For 91 years, the Christmas greeting mirrored the development of the Commonwealth

"Good morning father - it's me", whispers a little girl into the microphone and subsequently stops completely.

An elderly mother sends with trembling, choked voice a greeting to his son. And a young girl sends a greeting that is so cute that it is right on the edge of "what could be said in public".

"Good morning father - it's me", whispers a little girl into the microphone and subsequently stops completely.

An elderly mother sends with trembling, choked voice a greeting to his son. And a young girl sends a greeting that is so cute that it is right on the edge of "what could be said in public".

The year is 1932 and the place is Stærekassen, the State Broadcasting Corporation studies at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen. Radiofonien has just launched one new concept, which should prove to be a brilliant idea. "Christmas greetings to "Grønland" is the name of the broadcast, and it had a lifespan of 91 years before that which, as you know, was discontinued last year.

One of the best ideas

That ordinary people could have access to the radio medium, was something completely new and ground-breaking, and therefore the newspapers covered – like the Social-Demokraten and Frederikborg Amts Avis, like the above quotes originates from – the first broadcasts inclusive. During three evenings/nights could people turn up in the radio studio and say their greetings to their loved ones there was in Greenland. Frederiksborg Amts Avis called the broadcast "one of the best Ideas that the State Radio has realized for a long time".

The program was broadcast directly over the shortwave masts above The Atlantic via Reykjavik. It was opened with solemn speeches from, among others Prime Minister Stauning and seasoned with live music. In Denmark, it all took place in the orchestra studio in Stærekassen from 11pm in the evening, where there are three evenings in moves were sent directly. If you couldn't show up yourself, you could in advance fill in a form with your greeting, which is read out by the radio announcers.

The program was such a success that it was continued the following year expanded with broadcasting days from the studios in Aalborg, Randers, Aarhus, Esbjerg, Aabenraa, Odense and Nykøbing Falster, and later also Skive and Rønne. It could be difficult to hear the weak radio signal in some of the Greenlandic cities, but it helped when Iceland's Radiofoni stepped in to help and set its own broadcasts to help pass the greetings on.

In addition to the novelty of completely ordinary people gaining access to get on the radio, it was also unusual that one under the Christmas greeting broadcasts could hear the Greenlandic language spoken on the radio. Both when Greenlanders who stayed in Denmark sent greetings home, but also when some of the official speeches were translated into Greenlandic, which captain Johannes Balle, who had grown up in Greenland as the son of a seminary director N.E. Balle and spoke the language fluently, stood for.

Greenlanders in Denmark

The group of Greenlanders in Copenhagen in the 1930s was growing. From the middle of the 19th century, the Danish authorities began to send young people Greenlanders on educational stays in Denmark – initially with great reticence, but gradually more and more were sent away because KGH needed more helpers and craftsmen who could speak both Danish and Greenlandic. During the period 1927-1936, for example, there were 41 young Greenlandic men who were sent to Denmark to be trained as carpenters and coopers. While they were in Denmark, they lived at Grønlænderhjemmet in Kastrup, which had been opened in 1928. Some in particular selected women came to Denmark to be trained as midwives – a practice that was started in 1835. And a newly established committee, the Committee for Greenlandic women's education, from 1925 sent young women to two-year-olds educational stay in Denmark to learn about housekeeping and childcare. At the same time was it possible for Danish civil servant families who had stayed in Greenland, to take their Greenlandic kiffaq with them to Denmark when they returned home. Gradually, the group of Greenlanders in Denmark grew. The young Greenlanders in Copenhagen often met on Sundays at Grønlænderhjemmet, and in 1939 they founded the Greenlandic association Peqatigiit Kalaallit as a gathering place and discussion forum.

The small but close-knit Greenlandic environment in Denmark, came to influence Radiofonien's new programme. The original idea of the program was otherwise that "Parents and Relatives in Denmark" should send Christmas greetings to their "relatives" in Greenland, such as the Danish business leader Andreas Lund Drosvad, who worked for KGH in Kangersuatsiaq near Upernavik, suggested in one letter to radio in the summer of 1932. But already from the first broadcast Greenlanders who were in Denmark also began to appear in the Stærekassen to record Christmas greetings to their family and friends in Greenland. The program thus became the setting for a cultural meeting between Greenlanders and Danes, as on the time was relatively rare.

Radio seems to have supported this development of the program. The personal greetings were preferred and given refusal of lengthy written greetings from Danish institutions, which worked with Greenland, for example the aforementioned Committee for Young People Education of Greenlandic women.

The choice of music for the broadcast was also marked by the Greenlanders' invasion of the radio studio. In 1932, it was the radio orchestra that stood for the music and played a fantasy over Danish national songs, but the following year and for the many following years, a Greenlandic choir, which had been formed in 1932, sang in connection with a large Greenland exhibition. The choir sang, among other things, Guuterput Qutsinnermiu, which was a regular part of the program for Christmas greetings ever since.

