Island Geographies of Separation and Cohesion: The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic and the Geopolitics of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland)

Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) is an Arctic highly autonomous subnational island jurisdiction (SNIJ) of Denmark, its former coloniser. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic of 2020 has influenced both Kalaallit Nunaat's relations with the outside world and relations between people and places within the territory. The Kalaallit Nunaat government's response to the pandemic, including both internal and external travel bans and restrictions on movement, has focused on eradicating the disease from the territory. This strategy, however, is challenged both by the SNIJ's economic reliance on Denmark and by the Danish government's own strategy of mitigating the disease. This paper explores the ways in which the coronavirus pandemic has altered how the people of Kalaallit Nunaat interact with the people of Denmark and with one another, ultimately shedding light on the relationship between islands, disease, and geopolitics more generally.