Here Comes Kal

The largest island gets semisovereignty from Denmark

After 258 years, home rule finally came to the world's largest island last week. Denmark's Queen Margrethe II and Prince Henrik made the five-hour flight from Copenhagen to Greenland's So/ndre Stro/mfjord airport, helicoptered another two hours to Godthaab, the tiny (pop. 10,000) capital, and handed over the autonomy decree, bound in red leather, to the 21-member parliament. The royal couple then trudged through a May Day sleet storm to the 125-year-old Godthaab church for a short Lutheran service. After a Danish patrol boat boomed a 21-gun salute, Margrethe told Greenland's 50,000 people in a brief radio address that "you now hold the future in your own hands."

Denmark will retain control of defense and foreign affairs but trade, taxation and control of the fishing industry will be turned over to Greenland in stages by 1982. Full independence is not an issue, because one thing Greenlanders do not want to part with is their Danish subsidy, which now totals $250 million annually. This far exceeds the $100 million a year that the Greenlanders earn from fishing and mining (mainly zinc), and from such specialty exports as the ice cubes that are chopped from glaciers and sold in Denmark for status use in mixed drinks.

Greenland is beautiful but barren. Fifty times as big as Denmark, which has ruled it since 1721, it is 85% covered by an icecap up to two miles thick. The rest is rocky terrain virtually devoid of vegetation. On the shores, steep granite and basalt cliffs plunge into ice-choked fjords. Polar bears prowl the far north, reindeer roam the western coastal mountains, and a few hardy sheep are herded in the far south.

The Greenlanders, mostly of Eskimo descent and a few colonial Danes, live on the coastal fringes by hunting seals, fishing and shrimping, herding reindeer, or raising sheep. Uranium has been found in the south, and zinc is being mined at a site 350 miles north of the Arctic Circle. But Prime Minister Jonathan Motzfeldt, 40, a Lutheran pastor turned politician, says that sealing and fishing will remain the core of Greenland's economy. Says he: "We must look to the sea more than the land for our salvation."

The Norse explorer Eric the Red, who landed on the island in the 10th century, named the grim, gray island Greenland in hopes of luring settlers from Scandinavia and Iceland. By 1500 the climate had killed off Eric's heirs, leaving only the Eskimos who had migrated through the Arctic from Asia. Denmark colonized the island in the 18th century, and made it a Danish county in 1953; discussions on home rule began in 1975.

Motzfeldt, who led "Greenland for Greenlanders" demonstrations in Copenhagen in the 1960s, demanded full control of all resources, known and undiscovered. The Danes were shocked, but eventually agreed in principle, although the exact scope of the resource rights remains to be spelled out. "We are satisfied so far," Motzfeldt told TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs in Godthaab. "But we will not be pushovers for outsiders, Danes included. It is an exciting time. We must develop a modern society without ruining our environment and way of life."

Motzfeldt, a seal hunter's son from Qassimiut, a southern settlement, sets the first priority as fishing rights. Greenlanders now have exclusive rights up to twelve miles offshore, but Motzfeldt wants this extended to 100 miles. He threatens to pull out of the Common Market, to which Greenland reluctantly belongs through its link with Denmark, "if we do not get satisfaction" on fishing.

There are no plans to leave NATO. The U.S. maintains airbases at Thule and So/ndre Stro/mfjord and operates four early warning radar stations that probe deep into the Soviet Union. Eventually, Motzfeldt says, Greenland will "press the Americans to pay a tax for polluting our country with their planes and disturbing our people and wildlife."

With the advent of home rule, Greenlandic, an Eskimo tongue, replaces Danish as the official language, and towns now have new names. Godthaab (Good Hope in Danish) becomes Nuk, which means Point, after the capital's peninsular location. Greenland is now Kalatdlit-Nunat, or Land of the People. But new names do not solve old social problems, and Greenland's are serious.

One is alcoholism. The yearly consumption of hard liquor works out to 21 quarts for every man, woman and child; one in ten deaths is alcohol related, and job absenteeism is endemic. So grave is the situation that the parliament is planning to impose liquor rationing soon. Then there is venereal disease, which afflicts perhaps a third of the adults.

The island has just two native-born doctors and one dentist (as well as only three lawyers). Asked whether the alcohol and VD problems could be solved, one of the local doctors pondered and said, "Immaqa" (maybe). At the end of her home rule speech the Queen said: "Gutip Kalatdlit-Nunat sianigiliuk " (God bless Greenland). The islanders will need more than fond benedictions if they are to make a success of their semisovereign future.

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