Being (un)stuck in Qaqortoq: attachment, ambivalence, and affect in contemporary Greenland

Contemporary Greenland is characterised by a ‘female deficit’ and distinctly different mobility patterns among men and women. In this chapter, I explore attachment and ambivalence regarding South Greenland based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with both current and former residents. While Greenland is the world’s largest island, in many respects it makes no sense to think of it as one island place, but rather as a series of more or less isolated yet interconnected locations. As the chapter demonstrates, ‘islandness’, colonial history, locality, climate, and gender intersect in creating affective (mis)alignments between bodies and places. The chapter addresses the research question, ‘How can affective readings of gender, mobility, and place contribute to an understanding of contemporary social realities in South Greenland?’ I end with a discussion of how affect theory can be further developed in ways which could enrich island studies in general, and intersectional studies of ‘islandness’ and gender in particular.