When Elias Nielsen was in his early 30s, he began to have flashbacks to his childhood.
Of parents who drank. Shouting and violence.
The worst was when he watched an American film where an alcoholic father yelled at his son.
»It was an echo of my father’s screams. Damn, it hurt«.
Elias Nielsen recounts in his apartment in Nuuk’s new district, Qinngorput.
It’s after work as a garbage collector.
In his 40-year life, Elias Nielsen has experienced nearly all the social problems in Greenland associated with the aftermath of the colonial period under Denmark and the rapid modernization that followed.
A societal development that led to better health and housing conditions but also caused traditional family structures to erode. Today, this is linked to the country’s many forced child placements and high suicide rates.
Can one read history in a single person’s life?
Over his head
Elias Nielsen’s first memories are from the orphanage. He and his three siblings were forcibly placed there when he was 2 years old. His parents were alcoholics and couldn’t take care of the children.
Elias Nielsen shared a room with his little brother; they were inseparable. He remembers the orphanage as a safe place.
But when they visited their parents on weekends, there was drinking, violence, and loud music.
There was an attempt with a foster family. The four siblings went to three different families. But Elias and his little brother stayed with the family for only a year. He doesn’t know why. It happened over his head – a feeling he repeatedly returns to when talking about his childhood.
For example, when he was to attend boarding school after elementary school, and the decision was made for him where he would go. Or when he was placed with a foster family in Denmark during boarding school but wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to his friends and little brother. Or when he returned to Nuuk after boarding school, and no one came to pick him up at the airport.
In Greenland, more than four times as many children are placed in care as in other Nordic countries. And Elias Nielsen is aware that care placements are sometimes linked to the dissolution of family structures.
He also knows that his parents led rootless lives. Take his father.
His father grew up in the 1950s in a mining town that closed. The family fell apart. Elias Nielsen recounts that his father lost his mother early when his grandfather killed his grandmother. Later, his father moved to a settlement that was forcibly closed.
»I can see the connection to the colonial history and the rapid modernization. Back then, there was no help available; my father received no help. Everything was modernized, but the social services were not developed«, he says.
However, Elias Nielsen doesn’t believe his father was opposed to modernization. His father attended business school in Denmark and received an education.
Life’s greatest loss
Elias Nielsen himself graduated from high school and has worked ever since. He has driven a sewage truck, worked as a wastewater consultant supervisor. For the past seven years, he has been a garbage collector.
He lives in a large apartment he shares with two others. He has three children who live with their mother elsewhere in the city but whom he often sees and writes with.
Of Elias Nielsen’s three siblings, two have gone astray, he explains. One developed a hash addiction and is in rehab. While his little brother, whom Elias Nielsen accompanied through childhood and youth, lost his life to suicide. He was in his early 30s.
»We believe he had depression. It’s a great loss for me«. He sits silent for a moment.
The loss of his brother coincided with Elias Nielsen’s wife wanting a divorce, and then childhood returned in flashbacks.
He secretly sought out a psychologist. He did it because he wanted to save his marriage, but they talked a lot about his childhood.
Elias Nielsen says he can now handle his flashbacks.
»I can sort of build a wall to keep it out«, he explains.
Elias Nielsen has lost both his parents today. He forgave his father when he was dying of cancer. And his mother, who lost her life to suicide 10 years later, he has forgiven in his quiet mind.
So can one read history in a single person’s life?
It’s hard to say, says Elias Nielsen, but he has a personal project to change the future. He wants to break the vicious cycle.
»My children shall never experience what I did in my childhood«.
So he is there for his children. He trains soccer with his son, helps his daughter with high school homework. It extends beyond his own family; it also concerns the country’s future.
»Greenland needs well-educated people who can hold vital positions because, at some point, Greenland will be independent«, he says.
Breaking the vicious cycle
He has also engaged in a research project aimed at reducing the number of children placed in care in Greenland. Instead, new methods will be developed to prevent and protect children. And they will listen to children like Elias Nielsen, who were formerly placed in care.
At the dining table, he insists that there should be earlier intervention for placed children and that social efforts should reach the small towns and settlements.
As part of the research project, he and others are establishing an association for children who were formerly placed in care.
»Then we can pass on our knowledge so we can see what it takes to break the vicious cycle«.
Maybe a single person can help change history.
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