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with equal rights. These labels reflect the different wording in the Home Rule Act and in the Act on
Self Government respectively. When the Home Rule Act was introduced in 1979 it was “[…] in
recognition of the special status which Greenland occupies in national, cultural and geographical terms
within the kingdom” (Hjemmestyreloven 1979. Author’s translation), which is a formulation that
mirrors the contemporary perception of Greenlanders as a minority (Thisted 2012: 612). With words
such as ‘equality’, ‘mutual respect’ and ‘partnership’ the Act on Self Government broke with this
characterisation and the historic subordination within the Danish Realm (ibid.). Other subject position
pairs can sometimes also be identified in the communication, but it is with reference to these historical
documents that ‘minority’ and ‘equal partner’ are the preferred guiding difference throughout the
analysis.
On the international level, Greenland’s collective identity narrative seems to be clear and unambiguous
and although the consensus on certain central values is relatively sedimented, the different political
parties do, however, have different perceptions of how static or dynamic the Greenland nation is.
Before we turn to the foreign policy analysis, the following section will, thus, briefly describe some of
the nuances present in the domestic debates about what constitutes the Greenlandic collective identity.
Domestic nuances on how Greenland should develop as a nation
On 25 November 2008, 75.5 percent of all eligible Greenlanders voted for the Act on Greenland SelfGovernment, which acknowledges Greenlanders as “a people pursuant to international law with the
right of self-determination” (2009: 1). On 21 June 2009 the Act on Self-Government entered into
force whereby the legal obstacles on the road towards full independence were removed with the
sentence: “Decision regarding Greenland’s