Description

Gronlandsbogen 1912 [Title on the cover] [Greenland Book 1912]

Højt skal man hædre den fremmede gæst [Title on the First Page] [One should highly honour the Foreign Guest]

Greenland, various locations (mostly Sisimiut (Holsteinsborg) and Qeqertarsuaq (Godhavn)): May 9, 1912- May 15, 1925.

Small Folio, 36,5 x 23,5 cm (14.4 x 9.25 inches), notebook with printed lines, 61 numbered pp. with entries in various handwritings in black ink and pencil, lines in red ink, rest of the notebook empty, contemporary three-quarter calf , marbled covers, paper label with hand-written title (binding with minor scuffing, tiny loss of paper to the label and binding, otherwise good with sporadic staining and age-toning)

Kept by Colonial Manager Oluf Nikolai Willemann Thron in Sisimiut, this remarkable and unique guestbook became, almost by chance, one of the most vivid surviving records of early twentieth-century Greenland.

What began as a private household album evolved into an extraordinary register of the Arctic world: explorers, colonial officials, missionaries, scientists, sailors, physicians, administrators, travellers, and their families all left traces in its pages. Their entries transform the volume into far more than a list of visitors; it is a densely layered document of encounter, memory, authority, curiosity, and lived experience at the edge of the Danish colonial world.

The voices preserved here are striking in their range and immediacy. They are admiring and affectionate, but also prejudiced, conflicted, humorous, lyrical, homesick, critical, and raw. Together, they reveal the human texture of colonial Greenland: the hospitality of the governor’s house, the hardships of Arctic travel, the rhythms of scientific and administrative life, and the uneven relationships between Danes and Greenlanders. Few documents capture so directly the tensions, misunderstandings, dependencies, and moments of genuine connection that shaped everyday life in this period.

As a whole, the guestbook stands as a rare and irreplaceable witness to Greenland at a moment of profound transformation. Its pages bring together many of the individuals who shaped the island’s political, scientific, missionary, and cultural history, while also preserving fleeting personal impressions that would otherwise have vanished. Intimate yet historically expansive, the volume offers an exceptional window into the colonial Arctic and into the complex human world of Greenland in the early twentieth century.

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