Greenland Looks Beyond Fishing in Effort to Reshape Its Economy

For centuries, fishing has been a central part of Greenland’s culture, and it remains the country’s largest industry. However, increased global interest has sparked an interest in diversifying their economy beyond fishing.

Local fisherman Casper Moller describes the connection between fishing and the local culture, saying, “We go out and catch our own cod, or halibut, or oxy char. It’s just so embedded and integrated with our culture. It’s just part of who we are. And fishing is something that has made it possible for the Greenlanders to survive since it all started.”

Fishing and hunting are deeply ingrained in the traditional Greenlandic culture. It has allowed people to survive on the barren landscape for generations and is an integral part of communities today. Many families and communities still rely on fishing in the local water to support themselves.

Moller describes the importance of fishing in Greenland by saying, “When you fish and are in one of the last untouched ecosystems on Earth, it means that all of us are basically hunter-gatherers. I might sit in my office for the majority of the day running a business, but [when] we go hunting, we go fishing, we get our own food.”

Local fishermen typically stick to the smaller rivers and lakes inland, which in many places have had very little human interference. Traditional recipes are resourceful and creative in order to use what little resources are available.

Fishing Industry in Greenland

The industrial fishing industry is Greenland’s larger export, and is the biggest industry in the country. It’s is mainly dominated by two large companies, Royal Greenland and Polar Seafood. The larger companies own large trawlers that fish off the coastline, sometimes not returning for weeks.

According to Royal Greenland, more than 4,300 people are directly employed by the fishing industry in Greenland, which is around fifteen percent of the total population. The fishing industry also makes up over 90 percent of Greenland’s exports, according to The National Fisherman.

“The economy of Greenland is very vulnerable because it’s depending on the fishery very much,” said Jorgen Hammeken-Holm, the Deputy Director of Business, Mineral Resources, and Energy in the Greenlandic independent government. “That is what we are very dependent on, and it’s shrimps and crabs and halibuts.”

Greenland also gets a larger block grant from Denmark, and smaller support from the EU, according to Hammeken-Holm. However, they have been trying to diversify their income through several methods. The extraction of mineral resources has been a topic of international interest, but there are several technical issues that make that difficult long term. Another potential solution that Hammeken-Holm explained was an increase in the tourism industry.

“We also have a strategy of creating more income from tourism, and that has been developing very rapidly for the last three years,” said Hammeken-Holm, “we have built one new international airport in Nuuk. There’s coming one in the north in Ilulissat, and there’s one in the south as well.”

Diversifying the Economy

With the new airport in Nuuk, local tourism has received a boost. One of the tourist industries that has benefited from the boost has been sport fishing. While it is still a relatively small industry, charters provide an exciting opportunity for newcomers to experience the nature and culture of Greenland. Due to the lack of population in relation to the size of the country, many places have had limited to no human contact.

Moller describes the experience of fishing in Greenland by saying, “Just imagine the amount of uninhabited land here. The square meters per person is the most in the entire world. So you fish in one of the last untouched ecosystems on earth, and the abundance of wildlife out there is just unimaginable”.

However, the effects of climate change have been a threat to the local fishing industry. According to Moller, weather patterns have been changing and are less predictable than in past years. This has affected fish behaviors and has made them less predictable and trackable to local fishermen.

“We can all see the different seasons. They get a bit more, like they’re more transitional. It’s more difficult to predict when the seasons are going to change,” said Mollner,” we can see that the fish has started to migrate up later, it’s because the winter is starting later on. We definitely feel that it’s less predictable to find out when they actually migrate up.

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This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into Greenland’s people, history, and culture. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available on Edge of the Arctic: Greenland, the Land of the People.

This work was made possible through the support of MPC Endowment Ltd., the philanthropic affiliate of the Milwaukee Press Club, and a private donor.