Posted: January 16, 2023
For those of you who have followed Greenland’s trajectory in the recent years, you’ll know that the country is on an exciting journey. A journey where Greenland is looking both to its past to gain knowledge and pull expertise from its local culture and knowhow, but also a journey where Greenland looks into the unknown future and explores further into adventure tourism, sustainable tourism and regenerative tourism. The tourism of tomorrow.
Visit Greenland’s ambition is to grow Greenland together with its local stakeholders and international partners. But how can we do this? When we talk about growth, visions and actions, we must also talk about economic, social and environmental sustainability.
This video was an attempt to try and encapsulate Greenland’s directional narrative. It attempts to show why it is important that Greenland taps into its local resources when redefining tourism for the future. Because it is these factors that make Greenland unique.
The film begins with scenes that pays tribute to the great polar explorers of the past and their expeditions which gave much knowledge to society. The year 2021 (when the film was made) was the 100 year anniversary of the Danish Greenlandic explorer Knud Rasmussen’s 5th Thule expedition. It could not have been completed without the support and knowledge of two local Greenlanders, Qavigarssuaq Miteq, and the only woman on the entire expedition, Arnarulunnguaq. In our general storytelling beyond this film, we have also tried to highlight the hidden figures of exploration. This is to show that it takes a community of expertise to gain success.
Greenland is also a hub for climate change, and therefore symbolises the need for the global community to contribute to reducing our carbon footprint in the world. One scene in the film is from the East Grip Ice core project, which is an international scientific station in East Greenland that bores up ancient ice cores deep from the underground, in order to gain knowledge of climate change. Another example of successful cooperation.
This video was produced to inspire the international and local tourism community to work together to develop a healthy tourism future for Greenland. One that is beneficial to the locals and guests alike. To show how exciting its future is, but that it needs like-minded people to share its vision, in order to become a leading sustainable tourism destination - all the while keeping in mind that Greenland has huge logistical challenges of being an ice island in the Arctic and therefore we must pave our own definition of sustainability sometimes!
Videographer: Aningaaq Pele Carlsen, Director: Hjortur Smarson, Editor: Tanny Por