All events · The War's Long Shadow
The Thule Relocation in Greenland
1953 · Americas
Displacement
Territory Seized
Displaced
130
Twenty-seven families, about 116-130 people, were moved from the settlement of Uummannaq to Qaanaaq, roughly 100 km north, in May 1953 at a few days' notice. The figures come from Danish administrative records and were established as facts in the Danish court proceedings brought by the Hingitaq 53 association; they are precise. The entry is included for its legal and political significance rather than its scale, which is small — comparable to the Banaban relocation already in the atlas.
Share of the population affected
43%
of the Inughuit (Polar Inuit) population of the Thule district in northern Greenland in 1953, 1953
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What happened
The United States began building a large air base at Thule in north-west Greenland in 1951 under a defence agreement with Denmark. In May 1953 the Danish authorities required the neighbouring Inughuit settlement of Uummannaq — twenty-seven families — to move about 100 km north to a new site at Qaanaaq, with a few days' notice and inadequate housing on arrival; the community lost access to its hunting grounds. The Hingitaq 53 association sued the Danish state, and in 1999 the Eastern High Court found the relocation an unlawful interference and awarded compensation, a ruling largely upheld by the Danish Supreme Court in 2003, which nonetheless denied a right of return to the base area. The European Court of Human Rights declared a subsequent application inadmissible in 2006. Greenland was otherwise absent from the atlas; the case is a well-documented instance of a European state moving an Arctic Indigenous community for a foreign military installation, and its findings are unusually explicit.
Parties
The Danish government moved the Inughuit community of Uummannaq to make way for the expansion of the United States air base at Thule
Disputed
Whether the move was a forced relocation, as the Inughuit claimants and the Danish courts' compensation findings indicate, or a voluntary resettlement, as Danish authorities long maintained; and the continuing question of a right of return to the base area, which the Danish Supreme Court refused.
The denominator
Danish administrative counts of the Thule district put the Inughuit at roughly 300 people in the early 1950s. The relocation moved the 27 families of Uummannaq, about 116-130 people, to Qaanaaq, so a substantial minority of the whole community was displaced.
Where the baseline comes from
On the death toll
There was no death toll. The harm found by the Danish courts was the loss of homes, hunting territory and community continuity, together with hardship in the first winters at Qaanaaq.
Documented forms of violence
Destruction of Property
Danish administrative records and the findings of the Danish courts document the abandonment of the Uummannaq settlement and its buildings.
Formal findings
- Supreme Court of Denmark (2003) — 2003 judgment in Hingitaq 53 v. the Prime Minister's Office upholding the 1999 Eastern High Court finding that the 1953 relocation was an unlawful interference and awarding compensation, while rejecting a right of return to the base area — source
Movements mapped
- Inughuit families moved from Uummannaq to Qaanaaq130
Countries touched, on present-day borders
Greenland
Sources
This entry rests only on reference, press or open-edited sources. Treat its figures as indicative and follow the links before relying on them.