What do you think of the future cooperation between the countries of the Danish Commonwealth? The editorial board of the Arctic Century did cover the youth attitude towards Danish Commonwealth last week.
KNR has spoken to two of the young people who took part in the survey. Birgir Ferjá Heldarskarð and Anouk Holm Jensen. Photo: Anouk ønsker ligesom mange andre unge et rigsfællesskab i fremtiden | KNR - Innuttaasunik kiffartuussineq / Grønlands public service
That is the question that young people from the three countries, Greenland, Denmark and the Faroe Islands, have dealt with in a new study by the Danish Youth Council, which goes in-depth into how young people know each other in the three countries.
A new survey shows that young people in the three countries want future cooperation. But the majority also believe that it requires more equality between the countries.
64 percent of the 318 young people from Greenland who took part in the survey answered that they would either maintain or strengthen it.
And that figure came behind Anouk Holm Jensen, who herself participated in the survey.
I was a little surprised by how many still want a community and to strengthen the community, because that is not the impression I have had in conversations with others, she says.
22-year-old Anouk Holm Jensen is herself a supporter of the cooperation between the three countries. She is originally from Nuuk, but today lives in Aarhus, where she studies psychology.
I want a commonwealth in the future, but I also think that work needs to be done on the knowledge base in all three countries before it can be called an equal community in my eyes, says Anouk Holm Jensen, who is the frontwoman of Avalak Aarhus.
I have a really strong attachment to Denmark and the Faroe Islands. It's important to me because there are some strong ties between the three countries, and I can't imagine that they should just be fought over. Although in many ways there is a sad history between Greenland and Denmark due to the colonial era, I think there is potential for us to strengthen and redefine the community, she says.
Although the majority of young people want to preserve the commonwealth, they believe that cooperation must be renewed.
At the same time, many of the young people point out that they want a future community out of necessity - and not really because the community between the three countries is in top form today. It is particularly good educational opportunities in Denmark and the fact that there is an opportunity to use the Danish healthcare system that has an influence on the numbers.
But there are also people who do not want a future collaboration. 13 percent believe that the collaboration should be discontinued, while 10 percent are somewhere between that "the collaboration should be discontinued" and that "it should be as it is today". 13 percent answered "don't know" to the question.
In the report, where the answers are anonymised, one of the Greenlandic participants has written as follows:
I don't think that we should be part of the Commonwealth forever, I have no arguments for that, but I feel that one day we will become independent.
From one of the Faroese participants it reads:
I prefer that there is no Commonwealth, and I am thinking of secession. Failure and the history we have with Denmark is negatively charged. To wrap it up, we use the word Commonwealth, but it doesn't feel like a Commonwealth. I love the countries individually, but not as a community.
If you look at the answers from young people in the other two countries, the Faroe Islands and Denmark, there is support for a collaboration in the future.
71 percent of Danish young people support the countries' community, as it looks today, or want more cooperation. For the Faroese young people, it is 63 percent who either want to maintain or strengthen the cooperation.
Birgir Ferjá Heldarskarð, who is from the Faroe Islands, has also participated in the study. He is a former chairman of Unga Samband, a youth organization for the bourgeois Faroese party Sambandsflokkurin.
I believe that it is very important with the Commonwealth, but I also believe that in the future we must have a more equal relationship, so that it becomes more of a community, says 25-year-old Birgir Ferjá Heldarskarð.
He points out that the commonwealth is important for the Faroe Islands for the same reason that Denmark is a member of the EU or the USA is a member of NATO.
It is a larger community where you work together on some larger agendas. It has advantages for all three countries to be part of a community. It also has an advantage to be three individual countries in that community, which I believe to a greater extent that we should strive for, says Birgir Ferjá Heldarskarð, who studies Rhetoric at the University of Copenhagen.
Birgir Ferjá Heldarskarð and Anouk Holm Jensen also believe that future cooperation must be more equal between the three countries than is the case today.
The study shows that more than half of the 1,000 Danish young people who took part in the study have never or only once had education about the Commonwealth.
And that is something Birgir Ferjá Heldarskarð and Anouk Holm Jensen, who both live in Denmark, can feel.
The level of knowledge has been very limited in the conversations I have had, and people's knowledge is often based on prejudice, says Anouk Holm Jensen.
Read more on the topic: Dansk Ungdoms Fællesråd, Sjómaq
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