When you get a child, you start to think about inheritance in a different way.
Not just on what the child gets from his parents. The eyes, the temperament, maybe a certain way of laughing. But also on everything that lies outside the family. The stories the child needs to know. The places where it has to learn to move. The traditions that it might one day itself carry on.
When you get a child, you start to think about inheritance in a different way.
Not just on what the child gets from his parents. The eyes, the temperament, maybe a certain way of laughing. But also on everything that lies outside the family. The stories the child needs to know. The places where it has to learn to move. The traditions that it might one day itself carry on.
Here in Greenland, I think of the reindeer hunt. On the knowledge that lies in knowing the landscape, reading the tracks and knowing when to move and when to wait. Knowledge which cannot necessarily be learned by reading about it, but which is passed on by taking along. By watching, listening and learning.
Someday someone has to show a kid how to do it. And the child must have the opportunity to come along.
The same applies to fishing. And the coffee shop, where the community is not only in the occasion, but in opening the door, pouring coffee and making room for those who come.
Traditions are not just something we inherit. They are something we keep alive by using them.
It requires time. It requires people who want to learn from them and people who are given the opportunity to learn.
There is a special knowledge and a special form of community in the Greenlandic traditions. In knowing the landscape, learning with your hands, sharing your catch and opening your home to others.
Traditions may live precisely the moment they are passed on. When someone invites you along, shows you how to do it, or lets you be a part of something you yourself have grown up with.
Because heritage is not only what we tell our children about the world they come from.
This is also what we teach them to value – and make them want to lead further.
