Why Denmark Has Forfeited Its Claim To Greenland

photorandy2023

2 months ago

Naja Lyberth was fitted with a coil as part of a birth control strategy in Greenland in the 1970s

I have written several articles on postings related to politics. A list of links has been provided at the bottom of this article for your convenience. This article will, however, address different aspects of these political events.

There are three reasons that Denmark has forfeited its claim on Green the first one was G60 Greenland Relocation Program. The second one was The little Danes Experiment, and the third one was the Spiral Case or The Coil Campaign. Let us first begin G60 Greenland Relocation Program.

1) The G60 Greenland Relocation Program

The G60 Greenland Relocation Program, part of Denmark’s post-WWII modernization efforts (G50/G60), forcibly centralized Greenland’s population by moving people from small settlements into larger towns for better services like healthcare and education, aiming to modernize the nation but causing significant social disruption, creating “ghost towns,” and sparking later compensation claims, particularly concerning the Uummannaq (Thule) displacement for a U.S. air base. In 1953, American officials decided the Thule Air Base needed to be expanded. Antiaircraft artillery, they found, had to be moved further from the main base. With the expansion of the base came the relocation of Uummannaq’s residents, which was to be one of the most controversial aspects of the American military presence in Greenland.

Since the mid-1980s, the Uummannaq relocation has been the subject of intense political controversy, official investigations, different compensation schemes, lawsuits, and governmental negotiations. The issue has been on and off the domestic political agenda and has sometimes put a strain on relations between Copenhagen and the Greenland Home Rule Government.

Key Aspects of G60

Centralization: The core goal was to consolidate Greenland’s scattered population into fewer, larger towns to make administration and service provision (schools, clinics) more efficient. A central part of G60 was the concentration of the population into a few large towns, which involved moving people from smaller settlements to modern, often concrete, housing blocks.
“Danification” (Danish Influence): The period of G50/G60 saw intensified “Danification,” where Greenland was managed heavily from Copenhagen, leading to profound changes in all aspects of life.
Modernization: It was part of a broader drive (G50 & G60) to rapidly advance Greenland’s socio-economic development, bringing it from a traditional society into the modern world. The program successfully increased the standard of living, introduced widespread electrification, and improved health services. It facilitated a shift that saw the Greenlandic population transition from the Middle Ages to the 20th century in roughly 25 years.
Forced Resettlement: This involved significant forced relocations, dismantling small communities, and relocating residents, sometimes with little notice, leading to cultural disruption.
Qoornoq Example: The abandoned settlement of Qoornoq is a physical remnant of G60, abandoned as residents moved to Nuuk.
Economic and Social Impact: The rapid changes caused significant social challenges, including high rates of alcoholism, crime, and, eventually, a high suicide rate.
Discrimination: The program was marked by a “birth criterion,” where workers born in Denmark often received higher salaries than native Greenlanders for the same work.
Political Awakening: The, sometimes forced, modernization and cultural, social, and economic discrimination led to a political awakening among young Greenlanders in the 1960s, creating a desire for autonomy.

Consequences & Controversies

Social Issues: While improving some standards of living, the rapid changes led to issues like increased alcoholism and crime.
Uummannaq (Thule) Displacement: A highly controversial aspect involved the forced move of Inuit from Uummannaq (Uummannaq) in 1953 to make way for the Thule Air Base expansion, a move later acknowledged as regrettable by Denmark and leading to legal battles and compensation.
“Experiment Children”: Separately, a controversial social experiment also occurred, involving children being sent to Denmark for Danish education, with some later receiving compensation from the Danish state.

In essence, G60 was a transformative, yet often traumatic, period of forced modernization and centralization in Greenland’s history, fundamentally reshaping its settlement patterns and social fabric. The G60 program was instrumental in setting the stage for the later demands for Home Rule (1979) and eventual Self-Government (2009) in Greenland.

2)The Little Danes Experiment.

The little Danes experiment, also known simply as the experiment (Danish: eksperimentet), was a 1951 Danish operation where 22 Greenlandic Inuit children (known as “experiment children”; Danish: eksperimentbørn) were sent to Danish foster families in an attempt to re-educate them as “little Danes”. While the children were all supposed to be orphans, most were not. Six children were adopted while in Denmark, and sixteen returned to Greenland, only to be placed in Danish-speaking orphanages and never lived with their families again. Half of the children experienced mental health disturbances, and half of them died in young adulthood. The government of Denmark officially apologised in 2020, after several years of demands from Greenlandic officials.

Background

Following World War II, Danish government officials and non-governmental organisations believed Greenlandic society was underdeveloped, and sought to redesign it.^[2] Together with the Red Cross and Save the Children, they manufactured an experiment to create a system where Greenlandic children would be brought to the Danish mainland, learn Danish, be fostered by Danish families, and then come back to Greenland as “little Danes”: A population that was to become, according to the colonial studies researcher Claire Louise McLisky, the “new ruling class of Greenlanders”. The children were supposed to be selected by Greenlandic priests according to certain criteria: Around six years old, without mental or physical impairments, and orphaned.

