Abstract
Marriage and consumption were frequently regulated by colonial administrations. As a response, local populations invented new strategies to navigate within and around the restraints of colonial regulations. This study of archaeological and historical sources addresses how the inhabitants of the southern Disko Bay in colonial Greenland circumvented policies of trade and marriage constraining the social scope of their lives. In the early nineteenth century, existing social networks, emerging colonial positions and identities included marriage and consumption as measures in social competition and the forging of new identities. One case is the large consumption of luxury goods by the Greenlanders, opposing the differentiated price system of the Royal Greenlandic Trading Department. This price system promoted traditional economy through a sale of mainly hunting equipment and, only to a lesser degree, luxury goods such as jewellery, European clothing and food. Another case is the many marriages between mainly European trade employees and Greenlandic women, which, from a local colonial point of view, were beneficial in establishing connections to existing Greenlandic kinship-based networks. Intermarriage also played an important role in the changing social landscapes of the colonies, with the advent of “mixed” families closely connected to the trade company through education and employment. The unique and detailed historical sources also show that Greenlandic women played a central part in a complex and entangled colonial situation.
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Notes
- 1.
The indigenous population of Greenland are Inuit but have referred to themselves as Kalaallit since precolonial times. Today this remains the marker of nationality and national culture of the Greenlanders, especially since the name of the now self-governing country is Kalaallit Nunaat—‘land of the Kalaallit’—in Greenland. In Danish, grønlænder—‘Greenlander’—is still used. There is no tradition of self-reference or reference to Greenlander Inuit, despite an awareness of and engagement in the Panarctic Inuit cultural and political community as Greenlandic Inuit. Accordingly, the indigenous population will be referred to as ‘Greenlanders.’
- 2.
In colonial Greenland, the term “year” denotes the period between the 1st of July and the 30th of June. For instance, the year 1806 covers the period between the 1st of July 1805 and the 30th of June 1806. The administration of the Danish colonies in Greenland was run by this temporal framework, as the supply ships reached Greenland in early July after the disappearance of the sea ice.
- 3.
Account books: Grønlænderbog, Christianshaab 1805–1806, NKA 57.11.01, 72.20, 1.1; Grønlænderbog, Egedesminde 1806–1816. NKA 57.10.01/72.21/1; Grønlænderbog, Christianshaab 1814–1820, NKA 57.11.01/72.21/1; Grønlænderbog, Egedesminde 1816–1824, NKA 57.10.01/72.21/3; Grønlænderbog, Christianshaab 1821–1829, NKA 57.11.01/72.21/2; Grønlænderbog, Egedesminde 1825–1833, NKA 57.10.01/72.21/4.
- 4.
Blanding, the term used by the colonial administration, can be directly translated as ‘mixture’ or ‘mix’ similar to the concepts of metís or mestizo. In Greenland, blanding remained in use as an administrative concept until the 1911 national census. Blanding is not and has never been a concept used as self-identification. In Greenlandic, the word akutaq has been used to refer to people with bright eyes, blond or bright-coloured hair but not necessarily referring to mixed descent.
- 5.
The abbreviation ‘v.’ or ‘vel.’ was used in the colonial sources to connect the several names of the individual Inuit, e.g., their Christian name, Greenlandic names, and nicknames. The use of multiple names for the same person was done to identify specific persons, as many Inuit had the same Christian name.
- 6.
The earliest version of a marriage contract preserved in the archives is a transcript from a church record to a mission journal from 1754. The wording of the marriage contracts changed very little in the following century, but focus on Greenlandic lifestyle—housing, food, childcare, and teaching of hunting skills—remained central (Mission journal 1754, Jacobshavn, NKA 22.12.01/05.50/1).
- 7.
Arnaq (‘woman’ in Greenlandic) was her Greenlandic name. She was christened Frederikke Broberg and was a daughter of the governor’s Greenlandic cook, Carl Vilhelm Broberg, and his wife, Helena, both Greenlanders of mixed parentage. At the age of 16, Arnaq married the Danish RGTD sailor Jens Andersen (Mission census record, Godhavn 1827 and 1850, NKA 22.10.01/31.10/1).
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Toft, P.A., Seiding, I.H. (2013). Circumventing Colonial Policies: Consumption and Family Life as Social Practices in the Early Nineteenth-Century Disko Bay. In: Naum, M., Nordin, J. (eds) Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity. Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology, vol 37. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6202-6_7
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