Gold: Block 1-10
Greenland’s future is being pulled and torn by the persistent interest of the United States and other global powers. Yet behind the worn facades of the many concrete housing blocks, everyday life for the island’s inhabitants quietly continues.
Today, the large concrete housing blocks make up a significant share of Greenland’s homes. They have done so ever since the Danish state, in the 1960s and 1970s, decided to modernize the island’s infrastructure through an ambitious centralization strategy.
The goal was to improve welfare by moving people out of the settlements and away from the coastal dwellings that were considered both unhealthy and outdated. At the same time, fishing grew from something a single man could do to support his family into a large-scale industry, creating a demand for more labor in the bigger towns.
People needed somewhere to live, it had to be built quickly, and it had to be big. And so, in the 1960s, concrete housing blocks suddenly rose from the ground in every major town in Greenland.
In Nuuk, ten such blocks were built in the very center of the city. Decades have passed, but the blocks remain in the heart of town, largely unchanged.
The move from the settlements into the concrete blocks is remembered both as a marked improvement in living conditions and as a loss of Greenlandic identity and traditional ways of life.
Over time, however, the blocks have become so deeply integrated into Greenlandic society that one might say a new culture has grown out of them. This project visits the residents of Sletten and explores life in the shadow of these buildings.
BLOCK 8 - Johanne Petersen
Karline Møller Hansen likes having many children. You are never alone, she says, and “it makes you feel alive.” She herself comes from a large family of six siblings. But when one of her sisters died by suicide, she moved from Paamiut to Nuuk, because everything in her hometown reminded her of the loss. She is happy living in Nuuk, but it is difficult to make ends meet on a part-time salary as a firefighter—especially as grocery prices have risen sharply in recent years. At the moment, she is even considering whether it would be cheaper to buy adult diapers instead of sanitary pads, which cost 62 kroner a pack. “It’s expensive when there are so many women in the family,” she says. In winter, Karline and her children are forced to light candles to keep warm, as the windows and insulation in the Sletten blocks have not been renovated since they were built in the 1960s.