Experiment

Queen Ingrid visiting Fedgaarden in 1951

Even though the participants selected were supposed to all be parentless and about six years old, priests could not find enough qualifying children. As a result, only six were orphans, and one child was nine years old when the experiment began. With the selections made, the MS Disko departed Nuuk in May 1951 carrying 22 Greenlandic Inuit children: thirteen boys and nine girls. They soon arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark—a country Helene Thiesen, one of the children, “had never previously heard of”. After being moved to a so-called holiday camp at Fedgaarden, operated by Save the Children, they were immediately placed in quarantine over fears they carried contagious diseases. This quarantine lasted the whole of the summer; there, Thiesen broke out with eczema. The queen of Denmark, Ingrid, visited the camp and took pictures with the children. Thiesen said she “didn’t understand a thing” of the queen’s visit, and that her general unease of the experiment showed through in the photo, in which “none of us is smiling”.

The children were then placed in Danish foster families for over a year. There, they learned the Danish language and forgot Kalaallisut. They were supposed to be sent back to Nuuk after about six months, but the construction of the orphanage by the program stalled, and over the course of their yearlong stay in Denmark, six of them were adopted by Danish families.

Aftermath and apology

Sixteen children returned to Greenland, while six were adopted by Danish families. Those who returned to Greenland were “top class” according to archival documents. None of them were to ever live with their families again, and even if they could, they could no longer speak the same language. They were placed into the orphanage, only permitted (alongside their Greenlandic Inuit staff) to speak Danish; this policy was to distill the “benefits” of Danish living to the children. By 1960, all of the children had vacated their orphanage, and sixteen of the 22 children lived outside of Greenland for most of their lives. About half of the children experienced mental health disturbances, substance abuse, and suicide attempts over the course of their lives, and half of the children died in young adulthood. They experienced extensive cultural isolation and social alienation, and Thiesen said they “lost their sense of purpose in life”. Modified forms of the experiment were held in the 1960s and 1970s, where children would go to Denmark only for a short while, and then be returned to their families; these experiments also negatively affected the children.

In 1996, a Danish archivist told Thiesen for the first time that she was a participant in an experiment, and in 1998, the Danish Red Cross shared its “regret” for it. In 2009, the prime minister of Greenland, Kuupik Kleist, demanded an apology from the Danish government, saying the experiment is a “classic colonial case”. The same demand was also made by the Social Democrats of Denmark, calling it a “black chapter” for the nation, alongside requests for an investigating commission of the experiment. Despite these calls, no apology was made by Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, who said instead: “History cannot be changed. The government regards the colonial period as a closed part of our shared history. We must be pleased with the fact that times have changed.” Conversely, Save the Children apologised for the experiment, while also saying that they may have intentionally destroyed their documents relating to it; they apologised again in 2015, with the general secretary saying they “will never enter into a cooperation of this nature with the authorities”. Just as Rasmussen refused to apologise, so too did following prime ministers of Denmark, and Helle Thorning-Schmidt declined to participate in an investigation. In 2019, two Greenlandic members of the Folketing made demands: Aaja Chemnitz Larsen (Inuit Ataqatigiit) demanded that an apology be made, and Ineqi Kielsen (Siumut) demanded that an investigating commission be made. As a result of Kielsen’s request, Rasmussen agreed with Greenlandic prime minister Kim Kielsen to create a commission, though he again refused to make an apology.

The next year, after waiting for the commission’s report, the government of Denmark and its prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, officially apologised for the little Danes experiment. There were only six surviving members of the experiment, among them Helene Thiesen, then 76 years old, who had been a proponent of officially recognising it. In December 2021, the survivors sued for 250,000 kroner (USD$38,000) in compensation from Denmark for “violation of current Danish law and human rights”; Astrid Krag, the Danish minister for social affairs, said the government was “in dialogue” with their lawyers, though she stressed the most important aspect for Denmark “has been an official apology”. In March 2022, the government announced that the six surviving experiment members will receive a face-to-face apology from the prime minister and their requested compensation of 250,000 kroner; Frederiksen traveled to Nuuk to apologise in a speech.

How a failed social experiment in Denmark separated Inuit children from their families

Seven-year-old Helene Thiesen peered out from aboard the passenger ship MS Disko, knowing she was setting sail from Greenland to a place called Denmark. What she could not understand is why her mother had chosen to send her away on that unhappy day in 1951.

“I was so sad,” Thiesen, now 77 years old, recalled to CNN. Rigid with sorrow, Thiesen was unable to wave back to her mother and two siblings, who were watching from the harbor off the coast of the Greenland capital, Nuuk. “I looked into (my mother’s) eyes and thought, why was she letting me go?”

Thiesen was one of 22 Inuit children who were taken from their homes not knowing that they would end up being part of a failed social experiment. Aged between 5 and 9 years old, many of them would never see or live with their families again, becoming forgotten about and marginalized in their native land.

At the time, Greenland was a Danish colony, and Greenlanders were suffering from high levels of poverty, low quality of life and high rates of mortality, said Einar Lund Jensen, a project researcher at the National Museum of Denmark.

