Une année polaire (2018)

Anders Hvidegaard, a young Danish schoolteacher, is drawn to adventure and travel and longs for a new life. He puts his experience to use by applying for a teaching job in the Danish “colony” of Greenland, in the village of Tiniteqilaaq. But he soon realizes how distant Denmark—and the social reflexes it has instilled in him—are from this place, whether in his dealings with the children, their parents, or the residents of the tiny village of 80 people. He is expected to teach there for a school year and instill a culture, with official Danish as its vehicle, in young people who are subject to no hierarchical constraints or moral or social authority. No one in this microcosm considers his contribution from elsewhere essential, so resistant are they to standardization and globalization. They are also aware of the distinctive nature of a place where the economy cannot be developed as the central government envisages: it is reduced to its simplest form, hunting and fishing, the only means of survival in the literal sense of the word.