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Arctic Yearbook 2014
The cultural differences greatly enhance this tendency. Speaking one’s mind and debating are
ingrained in the Danish culture, something most have learned from childhood, unlike in the
Greenlandic tradition where discussions and disagreements are something to be avoided. The
Greenlandic cultural restraint is historical – in small communities, disagreements can be
unfavourable (Lynge 1977; Hendriksen 2013). This response pattern is still an ingrained part of the
culture of Greenland, and especially for the population not from the bilingual elite and for those
from the smaller settlements.
This response pattern has been reinforced by the fact that for generations Danes made most of the
decisions, and decisions even today are often made from a Danish frame of reference. Many
Greenlanders have resigned to this fact rather than trying to change it, because of their cultural
reluctance to engage in conflict.
It can be said that this cultural pattern has been and continues to be extremely useful in several
contexts, but it is often a disadvantage in the interaction, or rather the confrontation, with the
Danish culture. Furthermore it is a barrier in the modern based educational system not at least in the
engineering education, where the ability to argue is evaluated highly. When the majority of
Greenlanders are silent or withdraw, the Danes, or the Greenlanders who more easily use the
Danish frame of reference, end up setting the agenda. Thus the cultural differences reinforce the
Danish students becoming dominant in the classroom. It also poses important challenges for group
work, because the Danish students experience that they lead, and as they are usually best at writing
in Danish, they also soon take over large parts of the writing process. Overall, it means that the
Danish students often feel that they do most of the work, and by dominating in the classroom and
in group work, they may also be ‘taking’ a greater share of the learning.
On the other hand, based on our interviews with Greenlandic students, most of them feel that the
Danish students control and decide everything, and if they try to raise any objections to the
decisions, they feel that the Danish students are more persistent in their argumentation and thereby
overrule their inputs. When the Greenlandic students experience this on a continued basis they have
a tendency to resign and withdraw from the dialogue and from the group work, which reinforces the
negative spiral.
This issue is something that we try to focus on and deal with. Not because the Greenlandic students
must uncritically learn the Danish cultural frame of reference, but because the Greenlandic and
Danish students should obtain an understanding of the cultural differences and challenges present
and in a constructive way seek to work with them as basic for shared learning and synergy (Kahlig
1999). This is not just important for all of them in their further education at DTU in Denmark and
in their future engineering work in Greenland or elsewhere in the Arctic, where they will constantly
run into challenges and conflicts arising from the interaction between different cultures. It is
fundamental for developing an integrative engineering practice that is able to deal with the
Greenlandic context.
In addition to the linguistic and cultural challenges of adapting to a foreign system in their second
language, some of the Greenlandic students are also burdened by the social and personal problems
Hendriksen & Christensen