Smilla's Sense of Snow and Danish Prejudice Against Greenlanders

Introduction: Identity and the Murder Mystery

The protagonist of Smilla's Sense of Snow, Peter Hoeg's thriller, is a product of a union between a native Greenlander — an indigenous person — and a wealthy Danish doctor. Although the plot is ostensibly a murder mystery, it is just as much about Smilla's struggle for identity. Smilla embarks upon her detective quest partially because she believes a fellow Greenlander named Isaiah Christiansen has been murdered. Although Isaiah was only six years old, Smilla identifies with the boy's sense of loneliness and isolation. The novel depicts the Danish legal system as shadowy and unknowable, and much of the book revolves around Smilla's attempt to unravel it and understand it, as well as to get to the bottom of Isaiah's death.

The book is an accurate reflection of the spirit of much of Denmark — a society that prides itself on its liberalism yet has also been characterized by prejudice against Greenlanders. This tension is embodied in Smilla, particularly in her relationship with her father, who was willing to have a relationship with an indigenous woman even though he embodies conventional Danish norms of patriarchal authority. Whether the precise legal details of the book are accurate is less important than the atmosphere and mood of prejudice and existential disenchantment with one's identity that the novel conveys.

Smilla's Alienation and the Limits of Assimilation

"I think more highly of snow and ice than love. It's easier for me to be interested in mathematics than to have affection for my fellow human beings" (Hoeg 45). Although she is of indigenous heritage and connected to the land, Smilla is presented as a cold character, without a true sense of self. She feels disconnected both from her native heritage and from her father. Her love of snow is not merely a reference to her heritage but also to her icy temperament. Greenlanders are portrayed as unable to assimilate into Danish society, either resorting to alcoholism like Isaiah's mother or utterly detaching into a world of numbers like Smilla.

The legal system, rather than encouraging Greenlanders to uphold their heritage proudly or to integrate successfully, seems to regard them as dwelling in a kind of never-never land: neither equal to Danes nor possessing a recognized, valuable separate heritage. The alcoholism of Isaiah's mother is presented as almost inevitable, and Smilla's embodiment of a different potential character for a Greenlander is treated as an exception — a product of her mixed heritage — or simply ignored.

The Legal System and Indigenous Marginalization

The legal system is portrayed as quick to dismiss the death of an indigenous child, despite Smilla's findings that the evidence at the scene indicates the child was being chased off a snowy roof to his death. This lack of recognition of the weight of a child's death parallels the broader struggles of Greenland within the Danish legal system and of non-Danish ethnic groups within Denmark as a whole. Greenland's struggle for recognition has been hard-fought. "The Greenland Home Rule Act of 1978 proclaims that 'Greenland is a distinct community within the Kingdom of Denmark'" ("Denmark," Multicultural Policies in Contemporary Democracies, 2012). But while Denmark voted in favor of adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, "this declaration is non-binding and does not impose duties or obligations on the Danish state" ("Denmark," Multicultural Policies in Contemporary Democracies, 2012).

Although Denmark is often considered a liberal Scandinavian country, "affirmative action has not been introduced as a legal measure in Greenland" ("Denmark," Multicultural Policies in Contemporary Democracies, 2012). Danish society is extremely homogeneous. "Danish representatives to the United Nations have remarked in the past that there was only one indigenous people in the Kingdom of Denmark: the Inuit of Greenland" ("Denmark," Multicultural Policies in Contemporary Democracies, 2012). Yet indigenous ways have not been preserved as natural treasures or as part of Denmark's heritage. "Starting with colonization of Greenland in 1721… the legitimacy of Inuit methods of social control were rejected and traditional Inuit ways of conflict resolution, peace management and rituals almost ceased to exist… Greenlanders were subject to a dual system of law, which made a distinction between Danish and Greenlandic customary legal practices" (Loukacheva 2012: 3).

Attempts have been made to create Greenland-specific courts of law, but they have been criticized in their implementation. "The system of law and justice in Greenland has come under increasing scrutiny and the advantages of codification of Inuit customary law are questionable. The Greenland Criminal Code has been criticized for lenient sentences, as rapists and other sexual offenders are given less severe sentences than thieves. The growing number of new types of crime and cases before the lay judges and lay assessors require specific knowledge from the latter" (Loukacheva 2012: 15). While in theory granting Greenlanders some degree of home rule confers greater autonomy and the ability to use community norms in the administration of justice, Greenland has no permanent prison and only spotty law enforcement. A lack of judicial education and rising modern-day crime have made this an ineffectual solution, leaving areas of Greenland under the 1979 Home Rule arrangement frequently existing in a state of legal limbo (Loukacheva 2012: 15).