The Inuit children are seen at an orphanage back in Greenland wearing outfits made for them after a visit from Queen Ingrid of Denmark. Thiesen says the girls called them their “princess dresses.”

Denmark’s aim was “to create little Danes who would become the intelligentsia; role models for Greenland,” said Jensen, who co-authored a recent government-commissioned report investigating the experiment.

The Danish government felt compelled to modernize the arctic colony, hoping to hold onto their interests as post-war decolonization movements swept through the globe. They took up an idea from human rights organization Save the Children Denmark of bringing Inuit children to the country in order to recover from what were perceived as their bad living conditions, he said.

The assumption at that time was “Danish society is superior to Greenlandic society,” he added.

After a year and a half in Denmark, most of the children were returned to Greenland to live in an orphanage run by another charity, the Danish Red Cross, in Nuuk — separated from Greenlanders and their families and banned from speaking their mother tongue. CNN has reached out to the Danish Red Cross for comment.

Seen as strangers by Greenlanders, many of the children returned to Denmark when they became adults. Up to half of the group developed mental illness or substance abuse problems in later life, Jensen said. Many were unemployed and led hard lives, Thiesen said.

The Danish government “took our identity and family from us,” Kristine Heinesen, 76, who, along with Thiesen, is one of the six Greenlandic social experiment survivors alive today. Walking in a cemetery in Copenhagen where some of her friends from the experiment are now buried, Heinesen admits her life has been decent since her days in the orphanage. “But I know many of the other children suffered more growing up, and I think because we’re only six left of 22 — that tells the story very well,” she said, wrapped in a Greenlandic fur-lined coat.

Save the Children apologized in 2015 for the part they played in the social experiment. The Danish government issued an apology five years later, after pressure from campaign groups, but has refused to compensate those who are still alive, said the lawyer of the victims, Mads Krøger Pramming. He filed a compensation claim of 250,000 kroner ($38,000) each in Copenhagen’s district court in late December 2021.

The six accuse the Danish state of acting “in violation of current Danish law and human rights, including the plaintiffs’ right to private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR),” reads their claim.

In a statement to CNN, Denmark’s Minister of Social Affairs and the Elderly said the government was looking into the compensation claim.

“The most important aspect for the Danish Government has been an official apology to the now adult children and their families for the betrayal they endured. This was a major step towards redressing the Government’s failure; a responsibility no previous government had taken on,” Astrid Krag said.

“The government and I believe that recognizing the mistakes of the past is in itself crucial, and we must learn from these so that history is never permitted to repeat itself.”

The hearing is likely to happen in the next 10 months and “it is still our hope, that the government will settle the case and pay compensation before the hearing,” Pramming said.

After all the six victims have been through, “they don’t think an apology is enough,” he added.

‘Cultural eradication’

The aim of the experiment, which was greenlit in 1950, was to recruit orphans, but it was hard to find enough children, said researcher Jensen. The parameters were broadened to include motherless or fatherless households and 22 children were selected, even though many of them were living with their extended families or one parent, he added.

Thiesen’s mother, who was widowed, initially dismissed the request of two Danes to take her young daughter to Denmark, Thiesen told CNN. But she eventually agreed on the promise that Thiesen would get a better education.

As colonizers, Danes, who helped identify the children for the experiment, held authority in Greenland, Jensen explained.

It would have been hard for a Greenlander to refuse them at the time, Karla Jessen Williamson, a Greenlandic assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan and member of the Greenland Reconciliation Commission, told CNN.

“As with any colonized nation, the authorities (were) respected and feared; rebutting these authorities cannot be done,” she said.

According to the report Jensen co-authored on the experiment, there were doubts as to whether some of the parents were fully informed or understood what they were agreeing to.

In many ways, what happened to the children represents the devastating and deliberate effects of cultural eradication during colonialism, said Williamson. “In colonial times, there was an eradication of the uniqueness of culture, of the relationship with the land, the range of languages, spirituality — and these would have been done away with so that (the colonized) can be socialized into becoming part of the colonial state,” she said.

On arriving to Denmark, the children were housed in Fedgaarden, Save the Children’s holiday camp on the southern Feddet peninsular, for four months. The children were banned from speaking Greenlandic — a dialect of the Inuit language — and were instead taught Danish.

The children were both terrified and amazed by their new surroundings. Heinesen was only 5 years old at the time and clearly recalls “all the trees — we don’t have any trees in Greenland, so I remember how tall and big they were.”

They were later placed with separate foster families for around a year. Thiesen did not feel welcome in the home of her first foster family. She had to wear an ointment for her eczema and was not allowed to sit on the furniture. “I was homesick every day,” she said.

Her second foster family were kinder, buying her a bicycle and doll, and treating her as part of the family.

When it was time to return to Greenland, six of the Inuit children remained in Denmark and were adopted by their foster families. The adoptions were “completely against the whole idea of coming back (to Greenland) and becoming the intellectual elite,” said historian Jensen. “In my opinion, it was a mistake,” he said.

