Emilie Dybdal (Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen)
Tuesday, October 29, 16:15
Campus Westend, Casino 1.812
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The dominant narrative in Denmark has long been that Danish colonialism in Greenland was particularly mild and benign, emphasizing the Danes’ altruistic efforts to protect the Greenlandic ‘people of nature’ and help them transition gently into modernity. However, Danish author Iben Mondrup’s trilogy of novels – Tabita (2020), Vittu (2022), and Bjørn (2023) – challenges this narrative by depicting the traumatic experiences of two Greenlandic children who are ‘stolen’ by Danish families and subjected to neglect and trauma. This paper examines the trilogy’s potential impact on Danish cultural memory. Drawing on Alison Landsberg’s concept of “prosthetic memory”, it argues, on the one hand, that the novels can foster empathy and awareness of colonial injustices among Danish readers. On the other hand, it also raises the concern that these prosthetic memories could become what Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang call “moves to innocence” – strategies allowing Danish readers to alleviate feelings of guilt or discomfort about the ongoing effects of colonialism without actually addressing or dismantling colonial structures.
Emilie Dybdal is a PhD Fellow at Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. She is a literary scholar whose research focuses on how contemporary Danish literature engages with and negotiates Denmark’s cultural memory of colonialism in Greenland. She has previously taught at Aalborg University and Ilisimatusarfik (University of Greenland) and has published on both Danish literature and Greenlandic film production