Nuuk, 22 April 1933 – Qaqortoq, 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
Govert de Groot, Arctic Peoples Alert