‘Could not see anything through my tears’

They returned to Greenland in October 1952 and were placed in an orphanage run by the Danish Red Cross in Nuuk. According to the legal claim, custody of the children was transferred to the headmistress of the orphanage.

Thiesen recalls seeing her family waiting for her by the quay in Nuuk. “I dropped my suitcase and ran to them, telling them everything I saw. But my mother did not answer me,” Thiesen said. It was because she was speaking Danish and her mother spoke the Inuit dialect of Greenlandic — a language Thiesen had lost the ability to understand.

Their reunion lasted 10 minutes. A Danish nurse looking after the children told her to let go of her mother because she now lived in an orphanage, Thiesen told CNN. “I cried all the way to the orphanage — I was so looking forward to see my town but I could not see anything through my tears.”

The orphanage was where 16 of the children lived. They were only allowed to speak Danish, were put in a Danish-speaking school, and contact with their families was limited or non-existent. No one told Heinesen that her biological mother died soon after Heinesen joined the orphanage, according to the legal claim.

Emphasis was placed on keeping in touch with the foster families, said Jensen. Thiesen’s mother was only allowed to visit her daughter a couple of times during the seven years Thiesen was there, the legal claim states.

It was psychologically traumatic “for these kids to be separated like that from Greenlandic society and their parents,” Jensen said. “Even those who (had family in Nuuk) said they were not allowed to visit their family. Sometimes the orphanage invited the family to coffee on Sundays, but the children were never given a fair chance to contact their families.”

They were enrolled in a Danish school and were limited from playing or interacting with Greenlandic children in the town. The only people the children were allowed to socialize with were prominent Danish families who lived in Nuuk, survivor Heinesen said.

Greenlanders began to consider the children as outsiders. Gabriel Schmidt, 76, one of the six from the social experiment who now lives in Denmark, told CNN that Greenlandic children in Nuuk would say: “You don’t know Greenlandic, you’re not Greenlandic,” and throw rocks at them. “But most of what they said I didn’t understand as I had lost my language in Denmark,” he said from his home.

Greenland was fully integrated into Denmark in 1953 and in 1979 it was granted home rule. In that period, Jensen said, Danish and Greenlandic authorities lost interest in the social experiment as Greenland’s infrastructure projects, business sector, and healthcare reforms took center stage.

‘Are you sitting down?’

By 1960, all the children had left the orphanage, and eventually almost all of them moved back to Denmark. For the six who are still alive, they say finding their sense of identity has taken a lifetime.

Schmidt returned to Denmark to live with his foster mother, where he eventually got a job as a solider in the Danish army. Speaking from his tidy home in Copenhagen, Schmidt said the army gave him a calling. “It really saved me. It gave me structure, friends and a purpose for my life, and in many ways that time was the best of my life.”

Thiesen struggled to connect or forgive her mother, angry with her decision to send her away. “I thought my mother did not want me and it is why I was angry with her for most of my life,” she said.

It was only in 1996, when Thiesen was 46 years old, when she discovered the truth. The late Danish radio personality and writer Tine Bryld called Thiesen’s home with some devastating news. “She told me, ‘are you sitting down? I found something in Copenhagen, you have been part of an experiment,’” Thiesen said. “I fell to the ground and cried. It was the first time I had been told of this and it was so awful,” she added.

“I felt sad when I learned the truth,” Heinesen, who moved to Denmark in the 1960s and became a seamstress, told CNN. “You just don’t experiment with children — it’s just wrong.” In 1993, she put an advert in the local paper in Greenland that she was coming to visit and was looking for living relatives. “It was a great moment to be back and to visit — (it was) very emotional for all of us,” she said.

Thiesen has spent part of her adult life trying to reconnect with Greenland and her people. Her home in Stensved, a small town an hour and a half away from Copenhagen, is a testament to that attempt.

Sat at a dining table in front of a sideboard covered with snow white-colored tupilaq carvings, mythic Greenlandic Inuit figures meant to protect their owners from any harm, Thiesen told CNN that learning Greenlandic and writing her memoir has been part of her healing process.

It was facilitated by her second husband, Jens Møller, who is Greenlandic. Thiesen said he “gave me the biggest gift … to learn the Greenlandic language, but also he taught me fishing, hunting and all those things I had never done as a child, but which are key elements of the Greenlandic culture.”

It has not wiped away the enormous damage created by the social experiment but has, in some ways, helped her reconcile the pain that began aboard MS Disko in 1951. At least now she understands why her mother sent her away.

Denmark Apologizes for Taking Greenlandic Children in 1950s Social Experiment

Denmark’s Prime Minister delivered a face-to-face apology to six living victims of a 1950s social experiment in which 22 Greenlandic children were taken from their families and sent to Denmark to be integrated into Danish society.

The Inuit children were between four and nine years old when they in 1951 were shipped to Denmark, the then-colonial power, to try and re-educate them as “little Danes”. The children were supposed to return to Greenland and be part of a new Danish-speaking elite that would help modernise the Arctic island’s Inuit population.

