2017 Welkom

Een touwtje uit de brievenbus is een beeldspraak in een televisie toespraak gebruikt door een senior politicus en schrijver Jan Terlouw, dat debat gaf over het verlies in vertrouwen.

DWDD 30 nov 2016

A string Out the Box is a metaphor used in a TV speech by the senior politician and writer Jan Terlouw, which gave debate about the loss of confidence.

2015 06 03 Rijksmuseum

Op 3 juni 2015 heb ik met vrienden het heropend Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam bezocht.
De overwintering van Willem Barentsz en zijn manschappen in de winter van 1596/1597 en de Nederlandse rol in de walvisvaart komt niet goed uit de verf. Hier zie je me voor de mutsen die in 1980 op Smerenburg, Spitsbergen opgegraven zijn en het schilderij van Cornelis de Man met zijn voorstelling van een walvisstation op Jan Mayen (1639), waar hij overigens nooit geweest is. Wel heeft vanaf Jan Mayen onze zogenoemde held Michiel de Ruyter op walvissen gejaagd en heeft onze zogenoemde held Jacob van Heemskerck de overwintering op Nova Zembla overleefd.
Aan de Slag bij Waterloo op 18 juni 200 jaar geleden besteed het museum niet veel aandacht.
Het was enkele jaren geleden dat ik met de trein heb gereisd en een museum heb bezocht. Het smaakt naar meer.
Sinds jaren heb ik op deze dag niet zo veel felicitaties ontvangen. Dank.
Na de verhuizing (‘vlucht’) was het een jaar van vechten met de bureaucratie en acclimatiseren. Ik probeer de draad betreffende mijn werkzaamheden voor Arctic Peoples Alert op te pakken. Dat heb je gemerkt aan mijn activiteiten op Facebook.

On June 3, 2015 I visited with friends reopened Rijksmuseum (national museum) in Amsterdam.
The overwintering of Willem Barentsz and his men in the winter of 1596/1597 and the Dutch role in the whaling does not come up to its promise. Here you see me for the caps which have been excavated in 1980 on Smeerenburg, Spitsbergen and the painting by Cornelis de Man of his depiction of a whaling station on Jan Mayen (1639), where he has never been. However, our so-called hero Michiel de Ruyter has hunted whales from Jan Mayen and our so-called hero Jacob van Heemskerck survived the wintering on Nova Zembla.
The museum spent not much attention on the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 200 years ago.
It was a few years ago I traveled by train and visited a museum. It tastes too more. years, on this day, I did not receive so many congratulations. Thanks.
After moving (‘fleeing: = refugee; fugitive’) it was a year of battling with bureaucracy and acclimatizing. I try to pick up the work for Arctic Peoples Alert. Which you've noticed of my activities on Facebook.

Finn Lynge 1933 - 2014

In Memorium

Nuuk, 22 April 1933 - Qaqortoq, Greenland, 4 April 2014

Finn Lynge passed away in the South of Greenland aged eighty. We not only lost an extraordinary man. He was an exceptional Greenlandic world citizen, advocate for the environment and the indigenous rights and a man who saw the big picture.

He visited the Netherlands many times to participate in sessions of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the International Whaling Commission, to give lectures, and in the last years in relation to the Earth Charter in which he actively participated. He tried to get other Greenlanders involved in the Earth Charter and brought in Narsaq Agenda 21 in practice.
He made the Greenlandic government aware of the exhibition of human remains in the West-Frisian Museum in Hoorn, The Netherlands which claimed these belong to a Greenlander. Do to investigation by the Greenlandic government it became clear that the remains are not from a Greenlander.
Since we met in Echternach, Luxembourg, in the nineteen eighties, he has learned me a lot. We often discussed the developments around the so called seal issue. The last years he got tired fighting against the import ban on skins of seals (now even a ban on all products of seals). This ban has enormous impact on Inuit in the Arctic who depend on the hunt on seals. But in the EU there is little understanding. Everyone who fights for animal rights should read his book Arctic Wars, Animal Rights, Endangered Peoples (1992).
Finn was a teller of many anecdotes. Once a friend and I met him in the streets of Helsingør and visited him. Finn showed my friend his bone of a walrus penis. My friend earned one point by recognizing this. After that came an auditory ossicle of a whale. Another point. Then came a hair of a mammoth… Then there was the repeated  anecdote about kasuutta (cheers) and op je gezondheid (to your health), which are pronounced in a similar way, which is perhaps explained by the Dutch roots of whalers and traders visiting the west coast of Greenland in the seventeen century before priest Hans Egede landed near Nuuk on a “Dutch” vessel in 1721.

Besides The Hague and Brussels we met mostly in København, the last time in 2010 during the presentation of a new book. In 2008, when he became 75, I was present at his symposium in Narsaq. From there, he went to København and we travelled together, but no place to sit together. So during the whole flight from Narsarssuaq to Kastrup we stood in the isle in the middle of the plane discussing as Finn wrote: “our common efforts to understand our own time”.

I will miss his inspiring talks and hope that his legacy will live on. I wish a great deal of strength to Rie, family, friends and the Greenlandic community.

Govert de Groot, Arctic Peoples Alert