viewed in a broader  historical perspective and new questions are asked about the representation of Greenland in Danish children’s literature that include a wider spectrum of literary works written for children.