The experiment was part of a broader effort by Denmark to convince the United Nations that Greenland, a Danish colony until 1953, was an integrated part of Denmark. Denmark and other colonial powers had pledged to work towards de-colonization when joining the world body in 1945.

“Your stories have touched us deeply and this is why Denmark today says the only word that is right to say: Sorry!,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told the six survivors at a ceremony at the National Museum of Denmark, calling the act inhuman and heartless.

The children were never sent back to their families, but were either adopted by Danish families or sent back to Greenland and placed in an orphanage, where they were forced to speak Danish and had little or no contact with their relatives.

“Our parents said yes to the trip but were hardly aware of what they agreed to,” said Eva Illum, who was taken from her family back in 1951.

The grim experiment is a sore point in the relations between Greenland and Denmark.

“This is part of our common history. The truth has emerged and it is a truth which hurts to look back on,” Greenland’s Premier Mute B. Egede said.

The overwhelming majority of Greenland’s 57,000 people are of Inuit decent, thinly spread out across the vast, barren North Atlantic island that is a quarter the size of the United States. Greenland remains a formal part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but has since gained wide autonomy and holds the right to declare independence.

Frederiksen sent a written apology in December 2020, and on Wednesday delivered the apology to the six survivors in person for the first time.

3) The Spiral Case.

The spiral case (also known as the coil campaign, coil case or IUD case; Danish: spiralsagen or spiralkampagnen) is an ongoing investigation into Danish physicians forcing birth control onto Greenlandic Inuit women during the 1960s and 1970s by placing intrauterine devices in thousands of Greenlandic Inuit girls and women, often without consent and under the direction of government officials. The program was created to prevent unplanned or unwanted pregnancies, lower costs, and control Greenland‘s birth rate. Some cases also occurred after the responsibility of the health care system was transferred to the Greenland government in 1991.

While Greenlandic politicians Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam, Mimi Karlsen and former Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede have described the birth control campaign as genocide, Danish jurist Frederik Harhoff described the campaign as an injustice but lacking genocidal intent. Greenland’s Human Rights Council stated the campaign violated existing privacy regulations. In 2022, the Danish and Greenlandic governments agreed to hold a two-year investigation into the campaign, though some activists have spoken against the investigation’s limited scope. In 2023, the investigation formally began, and 67 women sued the Danish government. The investigation is scheduled to conclude in 2026. In September 2025, the report was released. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen have formally apologized for the case.

Involuntary fertility control program

Between around 1966 and 1975, thousands of Greenlandic Inuit girls and women had intrauterine devices (IUDs) inserted to prevent pregnancy under the direction of the Danish government and by Danish doctors. Half of the 9,000 women in Greenland who could have children were given IUDs in the first five years of the program; some of the affected girls were as young as 12, and in many cases, women (and in the case of girls, their parents) did not consent to the procedure. For instance, Naja Lyberth was 13 or 14 years old, Elisibánguak’ Jeremiasssen was 13, and Arnannguaq Poulsen was 16 and staying in Denmark when she received hers. All of the girls in Lyberth’s class were told to have IUDs placed by a visiting doctor and then taken to a hospital for them to be inserted. The purpose of the campaign was to prevent unplanned or unwanted pregnancies, lower childcare costs, and control the birth rate in Greenland. Thousands of girls and women ultimately had IUDs placed without their consent during the campaign. As a result, the birth rate in Greenland was halved in just a few years.

Portions of the campaign were unlawful. In Greenland, it was illegal for doctors to give girls contraception without parental consent until 1970; past 1970, it was against the law for doctors to place IUDs in girls, like Lybert, who were under 15 and had never been pregnant. Greenland only received autonomy in its healthcare in 1991.

Investigations and reaction

Mimi Karlsen (pictured in 2011), who argued the birth control campaign amounted to genocide.

In 2017, Naja Lyberth was among the first people to publicly discuss the spiral campaign; she wrote on Facebook about her experiences. In 2022, the podcast Spiralkampagnen (“Spiral Campaign”), hosted by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, uncovered the campaign’s records. Following the podcast’s release that year, politicians and human rights organisations began calling for investigations; the party Naleraq wrote legislation to investigate. On 2 June, the Inatsisartut (Greenlandic parliament) voted to demand that the Danish government investigate the history of the campaign. Later that year, the Danish and Greenlandic governments agreed to begin a two-year investigation. It seeks to document the background of the birth control campaign; its implementation, including Greenlandic government involvement; the reasons the campaign began and continued; and other fertility control programs through 1991. The investigation formally began in May 2023; it was scheduled for completion in May 2025, but investigators requested an extension until 31 January 2026. The investigators are all women from Greenland and Denmark.

The Inuit Ataqatigiit Minister of Health, Mimi Karlsen, asked women affected by the fertility control program to call Tusaannga, a social services and support hotline. Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam, a Siumut member of the Folketing (Danish parliament) called the campaign genocide. She stated that in the Danish desire to modernise Greenland, elevating the material conditions of its residents was too expensive, so the government instituted a program to commit genocide on the population. Danish lawyer Mads Pramming likened the case to the Little Danes experiment, a 1951 Danish operation that resettled 22 Greenlandic children in Denmark. Lyberth said in 2022 that the campaign stole her virginity, caused her pain, may have caused complications for her later in life, and continued to traumatise her into adulthood. According to Greenland’s Human Rights Council, regulations regarding family life and privacy were violated.

