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Short abstract

This paper explores the frontiers emerging around muskoxen introduced to West Greenland in the 1960s. Tracing the resource logics at play and the changes occurring as the muskoxen were adopted in a caribou landscape, the paper argues that muskoxen undo the imaginaries continuously spun around them.

Long abstract

In the 1960s, when Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland was a Danish county, 27 muskox calves were translocated from Northeast Greenland to West Greenland. This endeavour was planned and carried out by a Danish zoologist with his team and supported by the Danish administration. The motivation was twofold: securing the conservation of a species considered in threat of extinction in its original habitat and establishing a new meat resource for the increasingly sedentary human population in West Greenland. The landscape selected as the new muskox habitat muskoxen was Angujaartorfiup Nunaa, a tundra landscape ideal for the animals due to its stable climate with little precipitation but plenty of vegetation. With a US Air Base in the vicinity, access to monitor the newcomers was easy and hunting by Kalaallit Inuit was limited. Before the muskoxen arrived, the undertaking was contested by Greenlandic hunters and politicians. To them, Angujaartorfiup Nunaa was an ancient caribou hunting ground; they feared that muskoxen would outcompete their treasured caribou.

This paper explores the muskox translocation as a colonial contact zone and an epistemic frontier. It investigates the Danish logics of animal production at play when “cultivating” a new meat resource for the Greenlandic population, and it traces the changes that occurred as the muskoxen were gradually adopted and adapted to the caribou landscape. Analysing the manifold encounters in which the muskox took centre stage, the paper argues that Kalaallit land relations dissolve urban-rural dichotomies and that the muskoxen themselves continue to undo the resource imaginaries spun around them.