Emil BAHRI - Professor

Upernavik - Latitude 72 46 NR - Longitude 056.009 W

1.300 inhabitants

Interviewed in June 2009

As a newcomer in the region, I can only recount what I have heard or noticed in the last two years.

Parents have told me that in this period of Spring (May-June), there are no storms as there used to be. In spite of a cold winter, the pack-ice has continues to shrink. It arrived very late, coming in February and staying until mid-May. This month, the quality is very poor. In previous years, the people went off and walked long distances on the ice, but that was not the case this year – they were afraid to. The situation is very changeable. I learned that in 2002, the sea remained free during the winter. The level of education in Greenland is very low; for a long time there has been a shortage of teachers, and this situation is still not improved – my presence here is proof. We don’t have enough teachers in Upernavik, and the situation in the small villages gives even more cause for concern. More and more the children come to the big cities, and we can’t handle it.

The political changes are important, the work involved is enormous. Sectors such as Justice and the police need to be completely reorganised. It is necessary to translate many texts, originally written in Danish, into Greenlandic and to train a lot of people. Denmark provides important aid to the country, to the tune of three billion Kroner. This makes a lot of things possible: as far as I’m concerned, education is an essential sector, which requires a real plan. Many children stop their studies at the age of fourteen or fifteen, as soon as education is no longer compulsory. Those who continue are obliged to go to schools in the big cities of the south. As a result, they are far from their families and their environment. They find themselves faced with Danish professors, who for the most part don’t speak their language. The young adolescents are very curious, and focused on the contemporary way of life. Very few of them have any interest in the traditional way of life, and it is rare to find one who follows his parents in fishing and hunting. My feeling is that the traditional way of life is already being neglected, and will gradually be forgotten. Only the older people keep certain knowledge of this, which is very likely to disappear along with them.

Information is difficult to get here. In the years 2000, certain events were reported here three weeks after they had been published in the European media. One of the most important developments in Upernavik is the arrival of the fishery  which created a number of jobs, as well as the construction and opening of the airport, which has been in service since 2001. Previously, travel was by boat and by helicopter. Another problem is the isolation of each town and village. A flight from here to the capital, Nuuk, costs 11,000 kroner, and a flight to Denmark costs 20,000.