Some activists have criticised the limited scope of the campaign, which extends only to 1991. In December 2022, BBC News noted that numerous women and girls allege that this campaign continued after 1991. Karlsen said in a BBC interview that she would forward allegations to the Greenlandic medical authorities to see if they are true and if they reflect widespread practises related to the spiral case. At least nine women have reported post-1991 nonconsensual IUD placements to the government; medical investigators found four operations occurred without consent (three had documented consent), eight of the nine cases allegedly happened after the year 2000, and most happened while the women were under anesthesia for induced abortions. Nivi Olsen, a Demokraatit member of the Inatsisartut, has called for the investigation to be broadened to include post-1991 birth control measures.

In October 2023, Lyberth and 66 other women sued the Danish government for DKK 300,000 each (approximately US$47,695). In March 2024, 143 women sued the Danish government and demanded 43 million kroner, in total. In response to the investigation, Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede accused Denmark of committing the crime of genocide in Greenland.

In response to the allegation that the campaign amounted to genocide, spokesperson for the Conservative People’s Party in Denmark Rasmus Jarlov and Danish Social Liberal Party leader Martin Lidegaard have denied the accusation, both claiming that there was no concerted effort to exterminate Greenlandic Inuit. Trine Mach, a spokesperson for Red–Green Alliance, neither disputed nor endorsed calling the practice genocide, although she asked for Denmark to apologize for the practice. Among academics, the label of genocide is disputed; Danish jurist Frederik Harhoff argued that it may have been a crime against humanity or a human rights violation, but it did not amount to genocide, and he argued there was a lack of genocidal intent on the part of authorities to clear Greenland of its indigenous population. Colonial researcher Naja Graugaard Dyrendom argued that the practice was propelled by ethnic animus and should be investigated as a genocide.

Hundreds of Greenlandic women and girls were forcibly given contraception between 1960 and 1991, report says

More than 350 Greenlandic Indigenous women and girls, including some 12 years old and younger, reported that they were forcibly given contraception by Danish health authorities in cases that date back to the 1960s, according to an independent investigation’s findings released Tuesday.

The Inuit victims, many of them teenagers at the time, were either fitted with intrauterine contraceptive devices, known as IUDs or coils, or given a hormonal birth control injection. They were not told details about the procedure, or did not give their consent.

The victims described traumatic experiences that left some with physical side effects, ranging from pain and bleeding to serious infections.

The governments of Denmark and Greenland officially apologized last month for their roles in the historic mistreatment in an apparent attempt to get ahead of the highly anticipated report, which covered 488 times when a woman was given forced contraception between 1960 and 1991.

Nearly 150 Inuit women last year sued Denmark and filed compensation claims against its health ministry, saying Danish health authorities violated their human rights. Danish authorities last year said as many as 4,500 women and girls — reportedly half the fertile women in Greenland at the time — received IUDs between the 1960s and mid-1970s.

The alleged purpose was to limit population growth in Greenland by preventing pregnancies. The population on the Arctic island was rapidly increasing at the time because of better living conditions and better health care.

Greenland took over its own health care programs on Jan. 1, 1992.

Centuries of dehumanizing policies

The investigation’s conclusion comes as Greenland is in the headlines alongside U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly said he seeks U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland. He has not ruled out a military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island.

The leaders of Denmark and Greenland say the island is not for sale. Denmark’s foreign minister recently summoned the top U.S. diplomat in the country for talks after the main national broadcaster reported that at least three people with connections to Trump have been carrying out covert influence operations in Greenland.

Greenland, which remains part of the Danish realm, was a colony under Denmark’s crown until 1953, when it became a province in the Scandinavian country. In 1979, the island was granted home rule, and 30 years later Greenland became a self-governing entity.

The forced contraception of Indigenous women and girls was part of centuries of Danish policies that dehumanized Greenlanders and their families.

The policies included the removal of young Inuit children from their parents to be given to Danish foster families for reeducation and controversial parental competency tests that resulted in the forced separation of Greenlandic families.

The report’s findings

The investigators received reports from 354 Greenlandic women who were between 48 and 89 years old when they spoke to authorities for the independent investigation, which began June 1, 2023 following a media outcry.

Almost all victims were between 12 and 37 years old at the time. One girl was under 12, but her exact age was not made public in Tuesday’s report due to anonymity concerns. The vast majority of the procedures occurred in Greenland.

Most of the women reported a single incident, while eight women said they were forcibly given contraception at least three times.

Inuit Greenlanders demand answers over Danish birth control scandal

Denmark and Greenland have formally agreed to launch a two-year investigation into historic birth control practices carried out for many years on Inuit Greenlanders by Danish doctors.

Thousands of Inuit women and girls were fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD), commonly known as a coil, during the 1960s and 70s.

It is a contraceptive device placed inside the womb – or uterus – to prevent pregnancy.

