Tunu – Eastern Greenland turns its back on you!
I’ve just spent a couple of days in the company of Kim Leine’s Greenlanders as seen and narrated through his book Tunu. Let me just say from the get-go; I did not like it. In short, Tunu is about the inhabitants of a village in Eastern Greenland (Tunu is Eastern Greenland, and means back). At the start of the novel a young male nurse from Denmark has just arrived to the village, and so goes the merry-go-round of funsies and death.
Tunu
When I borrowed it from the library I guess I was hoping that this novel would present a different experience, or point-of-view of Greenland than has been the case with so many accounts and narrations so often before. But it’s like hearing the same old, tired rantings about women and nature, and how the female sex is in a special symbiosis with nature, how the lunar cycle and my period are in sync, yadi-yadi-yah! Only here we have a whole nation destined to live out nature’s raw state of flux, leaving the people helpless and unable to function the way every other European does (because that’s what they are supposed to ultimately); in modern rational society. Not that they really mind this deficit as Leine narrates them. It’s such an easy solution to a “problem”. It seems to me that Leine really wanted to tell a story about a people who were still in contact with nature, but when I read it I just experienced drippings of sentimental Euro-centric Other-fascination, and deep down a resignation with the fact that these people were never going to be understood/explained, so just live with it. I didn’t feel like Leine went the distance himself and met his subjects halfway. Or maybe I’m just being a tad judgmental, after all, Leine did spend 15 years in Eastern Greenland, I went there for half a month!
If I can try to point to a specific point of irritation I would say that Leine is too busy getting every single person in the village down on paper, individualized in order to show the heterogeneous population, that he ends up painting a picture of a lump of people who are never really characters, but types. And these types stand for the different types of Greenland that the young male nurse experiences in Eastern Greenland. There are the drunken men, the strong, rough women who will boink every single man they meet, the uneducated ones who think that every sniffle can be cured with penicillin, the neglected children and the Dane. And it especially pisses me off that the old story about a man going crazy as a direct result of female callousness and inconsiderate behavior is being thrusted down my throat here. The Greenlandic women are so emotionally stumped, whereas the soft 30-something Danish Modernity Himself cannot help fall in love with each and every one – and to top it off let’s throw in the worthy-of-a-couch-and-Freud-psychoanalysis-theme that is; a 15 year old for him to fall in love with.
So just to sum it up: I think he could have done with half of this sorry cast and then really dug into the mud of it all. Because there is no law that says Greenland can’t be fascinating without one being stamped as a colonial twit Mr. Know-it-all. But somewhere along the line, it would be nice if one could be critical without the pointed moral finger that scolds the child (in this case; Greenlanders) and puts a Gordian knot around them, saying “you simply don’t understand what to do in a modern society” and “living in symbiotic state with nature must be soooo cool”.
I don’t know what I am supposed to do with this kind of thinking, it isn’t helpful to me. There are moments of Tunu that could be really good, but no scene or person seems to get the time to settle down, Leine is on a mission! And it is a shame, truly.
Hej
som mangeårig bosat og arbejdende i en bygd i grønland har jeg virkelig følt mig ramt af tunu, både på godt og ondt, og jeg er lidt ked af og føler mig lidt provokeret af de her sure opstød. jeg er ikke så meget inde i det der med postkol-host-host-hvadenuhedder, men det virker på mig som om ordet tit rammer dem selv i hovedet der bruger det. jeg har godt nok set mange velmenende akademikertyper komme og gå, og det virkede altid som om de blev ret deprimerede over at få alle deres fordomme bekræftet (hvis de er uforsigtige nok til at blive længe nok til at lære folk at kende). det sker med jesper, sygeplejersken, som ser på de grønlandske kvinder med en beundrende rosenrød naivitet, der vender sig om og bliver til kynisme, måske foragt. jeg ved ikke om du nogensinde har været i en grl. bygd, men måske ville du selv opleve at møde nogle af de klicheer du er så stor en modstander af. i stedet for at benægte at de findes derude i det virkelige liv og dermed være mindst lige så postkol. som dem man går nar ad, kunne man evt. – som leine har skrevet et eller andet sted – tage klicheerne i hånden og følge dem til dørs. Jeg opfatter hans noveller og personerne i dem som meget troværdige og realistiske, som taget ud af min hverdag faktisk. jeg er grl. gift og lever det grl. liv, der er ikke noget andet liv jeg kunne tænke mig. Hvis man ikke kan lide hans bog, så er det efter min mening fordi man ikke kan lide grønlændere! og det er der jo mange der ikke kan. de vil bare ikke indrømme det. men grønlænderne r nu vilde med kim leine og hans bøger, skulle jeg hilse og sige.
så hvor formynderisk kan man egentlig tillade sig at være? jeg spør bare ;D
kærligst
Hej Line s.
Tak for din kommentar. Jeg er ked af hvis du føler jeg har gjort nar af nogen, og jeg var sandelig ikke ude på at gøre mig klogere end andre på grønlandske livsforhold. Det jeg ville med dette indlæg var at kritisere Leines skrivestil, da jeg mener, at han bruger alt for lang tid på at fylde sin roman med så mange kliché-personligheder, at den bliver en opremsning snarere end en behandling af de kritiske forhold han skriver om. Jeg mener ikke at han følger sin egen roman til dørs, for at holde mig i din terminologi (eller Leines). Jeg vil ikke forholde mig til livet på Grønland, da jeg, som jeg nævnte, kun har været på Grønland på besøg, og ikke som Leine, og du, lever der.
Når det så er sagt, så stiller jeg mig stærkt kritisk overfor din kommentar, om at man ikke kan lide grønlændere hvis man ikke kan lide Leines bog. Det synes jeg er at strække min fortolkning af bogen en lille smule for langt.
hej, og tak for svar
det kan godt være jeg strak den lidt for langt. jeg syntes bare jeg ville slå lidt i bolledejen og provokere dig, da du jo havde gjort det samme ved mig, ik :b
og klichepersonerne er jo dem der er set gennem jespers øjne, ka du ikke se det? de andre er sgu ikke spor klicheer efter min mening. men jeg har osse kun boet her et halvt liv.
ha et dejligt efterår og masser af sne. det glæder jeg mig til, og jeg tror ikke jeg blir skuffet.