Politics between the lines

Something else that marked the Christmas greeting in the first year was that pending conflict between Norway and Denmark over the right to East Greenland. Norwegian fur hunters had in 1931 raised the Norwegian flag at their trapping station Myggbukta in East Greenland, and the Norwegian government issued a declaration on 10 July 1931 that the area was now Norwegian territory, which they named Eirik Raude's Land after the Norwegian Viking Erik the Red, who had settled in Greenland for many years before. The Norwegians' claim was that the area in northeastern Greenland was a no-man's land, which Denmark therefore had no claim to.

The Norwegian attempt to annex parts of Greenland took off both mind and slot in Denmark in the 1930s. The sovereignty conflict became filed before the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague, and the verdict – which gave Denmark full sovereignty over Greenland – was handed down on 5 April 1933.

But when Christmas greetings were brought to Greenland for the first time, the showdown is still in full swing. One of Denmark's responses to Norway was to intensify their activities in East Greenland – including expeditions, scientific studies and the construction of a seismological measuring station. This political climate is reflected in several places in the Christmas greetings of the first year, where small suppositories were sent off to the Norwegians, who then owned the estate Uttental, according to the newspaper Social-Demokraten, sent a thank you to the Greenlanders in the colony Scoresbysund for their approach to the court in The Hague, or then director According to Aftenbladet, Jennow greeted the bear hunters in East Greenland and wished them one good catch with the addition: "And may you still be able to work under us old Flag”. The chairman of the Danish Parliament's Greenland Committee, the conservative Pürschel, according to Berlingske Tidende, thanked the Greenlanders for the friendly reception the Riksdag delegation had received during their visit to Greenland, and wanted that "our beautiful, old flag should continue to fly, as it has for centuries loud and free and proud of an undivided Greenland". Also in journalists' wording about the radio broadcast crept in references to the case in The Hague:

"Family after Family passed revue, Greeting after Greeting flew through the ether and showed that the band that binds Greenland to Denmark is Thousands. Actually, the Court in The Hague should have attended this Broadcast, so it would not have been in doubt that Greenland is Danish", wrote Social-Demokraten about the broadcast in 1932.

In a chronicle, the editor of the Danish newspaper Aftensbladet languished Carl Rasmussen under the pseudonym Jens Hammer, after the Norwegians. He quoted the Norwegian lawyer in The Hague to criticize Denmark for maintaining the Greenlanders in a "Stone Age" stage, but I wonder if the Norwegians had remained strongly angered when they heard the Christmas greeting to Greenland, he speculated:

"The Fjældbore jumped up when they heard Stauning's words the speakers… The fists were clenched. The beards quivered. The eyes flashed under them mighty Norse Bryn. Yes and the speakers were slapped on the floor and they left Beserkergang between the stumps, while they screamed and without regard to Christmas time after all, it's almost inside and therefore you shouldn't be used, they cursed, saw it rocked – That's a lie. That's Damn hack us Løjn that, the Dane Prime Minister stands and says. Pay every word. The Greenlanders have no spirit and not Culture. They stand on the Stone Age step, the Danes have deliberately kept them down on.”

When the Christmas greeting was sent the following year, Christmas 1933, the case was in The Hague decided, and the political climate was primarily about achieving reestablish peace and cooperation in the Nordic region. Still, you can in prime minister Stauning's speech on the first evening of the broadcast in 1933 between the lines track one relief that all of Greenland ended up in Danish hands:

"We are happy to know that the people who lived in Hundreds of years under Danish rule, feel satisfied with this coexistence, and wants to be able to continue the development that has so far represented a series of Progress in the life of the Greenlandic population, in its spiritual life and culture. Here is still Willing to cherish and protect the Brethren in Greenland, and therefore sent also on this occasion all good wishes. We send greetings to the people, which it must be Denmark's honor to bring forward in the ranks of Nordic cultural people."

End of the Christmas greeting

Over the years, Christmas Greetings has been a beloved programme, which was a regular component in many Greenlandic and Danish families' Christmas. From 1983 it was broadcast as a TV program instead of a radio broadcast - the latter year either from DR's concert hall or Musikkens Hus in Aalborg.

And the program has, in its own way, reflected the political one development in the Commonwealth, for example by making the singer Julie Berthelsen to the bilingual host from 2000 or by sending the program from Greenland i 2014.

It caused an outcry in Greenland when DR in October last year announced that the Christmas greeting had been sent for the last time. But DR was adamant that the program had timed out:

- The program was created for a different time, when Danes and Greenlanders were not so connected and had the technological possibilities to make contact with each other, as they have today, was the reasoning from DR's editor-in-chief Gustav Lützhøft.

Nor did Greenland Radio, KNR, want to take over the Christmas broadcast, although several suggested it. KNR's director Annga Lynge refused last Christmas to KNR.gl that the station could produce a similar programme, although several viewers had approached with this wish. However, the station has its own own Christmas greeting, which it continues with.