Among the women and girls fitted with an IUD was Naja Lyberth.

It was in the 1970s that a doctor told Naja, who believes she was then aged about 13, to go to her local hospital to have a coil implanted following a routine school medical examination.

“I didn’t really know what it [was] because he never explained or got my permission,” says Naja, who at the time was living in Maniitsoq, a small town on Greenland’s west coast.

“I was afraid. I couldn’t tell my parents,” she says. “I was a virgin. I had never even kissed a boy.”

Now 60, Naja is one of the first to speak out about what happened.

“I can remember the doctors [in] white coats, and maybe there was a nurse. I saw the metal things [stirrups] where you should spread your legs. It was very frightening. The equipment the doctors used was so big for my child body – it was like having knives inside me.”

Naja says her parents’ permission had not been sought, and that her classmates were also sent to hospital but did not talk about it because “it was too shocking”.

She has set up a Facebook group to allow women to share their common experiences and help each other cope with the trauma. More than 70 women have joined.

A recent podcast, Spiralkampagnen (“coil campaign”), found records indicating that up to 4,500 women and girls – roughly half of all fertile females – had an IUD implanted in Greenland between 1966 and 1970. But the procedures continued into the mid-1970s.

Of these, it is unclear how many cases lacked consent or proper explanation.

Among those affected were girls as young as 12, and several have stated publicly that they were not properly informed. Some women unable to have children suspect the coil is to blame.

“So many women contact me,” says Naja. “It seems that the younger the girls were, the more complications they get from this coil. It’s so sad.”

Arnannguaq Poulsen had a coil fitted when she was 16, not in Greenland but on Danish soil. She was studying at a boarding school for Greenlandic children on the island of Bornholm in 1974.

“They didn’t ask me before the procedure, and I had no idea what it was all about, or what the coil was,” she says.

She could only travel home once a year and is certain her parents were not consulted. Arnannguaq describes suffering pains, and says she had the coil removed when she returned home to Greenland a year later, aged 17.

“I feel that I didn’t get a choice back then, and I cannot accept that,” the 64-year-old says, tearfully. “How would people react if it was Danish women instead of Greenlandic?”

There was little knowledge of the birth control programme in either Greenland or Denmark, and the reports have caused shock and indignation.

Now, a committee will examine the pregnancy prevention practices carried out by Danish health authorities between 1960 and 1991, both in Greenland and at schools in Denmark with Greenlandic students.

Greenland’s government only took control of health policy from Copenhagen in 1992.

In a statement on Friday, Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said the investigation would shed light on the decisions leading up to the practice, and how it was carried out.

He said he had met several of the women affected, adding: “The pain, physically and emotionally, that they have experienced is still there today.”

Greenland transitioned from a colony to a country of Denmark in 1953.

Sweeping modernisation plans ushered in better healthcare and living conditions. Life expectancy and new-born survival rates improved.

But those successes brought other challenges, says Soeren Rud, a historian at Copenhagen University.

Greenland’s tiny population rocketed, and by 1970 it had almost doubled.

Mr Rud believes the rationale for introducing the coil was partly financial, but also the result of colonial attitudes.

“There’s an obvious interest in trying to limit the growth of the population,” he says, adding that it reduces “the challenges of providing housing and welfare services”.

A high proportion of young single mothers was another concern that prompted family-planning initiatives.

Doctors wrote about the coil initiative in journals, perceiving it a success, Mr Rud adds. Records show the birth rate halved in just a few years.

Katrine Jakobsen, from Nuuk, says she was only 12 when she had a coil fitted. She remembers being taken to the doctor by a relative’s girlfriend in 1974.

She had the coil for almost two decades and suffered pain and a string of complications. In her late 30s, her uterus was removed.

“It’s had a big impact on my life. I never had children,” she says. “I never told anyone. I always thought I was alone in this.”

Today’s IUDs are small T-like devices, but earlier versions in the 1960s were S-shaped and much larger.

“In a uterus that had never been pregnant, it would give more bleeding, more pain, a bigger risk of infection,” says Dr Aviaja Siegstad, a gynaecologist at Queen Ingrid’s Hospital in Nuuk.

In the 1990s and 2000s, she and her colleagues came across patients struggling to conceive who were unaware they had a coil. It was not a big number, she says, but it was also not unusual.

“In a couple of cases we were able to date the IUD back to women who had abortions and probably had it placed after an abortion without being told,” she adds.

According to Greenland’s Human Rights Council, conventions on family life and privacy were breached.

“We need to get it investigated to know whether or not it was actually a genocide,” says the council’s chairperson Qivioq Loevstroem, adding: “We don’t want a whitewashed report.”

Greenland’s health minister, Mimi Karlsen, said involving Greenland in the investigation was “necessary to get to the bottom” of what happened.

It follows other controversies that have seen Denmark’s past relationship with Greenland come under increased scrutiny.

In March, Denmark apologised and paid compensation to six Inuit who were separated from their families and sent to Denmark as part of failed 1950s social experiment.

During the summer, Greenland’s parliament voted for a separate commission to examine Denmark’s decolonisation after 1953.

