GREEK LOVE IN GREENLAND
Nothing survives shedding any light whatsoever on the possible practice of Greek love in either pre-historic (Eskimo, or Inuit in their own language) Greenland or the Norse settlement that was established there in 986 and died out in the 15th century. The Greenlander population since then has stemmed from a second wave of Eskimo settlers, latterly having an admixture of Nordic blood, and nothing certain is known about its attitude to Greek love before the 20th century.
Danish colonisation and Christianisation of Greenland as a possession claimed from 1261 by the crown of Norway (later united with that of Denmark) began in 1721 and brought it under administrative control from Copenhagen (rather than Norway) from 1729, but even after it was integrated into Denmark as a county in 1953 and assimilation into Danish culture began in earnest, it retained a separate legal code which did not criminalise sex between Greenlander men and boys until 1963. However, Danes in Greenland were subject to Danish law from 1782 to 1958 (while the presence of any non-natives in the island was severely restricted between 1736 and 1954).

The two best general accounts of traditional Greenlander customs were by the 18th-century Danish Lutheran missionaries Hans Egede (whose religious zeal inspired the first Danish colonisation) and his grandson Hans Egede Saabye. In reading their accounts, one should bear in mind the misunderstandings likely to have arisen from their deeply foreign perspectives. Moreover, before drawing conclusions about the wider practice of Greek love from the little that can be surmised about Greenlander attitudes, one should bear in mind the tiny population of this largest of the world’s islands: the population was estimated at about six thousand in 1818 and had only just reached 25,000 on integration into Denmark in 1953. Opportunities for diversity were limited.
Hans Egede, in Greenland for a quarter of a century from 1721, had nothing whatsoever to say about any kind of homosexuality in his A Description of Greenland.[1] Saabye, in his Greenland: being extracts from a journal kept in that country in the years 1770 to 1778,[2] after noting that “Without magistrates, without laws, they live in peace and harmony”,[3] said in his Chapter XXI on “The Domestic Life of the Greenlanders”:
When the boys have attained the age of twelve or thirteen, they may no longer lie upon the bench among the women, but have a place to sleep on, under the windows, where they always remain till they are married. Notwithstanding their sleeping so mixed together, and their scanty clothing, no illicit passion is entertained in their houses. The married and unmarried, of both sexes, have a certain reserve towards each other, and a repugnance to every thing that violates decency.[4]

Before entirely swallowing these two worthies’ Christianly uplifting accounts, one should bear in mind two caveats posed by other European accounts from this era. One is an observation by the Danish Arctic explorer Peder Olsen in 1752. During a visit to Ulineq in southernmost Greenland, he noted in his diary that “the sin that St. Paul did not want to name was, I think, common among the male population.”[5] Secondly, a history of the Moravian mission to Greenland published in 1879 and reporting that the mission had built sex-segregated dormitories for their unmarried parishioners of each gender in 1749 and 1753, said these dormitories had soon had to be abolished “since the Greenlanders’ way of life created obstacles for the unmarried people’s cohabitation, and since they found that morality rather deteriorated than improved by those means.”[6]
Not a single prosecution for a homosexual act in Greenland is recorded before Greenlander customary law (for Greenlanders) and Danish law (for others) were replaced by a single Criminal Code in 1958, though there had been nine verdicts for sexual crimes issued between 1881 and 1926 and sexual acts with girls under 15 were much the most common sexual crime prosecuted between 1938 and 1948. This is despite sex between men and boys being a crime for non-Greenlanders.
In 1948-9, a Juridical Expedition was sent to prepare a Criminal Code and expressed its determination to make crimes concerning sexuality the single exception to its general respect for Greenlanders’ customs. Despite this, the Code introduced initially ignored homosexual acts, thus making the practice of Greek love legal for all between 1958 and 1963, when a revision outlawed homosexual acts with males under 18, in conformity with Danish law. This change was implemented despite recognition by both the commission appointed for the revision and in the consequent debate in the Greenlandic Landsråd that homosexuality was “not a problem in Greenland” and that there was therefore strictly speaking no need for such legislation. The reason given was it would be unfortunate “if a safe haven would be created in Greenland for acts that are punished in other parts of the Realm.”

The Docket books for Greenland’s High Court for the fifteen years, 1963-78, until the next change in law, reveal that sex with children accounted for 65 of the 161 sexual crimes brought before it, but do not distinguish between the cases involving boys versus girls. However, none of the prosecutions were for violation of the clause (2 of Section 53) that set a higher age of consent for the former, so any boys who may have been concerned must have been under fifteen.[7]
The physician Gunnar Olsen’s interviews in 1967-8 of 499 Greenlanders aged 15 to 19 revealed that “13 percent of the young men between 18 and 19 had been approached by adult men with sexual intent − compared to 48 percent in Denmark,” but there are serious grounds for doubt as to how open Greenlander teenagers would have been in interviews with someone from an alien and condescending culture.[8] Despite his statistics, Olsen had “the impression that there is a less emotional and restrictive attitude to homosexuality in Greenland than is traditionally the case in Denmark.”[9]
A further revision of the law in 1978, explicitly enacted for the sake of continued legal conformity with Denmark, removed Section 53 clause 2, thus establishing a still-enduring age of consent of 15 and legal toleration of at least some Greek love.
[1] The 2nd edition of an anonymous translation from the Danish was published by T. and J. Allman in London in 1818.
[2] A translation (from a German edition) by H. E. Lloyd, first published by Boosey and Sons in London in 1818 with a lengthy introduction by G. Fries (which makes no mention of sexual customs) of Saabye’s original Danish book, Brudstykker af en Dagbog holden i Grønland i Aarene 1770-1778 published in 1816.
[3] Page 55 in “Chapter XIV. Some characteristic Features”.
[4] Hans Egede Saabye, Greenland: being extracts from a journal kept in that country in the years 1770 to 1778, London: Boosey and Sons, 1818, pp. 228-9.
[5] The euphemism resorted to here was a common designation for pedication, but could possibly have referred to something else.
[6] “men da Grønlændernes Levemåde lagde Hindringer i Veien for de ugifte Folks Samboen, og da man opdagede, at Sædeligheden mere hæmmedes end fremmedes der ved.” H. M. Fenger, Bidrag til Hans Egedes og den grønlandske Missions Historie 1721–1760. Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad.
[7] Jens Rydström’s thorough study presented as “Chapter 5. Greenland and the Faroe Islands 1866-1988: Nordic Peripheries” of his Criminally Queer: Homosexuality and Criminal Law in Scandinavia, 1842-1999 (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2007), is the source for all the legal information on this page.
[8] Jens Rydström, “Chapter 5. Greenland and the Faroe Islands 1866-1988: Nordic Peripheries” in Criminally Queer: Homosexuality and Criminal Law in Scandinavia, 1842-1999 edited by Jens Rydström and Kati Mustola (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2007), p. 165.
[9] Gunnar Aagaard Olsen, Seksuel adfærd blandt ungdom i Grønland: I socialmedicinsk belysning. Copenhagen: Institut for Social Medicin, 1974, p. 78.
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