"When Christopher Columbus arrived in North America in 1492 there were hundreds of native languages there. Today all American heads of states address their people in Portuguese, Spanish, English and French. The only 'head of state' who does not address his people in a European language is here," says Kjærgaard, a tall, intense Dane, who has worked in Greenland since 2002. "Greenlandic is the only American language that has been preserved."
The reason, he argues, is the Danes. For hundreds of years, they treated Greenland and its people with unprecedented respect; Greenlandic and Danish are both official languages. According to Kjærgaard, there is no record of a Dane killing an Inuit in the 18th and 19th centuries; thousands were slaughtered in the US. Hammond agrees. "Thank God it was the Danes who colonised us, not the British or Americans or Dutch or Germans," she says. "The Danes respected our lifestyle and culture and that has made it possible for us to maintain our own identity as a people."
