Isolated among icebergs, fjords and mountains in remote southern Greenland, Narsaq is a town that does not worry too much about what the outside world thinks, says Ane Egede.
In her home town of about 1,300 people, there is not much in the way of shops, but there are plentiful opportunities to hunt, fish, and pick berries and herbs. “We are very close to the nature,” she says. “The town is clean and a beautiful place to live in. We live a little bit old fashioned. We’re not so materialistically minded.”
But now residents have little choice but to engage with external forces. Close to the world’s second largest rare earth deposit and the sixth largest uranium deposit, the town has been forced into conflict with a mining company thousands of miles away in Australia. If the arbitration investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) case is accepted this summer, its fate is likely to be decided later this year.