Counselling has been offered to those affected by the birth control practice, but Arnannguaq Poulsen hopes there will be compensation.

“I know there are many women that cannot have children,” she says.

Women This Week: Denmark Issues Apology to Greenland Over Forced Sterilization

Hundreds Left Infertile After Campaign to Control Greenland’s Population

After a two-year investigation, independent researchers have released a report on the forced sterilization of Greenlandic women and girls by Danish doctors since the 1960s. Between 1966 and 1970, over 4,500 women and girls, some as young as twelve, had an intra-uterine device (IUD) implanted. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, issued an apology to Greenland, calling the campaign to manage Greenland’s population “systematic discrimination.” From the testimonies of 410 cases in the report, 349 involved subsequent health complications. Greenlandic girls were often given contraception without consent or knowledge, and several reports of women receiving injections left them infertile. Although Greenland gained independence from Danish colonial rule in 1953, Denmark oversaw their healthcare until 1992. The nearly 350-page report was the final step of the investigation ordered by both countries, but the authors outline that courts must determine if the abuses violated Danish and human rights law. A lawsuit is ongoing from a group of 143 women—138 of whom were underage at the time of being sterilized—who are fighting for compensation.

Polling From NBC News Desk Reveals Gen Z’s Growing Gender Divide on Personal and Political Issues

According to a new poll from the NBC News Decision Desk, the gender divide has deepened among Gen Z on social and political issues. Conducted between August 13 and September 1 of this year, the poll surveyed 2,970 adults aged between eighteen and twenty-nine. On average, 64 percent of Gen Z disapprove of President Donald Trump’s performance; however, when separated by gender, young men are more evenly split with 53 percent disapproving, while young women report a 74 percent disapproval rate. Republican and Democratic supporters also report different personal priorities. For example, in a thirteen-point ranking of personal success, young men who voted for Trump ranked having children first, whereas young women who voted for Kamala Harris ranked it twelfth. In ranking marriage, men who voted for Trump placed it at four, whereas women of both political parties ranked it lower: Nine for women who voted for Trump and eleven for women who supported Harris. Not separated by political belief, Gen Z men and women had the same top priorities, including a fulfilling job, economic success, and financial independence.

Bonus

While there wasn’t a single massive “sled dog cull” in Greenland during the 1950s like the infamous Canadian Arctic dog slaughters (Nunavik/Qikiqtani), Greenland experienced significant changes and control over its sled dogs (Greenland Dogs), with authorities restricting breeding and culling dogs deemed problematic, leading to tensions, particularly as modernization reduced dog reliance, but the mass, deliberate killings often associated with Canada didn’t happen in Greenland then, though some dogs were culled for disease or public safety, as detailed in works like *Qimmit, a Clash of Two Truths* and *Greenland Dog*.

Key Points on Greenland’s Sled Dogs in the Mid-20th Century:

Control & Modernization: The Danish colonial administration and later Greenland’s home rule government increasingly viewed sled dogs as a threat to public health (rabies, bites) and an impediment to modernizing infrastructure (roads, cars).
Culling for Disease/Safety: Instead of mass slaughter, there were systematic culling programs targeting dogs that were sick, aggressive, or simply numerous, especially in areas bordering growing settlements.
Restrictions on Breeding: To control numbers, authorities often restricted dog ownership and breeding, sometimes requiring permits.
Comparison to Canada: This differed from the widespread, often brutal, deliberate mass killings of Inuit sled dogs by Canadian police (RCMP) in the 1950s/60s (the Qikiqtani Dog Slaughter, investigated in Qimmit), which aimed to force Inuit into settlements.
Focus on the Greenland Dog: Greenland has a distinct, pure breed (the Greenland Dog, Canis lupus familiaris) vital for hunting, but its population management became stricter as sledding declined in some areas.

While Greenland’s experience wasn’t the exact same event as Canada’s “Great Dog Slaughter,” the 1950s marked a period of significant tension and control over sled dogs as Greenland moved towards greater self-governance and modernization, impacting traditional ways of life.

Resources

-en.wikipedia.org, Little Danes Experiment.” By Wikipedia Editors;

–https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2022/01/world/greenland-denmark-social-experiment-cmd-idnty-intl-cnnphotos/, “How a failed social experiment in Denmark separated Inuit children from their families.” By Tara John’

–https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/denmark-apologizes-taking-greenlandic-children-1950s-social-experiment, “Denmark Apologizes for Taking Greenlandic Children in 1950s Social Experiment.” By Trine Jonassen;

-en,wikipedia.org, “Spiral Case.” By Wikipedia Editors;

-pbs.org, “Hundreds of Greenlandic women and girls were forcibly given contraception between 1960 and 1991, report says.” By Associated Press;

-bbc.com, “Inuit Greenlanders demand answers over Danish birth control scandal.” By Adrienne Murray

–https://www.cfr.org/blog/women-week-denmark-issues-apology-greenland-over-forced-sterilization, “Women This Week: Denmark Issues Apology to Greenland Over Forced Sterilization.” By Linda Robinson and Noel James;