Greenlanders in their own territories were thus denied the protections accorded to Danes, but as outsiders living in a society that deemed them aliens, their lives and struggles were also unprotected within the legal system and frequently ignored even when they were residents of white-dominated Danish society. This is metaphorically demonstrated in Isaiah's plight. It seems as if no one followed proper forensic procedures after the boy died: "I'll eat my old hat if someone hasn't taken a muscle biopsy on him… They all swear on a stack of bibles they did nothing of the kind" (Hoeg 61). The forensic system in Denmark is portrayed as just as archaic as the legal system — "there are only maybe three people, tops, who can call themselves experts in forensic medicine" — which does not bode well for discovering the truth in a society riddled with concealment (Hoeg 59).

The legal system is thus codified in a way that denigrates the traditional methods by which Greenlanders have enforced justice through community standards and other indigenous practices, replacing them with a false perception of objectivity, as is typical of many postcolonial societies in which colonial-era tensions persist.

Danish Society's Prejudice Against Greenlanders

There is also a great deal of prejudice in Danish society against Greenlanders that contaminates the supposedly objective legal system. "To most Danes, being Greenlandic means having serious social and substance abuse problems, and to some it even means coming from a backward culture. There's a well-known saying used to describe someone who is very drunk that goes, 'Drunk as a Greenlander'" (Madsen & Sullivan 2003). This perception is to some degree reinforced in the novel by the alcoholism of Isaiah's mother. Smilla's coolness and reserve, and her obsessive fixation on mathematics and academic subjects, can be seen as her attempt to resist such racist stereotypes. Among the "socially excluded Greenlanders of Vesterbro Torv or Christiania, a counter-culture commune in the heart of Copenhagen where hash is openly sold… they are often homeless and flagrantly drunk, contrasting sharply with a relatively reserved Danish culture" (Madsen & Sullivan 2003).

In fact, Smilla may be more typical of Danish Greenlanders than the stereotype suggests: "according to recent studies, the destitute Greenlanders only constitute approximately 10% of the Greenlandic population in Denmark. Thus the vast majority of Greenlanders, estimated to be between 7,000 and 9,000, lead lives similar to that of any other Dane but nevertheless have to reckon with a both unfair and misrepresentative stereotype of indigence" (Madsen & Sullivan 2003). According to one Greenlander, Danes "say 'Oh, you don't look like a Greenlander,' and they mean it like a compliment, but if they saw me with a beer in my hand they would say that I look like a Greenlander" (Madsen & Sullivan 2003). Smilla's mixed-heritage status enables her to perceive the prejudices of ordinary Danes that they might not otherwise reveal to a full-blooded Greenlander. "Many Greenlanders have been brought up to believe that everything Greenlandic is worse than, or not as good as, Danish" (Madsen & Sullivan 2003). Even so, the image of what she is supposed to be like as a Greenlander has clearly had a profound impact upon her psyche.

Denmark's policies toward its indigenous people have long been criticized as hypocritical. At the time when the book is set, "when Denmark in 1997 ratified the European Council's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, it only granted status as a national minority to the Germans living in the southern part of Denmark… Endowing national minority status to the Greenlanders residing in Denmark would provide directly claimable rights regarding language, culture and traditions," which it was unwilling to do (Madsen & Sullivan 2003).

Conclusion: Fiction as a Mirror of Policy Failure

Advocates for Greenlanders state that "granting status as a national minority would enhance the quality of life for more Greenlanders. Furthermore, the Danish reluctance to grant this status verges on the illogical. Implementing the provisions of the convention would not result in noteworthy burdens to the Danish state, but it would yield a more focused agenda" to help Greenlanders in dire straits (Madsen & Sullivan 2003). Although a work of fiction, Smilla's Sense of Snow demonstrates the need for a more comprehensive policy — one that allows Greenlanders to preserve their culture while finding social support, services, and a workable justice system within their communities, enabling them to thrive in modernity. Although some might protest that the level of nefariousness and callousness depicted in the thriller is not fully realistic, the attitude it encapsulates — that Danes in an official capacity display toward Greenlanders — is.

Works Cited

"Denmark." Multicultural Policies in Contemporary Democracies. 13 Nov. 2012.

Hoeg, Peter. Smilla's Sense of Snow. Delta, 1995.

Loukacheva, Natalia. "Autonomy and Legal Systems of Greenland and Nunavut." Havighurst Center. 13 Nov. 2012. http://www.units.muohio.edu/havighurstcenter/publications/documents/Loukacheva.pdf

Madsen, Lars, and Kimberly Sullivan. "Greenlanders in Denmark: A Realistic Perspective of a Varied Group." Humanity in Action. 2003. 13 Nov. 2012. http://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledgebase/275-greenlanders-in-denmark-a-realistic-perspective-of-a-varied-group