Some five years later, and the writing is about there. To my left is a pile of notes, doing its best to cascade off the side of the table. Some three hundred pages, littered with pencil marks indicating a missing letter, a lack of italics, or an incorrect date – and every single one of them has been resolved. This is the fifth time that I have sat down and said ‘that is it’, and resolved to close the edited document for the final time, the fifth and final time it would now appear. While printing, binding, and that whole viva thing are still in the near future, the biggest, most time and soul consuming elements of the PhD process is at an end. So five years on, life may be experienced once again. I have flashbacks to an interview, where I successfully made my case for the bursary that covered the costs of the first few years of the research. The person chairing that interview has since retired, as have at least five other individuals in the University who had some form of significant influence over proceedings at one stage or another. That being said, the University I started my research in does not even exist anymore! This thesis has outlived careers and institutions, such has been the protracted nature of its progress. I bought a house, okay, with a lot of help and others people’s money, but it’s still mine. We had bearded Americans move in, and bearded Americans move out. We went from having no pets, to having three cats, two dogs and as many horses – it would seem that for each year of the thesis the animals incrementally increased in size, a sixth year, while resulting in an overall failure, would surely have had to have been commemorated with the purchase of some manner of domesticated bison. And while we have not quite got married during the period of research, we did get engaged right in the middle of it all – perhaps submission will actually allow for that ceremony now! I started my research in Wales. Before long I had taken tea in the House of Commons, discussed Nazis in the National Museum of Ireland, flown to Iceland with a French documentary filmmaker, then been given a book by every museum professional (there were a lot of them) I met in Iceland, got lost in the wastelands that surround the airport in the capital of Greenland, Nuuk, before distributing Welsh flags in every cultural building that I could find in Greenland. Oh yes, we also went scampering around live volcanoes and narrowly avoided being sunk by increasingly large icebergs, but those are stories for another time. One day, I’ll really need to work out the carbon footprint of the thesis – for a consideration of heritage in Wales, I think it’s going to be surprisingly large. I was in my twenties when I started, and thirties now I’m finishing – which makes the whole process sound a lot longer than it actually was, but equally makes me feel tremendously old. Wales have won two Six Nations championships in that time, and reached a World Cup semi final, while the Lions won a test series, all of which surely bodes well for the viva I’m sure. While I have been able to enjoy some sporting glory, there are lots of other things that I have not been able to enjoy. I don’t even remember the feeling of cold mud under a pillow made from t-shirts, such is the length of time that has passed since I last went to a music festival. Exhibitions have proven to be too far away to be able to justify the time, films too expensive a luxury as the bursary began to run out. Birthday celebrations of loved ones were missed as time became a slave to the whip of editing, and for that, and to each of you who I did not celebrate with, I am sorry, and hope you will let me make up for it with birthdays to come. Yet a week from now, those few hundred pages will have been printed and bound, packaged up and sent away. Life may resume. I’m not sure what will come first, going to rugby matches, booking up some festivals somewhere, catching up on the latest touring exhibition in the British Museum, reading something that is not related to the thesis, or reading something that is not related to the thesis but not feeling terribly guilty about doing so, seeing where computer gaming is after parting ways with it about half way through the thesis, or returning to my beloved kendo and smacking some skulls with bamboo. Maybe, just maybe, sitting down without having to think about what needs correcting in which chapter, will suffice for day 1, there’s plenty of time for catching up on all the other things from day 2 onwards! The end...until the viva...
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It’s polling day in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) and it is arguable that the decisions made by voters today may have some of the most profound effects on the country since the respective referendums on Home and Self Rule. Following the gradual steps towards full independence, Kalaallit Nunaat has become one of the most attractive prospects for international investment. However, as financial opportunities have been presented to Kalaallit Nunaat, so has the potential for change. For many voters, that sense of change is coming too fast, and further change is a prospect to be feared and not to be embraced. When I last visited Kalaallit Nunaat, it was a country in a clear state of flux. A gradual international flavour was being spread across the capital Nuuk as foreign prospectors started to target newly exposed mineral resources. But discussions with locals a few years ago pointed towards underlying concerns. A grim acceptance of change seemed to be the tone among people in 2010 and 2011, as metallic drilling equipment, larger than buildings, began to appear in and among the ice bergs. Yet it was a begrudging acceptance, one that indicated that this is what the nation’s leaders felt best for the future of Kalaallit Nunaat, rather than a concept embraced and celebrated. In 2013, patience seems to be wearing out. The native population is gaining little from the foreign coin, with job opportunities being siphoned off to temporary contractors flying into the country, who promptly fly straight back out, coin and all. In many respects, despite being within touching distance of independence, the people of Kalaallit Nunaat appear to be as prone to foreign exploitation as they were under Danish rule. The promise of Self Rule increasingly seems only to echo colonial rule. For the nation’s precarious cultural heritage, these are particularly interesting times as well. The intangible cultural heritage of Kalaallit Nunaat has been well documented as threatened, in decline or already long lost. While the National Museum of Greenland has been working for several years to document the living traditions that do survive, the influx of a rapidly growing and transient population may well prove to be the death knell for many of the distinctive cultural contributions left in Kalaallit Nunaat. The decline for instance of the almost ubiquitous drum dancing, is an indication of the dangers. The dance, ubiquitous due to the way in which it is presented to all visiting tourists, has gradually become the preserve of that very audience. The tradition and spirit of drum dancing has been given over to the tourist community. Equally, those practitioners mirror the keepers of many global forms of intangible cultural heritage, being of a certain age, and being in want of an accepting generation to pass the tradition on to. Population change stimulated by industry appears to be doing little to stem such decline. The vote today will in part reflect attitudes towards the prospect of large numbers of foreign workers coming into the country on temporary contracts, China in particular being frequently discussed in relation to this topic. Kalaallit Nunaat is a small nation in terms of population, with barely 50,000 individuals distributed over a massive land block. Culturally, it has been shown to be fragile and vulnerable to the influences of external authorities. What survives of cultural distinctiveness in Kalaallit Nunaat today does so very much in spite of Danish intervention, than due to it. Yet today, the votes being cast will largely determine whether the next wave of foreign influences will be accepted, or rejected. Should the vote go in one particular direction, it will have profound repercussions for cultural heritage in Kalaallit Nunaat. A step into the future perhaps for the semi-autonomous country, but a step also into precarious waters for the cultural distinctiveness of the nation. |
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