Arctic Yearbook 2014
30
A Dependent Economy
In the decade following the introduction of Home Rule, focus was put on ‘Greenlandization’ and
decentralization, while Greenlandic was promoted as the main administrative and educational
language. However, from the late 1980s on, cod disappeared from Greenland waters and thus an
essential part of the Home Rule economic foundation, and since then a massive and gradually
increasing loss on the Greenlandic trade balance has been recorded (Figure 1).
Greenland's
trade
balance
in
constant
1979
prices
500
Millions
of
DKK
0
-‐500
-‐1,000
-‐1,500
-‐2,000
-‐2,500
Figure 1: Greenland's trade at constant 1979 prices from 1979 to 2009. As can be seen, Greenland has had a significant
trade deficit throughout the home rule period, except in 1989 and 1990 when there was a very modest surplus. (Based on
Statistics Greenland data date).
Slowly, societal developments returned back towards increased geographical and economic
centralization, and today’s population of just over 56,000 inhabitants are distributed between 17
small ‘cities’ and 58 villages.
The Intercultural Challenges of Engineering Education in a Greenlandic Context