The art that bound worlds together

Then the masks , the stories and rhythms from the Tuukkaq Theatre filled Dalgården in Fjaltring, it was more than a theater that took shape.

It was a cultural experimentarium, a place where Greenlandic traditions, international theater practice and local life in West Jutland merged something completely new.

Then the masks , the stories and rhythms from the Tuukkaq Theatre filled Dalgården in Fjaltring, it was more than a theater that took shape.

It was a cultural experimentarium, a place where Greenlandic traditions, international theater practice and local life in West Jutland merged something completely new.

Today, the buildings are no longer standing - they were demolished 2025, shortly after the death of the founder, the Norwegian Reidar Nilsson – but the legacy after Tuukkaq lives stronger than masonry. It lives in humans, i movements, in memories and in Nordic theater history.

The memories have been reproduced in the chapter in the exhibition booklet for the Hans Lynge exhibition held at the Museum of Religious Art in Lemvig until recently.

The author of the chapter is the art historian Laila Lund Altinbas, who has interviewed a number of key people who over the years have been associated with Tuukkaq.

A meeting between Fjaltring and the world

Tuukkaq was from the beginning in the late 1970s thought as a place where cultures should meet and reflect each other. Here came young people actors from Greenland to develop - and here came artists, musicians and theater people from around the world to learn from Inuit body language, mask work and storytelling traditions.

The Greenlandic theater was not a closed space; it was one magnet for its surroundings, not least for the local area, including Lemvig, the closest town to Fjaltring. Former principal of the city's high school, Lars Ebbensgaard tells how the meeting with Tuukkaq's founder, Reidar Nilsson, marked both the school and the entire region. Artists and actors flocked to, and The development of the high school was closely linked to the burgeoning theater environment.

- I couldn't have finished high school without Tuukkaq, says he today – a testament to how the theater unfolded in the local community.

According to the now-retired principal, Tuukkaq Theater thought in a new way - as an exchange between bodies, words, cultures and stories. One of the projects where the theater and the local high school collaborated were in 1985, where they became involved in a youth project. Lars Ebbensgaard tells:

- Young people from Manhattan and Lemvig had to get to know each other through theatre. During the period they drew, danced, made masks and spoke about everything that is difficult to say without the help of art. It became one of the Tuukkaqs great breakthroughs as a cultural bridge builder and was later repeated in New York.

Another theater project where the theater toured internationally, was the play Inuit, which was re-performed several times. One of the show's notable actors, Vivi Nielsen, who toured internationally and became an iconic work for the ensemble, says:

- Tuukkaq did not just give the young people a voice; it gave them one language that reached beyond words.

The meeting between tradition and modernity

The Tuukkaq Theater also had a special connection to the multi-artist Hans Lynge, who is the main figure for the exhibition this chapter included in

Hans Lynge taught at Tuukkaq's theater school and brought his knowledge of Greenlandic myths, storytelling technique and theater history into the teaching. But it wasn't just theory he passed on – it was a look on man, on creativity, on identity.

One of the students, Bendo Schmidt, remembers the moment when Hans Lynge stood in front of a blank canvas on an easel and asked the students to imagine all that did not yet have form. Only then did he start painting.

It wasn't a lesson on paint. It was a lesson about courage, imagination and intuition – about creating from the place where tradition and the present meet.

This mutual inspiration went both ways. Vivi Nielsen says it exactly:

- Hans Lynge meant a lot to Tuukkaq – and Tuukkaq meant much for Hans Lynge.

For Hans Lynge, Tuukkaq's work with mask dance and bodily narrative living proof that Greenlandic culture could be modern without losing its foundation.

Myths as modern expressions

Tuukkaq also gave Greenlandic legends and myths a new voice. Pieces like Inuit and the many improvised mask plays, drew threads back to Inuit tradition, but was shaped with a modern, experimental expression. This was in line with Hans Lynge's own conviction: that one should not copy the past, but use it as a foundation for something new.

At the same time, Tuukkaq addressed colonial history directly – both in the choice of material and in the way the ensemble worked with cultural meetings and conflicts. Hans Lynge found himself at home here; his own satirical and critical works from the 1930s, such as Juulleruttulersut/Juletravlhed, had been precursors for just such an exploration of power, identity and coexistence.

When theater changes lives

Tuukkaq's importance can also be measured in the people who walked through the theater. Several returned to Greenland and became pioneers in modern Greenlandic theatre, among them Simon "Mooqqu" Løvstrøm, Makka Kleist and Elisabeth Heilmann Blind. The latter two carried on the traditions Sami environments in Scandinavia or continued in international contexts.

Vivi Nielsen talks about a career that led her away Traveling to Europe, Alaska and the White House, where she performed in masquerade for Hillary Clinton. For her – and for many others – Tuukkaq became the gateway the world.

The Tuukkaq Theater officially closed in 1994, but continued as living museum and meeting place until Reidar Nilsson's death in 2024. The following year became Dalgården demolished. But the content from the theater did not disappear.

The archives have now been handed over to the Greenland National Museum and Archive, and history is secured for posterity. As Daniel Thorleifsen expresses it:

- The Tuukkaq Theater was an important cultural institution in a breaking time. The first Greenlandic actors were trained here, and here the basis for modern Greenlandic theater was created.

What began as a wild experiment in a West Jutland village, grew into a movement that shaped lives, artists and theater history far beyond Denmark's borders.

Tuukkaq no longer stands as a building. But as an idea, as method and as a meeting between people, it is still alive.