Mapping Ultima Thule. Agata Lubowicka
included, for example, marine officers Wilhelm August Graah (1793–1863) and Gustav Holm, who separately travelled to the east coast of Greenland by Greenlandic umiaqs, and the American Robert Edwin Peary, who used dogsleds in his attempts to reach the North Pole.
64 Pedersen, “Is-interferenser,” pp. 152–153; Gant, Eskimotid, p. 142.
65 Pedersen, “Is-interferenser,” pp. 149–156; Hastrup, Vinterens hjerte, p. 243.
66 Perceptions of Rasmussen in North Greenland are discussed, for example, by Danish Eskimo researcher Erik Holtved (1899–1981) in a story of his stay in the Cape York region between 1935 and 1937. Holtved recalls that he hardly heard the local people speak of Rasmussen and explains this by concluding that as the Inuit never mention the names of their dead, they must remember Rasmussen as one of their own folk. Erik Holtved, Polareskimoer (København: Carl Allers Bogforlag, 1942), p. 18.
67 Hastrup, Vinterens hjerte, pp. 608, 653. Kirsten Thisted, “Over deres egen races lig. Om Knud Rasmussens syn på kulturmødet og slægtskabet mellem grønlændere og danskere,” Tidsskriftet Antropologi, Vol. 50, No. 6 (2006), p. 139.
68 Kurt L. Frederiksen, Kongen af Thule (København: Borgen, 2009), p. 54.
69 Müntzberg and Simonsen, “Knud Rasmussen og handelsstationen Thule 1910–37,” p. 209.
70 According to Michelsen, Rasmussen had no education beyond secondary school and his journalism did not ensure an adequate livelihood. To provide for himself and his growing family, he needed a regular, dependable income, which was supposed to be secured by the operations of the trading station. Knud Michelsen, “Handelsstationen ved verdens ende,” Kristeligt Dagblad, 16.08.2010, p. 5.
71 Petersen, “Handselsstationen i Thule,” p. 229.
72 Officially, the Danish government did not interfere with the trading station. Yet both its establishment by subjects of the Danish monarch and its exploration activities bolstered the cabinet’s position in negotiations in case Denmark were to seek to assert its sovereignty over the whole of Greenland. The strategy was successful, considering that in 1920 several powerful states accepted Denmark’s dominion over Greenland and the Permanent Court of Justice in the Hague later endorsed Denmark’s claim to the area.
73 Until Rasmussen’s death in 1933, North Greenland remained his private colony even though, legally speaking, the Thule region belonged to Denmark. The status of Rasmussen as a great national hero and the fact that the trading station funded his expeditions stopped the Danish state from taking Thule over as early as in 1920. Petersen, “Handselsstationen i Thule,” p. 228.
74 Gant, Eskimotid, p. 159.
75 Thisted, “Over deres egen races lig,” pp. 143-144. Thisted, “Knud Rasmussen,” p. 242. Rasmussen’s hybrid identity and his capability to negotiate his various identities are also highlighted by Kirsten Hastrup, “Knud Rasmussen (1879–1933). The Anthropologist as Explorer, Hunter and Narrator,” FOLK. Journal of the Danish Ethnographic Society, Vol. 46/47 (2005), p. 162; Hastrup, Vinterens hjerte, pp. 652–653; Niels Barfoed, Manden bag helten: Knud Rasmussen på nært hold (København: Gyldendal, 2011), p. 404; Brøgger, “The Culture of Nature,” p. 90; Fredrik Chr. Brøgger, “Mellom tradisjon og modernitet: Knud Rasmussens femte Thule-ekspedisjon (1921–1924) og møtet med urfolkene i Arktis,” in: Reiser og ekspedisjoner i det litterære Arktis, eds. Johan Schimanski et al. (Trondheim: Tapir Akademisk Forlag, 2011), pp. 192–198. Thisted observes additionally that Rasmussen himself discursivised his own dual background as a privileged position which enabled him both to look at the Arctic as an outsider, the way common Europeans did, and to see it as an insider, through Inuit eyes. Thisted, “Knud Rasmussen,” p. 242.
76 Pratt, Imperial Eyes, p. 90.
77 The first book-length study of Scandinavian literature within the postcolonial framework in Poland was the PhD project developed by Maria Sibińska, a literary scholar of the University of Gdansk’s Department of Scandinavian Studies. Her dissertation, entitled Marginalitet og myte i moderne nordnorsk lyrikk (2002), explored myth and marginality in North-Norwegian poetry. My own interpretation of the two best-known Polish young adult novels about Greenland and its inhabitants, authored by Alina and Czesław Centkiewicz, was the axis of my article “Anaruk og Odarpi – ædle vilde børn i et eskimoisk frilandsmuseum. En behandling af eskimoeksotisme i polsk litteratur,” Aktuel forskning. Litteratur, kultur og medier (2014), Syddansk Universitet: http://www.sdu.dk/Om_SDU/Institutter_centre/Ikv/Videnskabelige+tidsskrifter/AktuelForskning/2014AF (15 Feb. 2015).
78 Rasmussen’s first biography was published in Denmark in 1934, barely one year after his death. See Peter Freuchen, Knud Rasmussen som jeg husker ham: fortalt for ungdommen (København: Gyldendal, 1934). This book and following biographies interpreted Rasmussen’s life and work through the lens of his status as a popular national hero. Kaj Birket-Smith, Knud Rasmussens Saga (København: C. Erichsen, 1936); Bogen om Knud skrevet af hans venner, eds. Johannes V. Jensen et al. (København: Westermanns Forlag, 1943); Niels Fenger, Knud Rasmussen – Grønlands Aladdin (København: Wøldike, 1979). In the 1990s, a new wave of Rasmussen’s biographies appeared, revealing previously unknown details of both his life and the historical conjuncture in which he lived: Knud Wentzel, Thule i hjertet: nærbillede af Knud Rasmussen (København: Munksgaard, 1990); Frederiksen, Kongen af Thule; Ebbe Kløvedal Reich, Den fremmede fortryller (København: Vindrose, 1995); Knud Michelsen, Jeg vil ikke dø for et skuldertræk. Knud Rasmussen skæbneår (København: Rosinante, 1999). Recently, an interest in the events of Rasmussen’s life has surged again, triggering a new series of publications: Hastrup, Vinterens hjerte; Michelsen, Den unge Knud Rasmussen; Barfoed, Manden bag helten; Michelsen, Vejen til Thule; Knud Michelsen, En værkende tand. Striden om 2. Thuleekspedition (København: Rosinante, 2017); Knud Michelsen, I videnskabens navn: Knud Rasmussen belyst gennem breve og andre kilder 1910–1921 (København: Forlaget Falcon, 2018).
79 Henk Van der Liet and Astrid Surmatz, “Postkolonialisme og nordisk litteratur – en orientering,” TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek, No 2 (2004), p. 13.
80 For example, Kirsten Hastrup observes that the author is always present in the texts both as a hunter and as a scientist. Hastrup, Vinterens hjerte, p. 703. Anthropologist Kennet Pedersen also approaches The New People in a biographical fashion in his article “At finde og opfinde sin niche: Omkring Nye Mennesker,” Grønlandsk kultur- og samfundsforskning (2004/2005), pp. 79–92.
81 Brøgger, “The Culture of Nature;” Brøgger, “Mellom tradisjon og modernitet.”