The silenced culture of suicide in Greenland

The Valley of Flowers, by Niviaq Korneliussen (Nanortalik, Greenland, 1990), is a powerful and raw story that stands as a cry of denunciation of the silence surrounding the numerous suicides that occur without restraint in Greenland. In this sense, ice becomes a symbol of the destructive power it has on the mental health of the inhabitants of the area.

As the synopsis of the book explains, "the unnamed narrator of this story is a young Greenlandic woman who delights in leaving her town of Nuuk behind and going to study Anthropology in Denmark." "There, however, she will clash with the prejudices of her classmates, exile, maladjustment and the dizzying loneliness caused by the distance from Maliina, her partner, and from her family." In the second part, the protagonist returns to the majestic nature of eastern Greenland: Maliina's cousin has committed suicide. The third part of the novel tells of the narrator's descent into a deep malaise, a depression in capital letters. She, a rebellious girl who had always pursued freedom, begins without being able to avoid the path towards self-destruction, often followed by increasingly frequent thoughts of taking her own life. Meanwhile, in her country there are more and more cemeteries with plastic flowers that mark the end of the lives of young Inuits. Spaces full of anonymous and forgotten crosses. People silenced by the system but also by their own families, still victims of taboo.

Each chapter of The Valley of Flowers begins with the news of a suicide that could perhaps have been avoided. The numbers go down: from 45 to 1, like a sad countdown. The language of The Valley of Flowers -the word "flowers" is capitalized because it is the symbol of all the proper names that have taken their own lives- is literally the alter ego of the protagonist, between the fierce coldness of the space that surrounds her and the gentle poetry of resilience. It is a very interesting literary device that makes a constant equivalence between the words and the state of the narrator. Both become more furious as the psychological collapse advances at full speed. In fact, the book has a glossary of terms in Greenlandic that the translator, Maria Rossich, has decided to keep in the text. In terms of form, the novel is divided into three parts "THEY", "YOU" and "I", each of which presents different perspectives on suicide.

The novel has been widely criticized for the sex scenes queer explicit that it presents, and which are still very rare in the literary landscape of Greenland. And this is one of the collateral themes of The Valley of Flowers: belonging to the LGTBIQ+ community, just like depression, the feeling of being inadequate in a zero-empathetic society. Inversely proportional to the reason for suicide - which instead of a tragedy becomes almost an intolerable normality for which no one takes responsibility - the normality of free sexuality is not well regarded by the puritanical eyes of many readers. It could be said that the strength of The Valley of Flowers lies in Korneliussen's ability to capture despair in raw prose, sprinkled with biting humor, eroticism and moments of tenderness. In this sense, the description of intimacy queer It is sincere and refreshing, a nice counterpoint to the silences and omissions that permeate the novel.