For two weeks in Denmark the subject of the documentary was “bigger than Trump”, says producer Michael Bévort. The broadcast of Grønlands hvide guld (Greenland’s white gold), a 55-minute film about the Danish exploitation over several decades of a cryolite mine in southern Greenland and the vast sums of money it generated, made waves in February in both Greenland and its former colonial ruler, Denmark. But the reaction between the two could not have been more polarised.
In Greenland, which remains part of the Danish kingdom, with Denmark still controlling its foreign and defence policies, there were feelings of anger and deep sadness. The country was in the middle of an election being watched by the world thanks to Donald Trump’s threats to take control of the Arctic island. According to a poll for Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq, more than a third of voters said the documentary would influence their vote.
There was also a sense of long-awaited recognition – that the stories people had heard from their friends and relatives about what happened in the now derelict town of Ivittuut were finally being confirmed by a public institution as big as DR, the public-service Danish Broadcasting Corporation.
Politically, it was seen as seismic in the country’s capital, Nuuk. It had the potential, some believed, to change the power dynamic between the territory and the Nordic country, which has long been framed as Greenland being financially dependent on Denmark. “A new documentary film shows that Denmark has earned at least 400bn kroner [£46bn] from just one mine,” Greenland’s then-prime minister, Múte B Egede, said at the time.
While there were initially some positive reviews in Denmark, the Danish media quickly flipped to attack, after one of the economists who appeared in the documentary denounced its interpretation of the figures. “It was horrible,” Bévort told the Observer. “It was the worst shit storm, almost ever.”
Criticism of the documentary centred on the figure of 400bn Danish kroner, the amount the team calculated was Denmark’s gross income from the mine over 133 years, adjusted to today’s value.
But Torben M Andersen – an economics professor at Aarhus university and chair of the Greenland Economic Council, who appears in the documentary – put the figure into doubt by urging caution over the calculation, which he said referred to turnover between 1854 and 1987, not profit. The documentary is careful to emphasise that the figure – calculated using logbooks from the Danish national archives – refers to the overall turnover because, as they are advised when dealing with colonial economics, production costs were spent in Denmark using Danish workers and equipment.
For 10 days, DR stood by the documentary. Despite criticism from several politicians, including the Danish Moderates’ culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, who decried its “poor journalistic craftmanship”, and economists, DR’s news director, Sandy French, refused to give in, saying: “There have been no violations of press ethics guidelines, there are no factual errors or reservations that have not been made”.
But eventually they changed their minds. They announced that they would withdraw and “depublish” the documentary and that DR’s news editor-in-chief, Tholmas Falbe, was resigning. French said the turning point was new information about a graph of total accumulated sales of cryolite that had been removed from an earlier version of the documentary because it was not accurate.
“It may seem like a minor thing compared to the big debate about the documentary, but this new discovery is crucial to me because you have to be able to trust that the presentation is accurate,” said French. Bévort, who is trying to find a new home for the documentary, said the rare move to depublish was political. “It’s nothing to do with the film. They’re going after DR.”
Rune Lykkeberg, editor-in-chief of Danish newspaper Information, agrees. “Not political in the sense ‘we need to censor this message to appease the government’. But corporately political in the sense that ‘we must do this to protect our brand and control the damage’.”
He added: “DR is like the BBC, a public-service station whose ultimate executive is the government – the minister of culture appoints the head of its board who appoints the formally independent CEO of DR. He came out with heavy criticism of the documentary, which was also political overreach.”
The move to depublish was a “terrible decision”, Lykkeberg added. “The documentary was part of public debate, it was a public fact that people were deliberating and it was in the common interest that everyone could access it. It does not help anyone that you can’t see the film you’re talking about. And the documentary is not dangerous.”
Naaja Nathanielsen, who was a minister in the last Greenlandic government and in the current government, which was officially sworn in on Monday, said the move was “an overreaction” from DR. “It has more something to do with the Danish self-interpretation of their actions in Greenland more than what this movie is about,” she told the Observer.
While she has not seen the numbers, so cannot comment on whether they are exactly correct, she believes they are fair. “What I do believe is that it’s not an unjust presentation of the economy between Greenland and Denmark,” she said. “I have confidence enough in the numbers to say they represent a correct interpretation of the way things were – even when Denmark started investing more in Greenland.”
But to focus so much on the figures alone “derails” the conversation from what should be the real debate, she said. “In Greenland we can have both narratives … yes, there is something in the past with Denmark that has been awry, that was not right, that violated rights. And we can still accept and acknowledge all the good stuff Denmark has done as well. So for us both narratives can exist at the same time.”
But in Denmark – or at least Danish media – she says, that seems not to be the case. “There is only one narrative that can exist, and that is that Denmark was good to Greenland and that’s the end of the story.”
DR and the Danish minister for culture did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment.
