Greenland images in bronze

An autumn afternoon on Christianshavns Torv. Bikes whiz by past, prams roll, and in front of the subway entrance stands a Greenlandic kayaker in bronze.

In front of him four women: one flaying a seal, one cleaning a fish, one catches small fish in the water, and one enjoys the sun. Most people rush past without paying attention them.

An autumn afternoon on Christianshavns Torv. Bikes whiz by past, prams roll, and in front of the subway entrance stands a Greenlandic kayaker in bronze.

In front of him four women: one flaying a seal, one cleaning a fish, one catches small fish in the water, and one enjoys the sun. Most people rush past without paying attention them.

The Greenland Monument, which the sculptor Svend Rathsack created in 1938, is for many just part of the city's inventory – a well-intentioned symbol of the commonwealth, without any real history.

But behind the figures hide stories about power, ideals and people. That is precisely what Astrid Nonbo Andersen and Martine Lind Krebs have set out to do to uncover in their new book “The Monument – images of Greenland in Denmark through 100 years”.

With the monument as a focal point, they tell the great ones stories between Greenland and Denmark seen through three people who all on in different ways became part of the Greenland picture: the sculptor Svend Rathsack, the Greenlandic model and artist Emma Lynge and the kayaker Hans Christiansen (father of Thue and Ole Christiansen, ed.).

It is an ambitious move. The authors don't just want to describe the work and its creation, but to let the three destinies shed light on it the entire Danish-Greenlandic relationship in the 20th century – from the legacy of the colonial era and the legal dispute with Norway over East Greenland at the Hague Tribunal in the 1930s to the modern protests against Danish ideas about Greenland. On the way includes a number of Greenlandic voices – politicians, artists and writers – which everyone, in their own way, has tried to do away with the Danish gaze.

The book is thorough, knowledgeable and well written. The reader gets one vivid and sometimes dramatic introduction to historical events, which for many will be unknown. Especially the sections on the case at the Hague Court and the background for the creation of the monument stands strong. Here the authors wish to show how deeply intertwined art and politics were – and how the bronze figures on Christianshavns Torv also became symbols of a larger one narrative.

Yet The Monument is a book that balances between two ambitions that are not always followed through: to write a comprehensive cultural history several decades while simultaneously creating three personal portraits. It succeeds partly, but sometimes you lose direction. The story starts from The Hague to Maniitsoq, from boxing to fine art, from artist biography to political analysis - and you as a reader can lose the thread and ask: why do I need to know this now?

The authors themselves write that they "commit violence" (page 381, ed.) against Rathsack's wish that his works should speak for themselves. And exactly here the book's weakness shows itself. Rathsack left no texts about the monument, and therefore the interpretations sometimes become too speculative. It is, as if the authors insist that the work must mean something definite – and that something usually fits into the overall narrative of Danish colonial heritage and Greenlandic resistance.

Thus, the book becomes more interpretive than investigative. Mon miss voices that break the pattern – for example the Greenlanders who through time has wanted a close relationship with Denmark. When the party Atassut went to the polls the first time in 1979 on that particular message, they got a great election result. These currents are supposedly not new - and the type of perspective would have given the book's narrative more nuances.

Having said that, the Monument is a significant and interesting one book. It reminds us of how much history, power and symbolism can be hidden in a piece of public art we barely notice. And it shows where sensitive and changeable the relationship between Greenland and Denmark still is.

That Nonbo Andersen and Lind Krebs dare to interpret Rathsack – indeed, perhaps "committing violence" against his silence - is in itself a brave choice. They pulls the monument out of the city's everyday anonymity and back into the debate where it belongs. The book may be uneven, but it opens up an important space for conversation: Who tells the story of Greenland in Denmark - and who stays standing like silent figures in the square?