Articles
·
17.6.24

The File of Greenland Marble

Documents showcasing the history and extraction of Greenland Marble.

Image courtesy of Jonathan Foote
First material testing of Greenland marble, January 10, 1935. 
(First page, see full document in the exhibition)

Ordered by E. Nielsens mek. Stenhuggeri and Kongelige Grønlandske Handel, it was tested as a substitute for Blanc clair from Viaregio, Italy. The location of the samples is not noted, but probably they are from original extraction location on Agpat Øen (at a site known in Greenlandic as Qaqortuatsiaq, or “white place”).

The presence of marble in Uummannaq Fjord was probably known from early explorations by the German mineralogist Karl Ludwig Giesecke (ca. 1810) and the Danish geologist Hinrich Johannes Rink (ca. 1850).

“Det grønlandske marmor tager sig glimrende ud” Social Demokraten, February 3, 1935. recounting the public unveiling of Greenland marble by Prime Minister Th. Stauning.

On February 2, 1935, Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning staged a public demonstration on Grønlandske Handels Plads in Copenhagen, where sample blocks of Greenland marble were presented to public officials, industry, and craft workers. Widely reported in the press, and praised as the opening of a new Danish stone industry, the event publicly linked Stauning to the project of extracting Greenland marble to promote industrial and economic development in Greenland. Stauning is pictured, along with a photo of the first extraction site on Agpat Øen. 

Stauning had a life-long fascination with Greenland, starting with his journey there in 1930 as the first standing Prime Minister to ever visit the territory. He subsequently published a popular, firsthand account, called Min Grønlandsfærd [My Voyage to Greenland]. Amidst his personal and political fascinations, he wrote, "I felt a bond that should never be broken (Da følte jeg Baandet, som aldrig maa brydes)”

“Grønland” Stenhuggertidende, no. 3, 1 March 1935, written by P.H. Mohr, stone mason (first page, see full document in the exhibition)

P.H. Mohr, the head of the stonemasons’ guild, attended Stauning’s presentation and was not impressed by the material nor the passionate promotion of it. Although Mohr had some reservations about its properties and expense, he acknowledged that a singular advantage was having a “Danish material” of comparable quality to the “more familiar foreign marble varieties”. In his final assessment, though, Mohr failed to see great beauty nor workability in the material, and chided that the blocks might just be better off lowered back down into the Greenland fjord.  

Photo by Arktisk Institut / Erik Holtved Maarmorilik quarry, August 23, 1937.

Marble was initially extracted on Agpat Øen, but after reaching six meters down, major problems in quality were encountered. In the fall of 1935, the quarry operation was moved further up the fjord to a deep-water harbour at Maarmorilik, where it remained modestly productive until the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1940. 

Photo by Arktisk Institut / Erik Holtved. Maarmorilik quarry workers, August 8, 1937.

At the peak of quarry operations, around forty Greenlanders were employed in the winter and up to 100 in the summer. Entire families would relocate in the summer months from the local villages of Ukkusissat and Uummannaq. Once the material showed its potential in Denmark, it was thought, it could also be exported to the USA and Canada. 

“Den flotteste Servante i Verden” Roskilde Dagblad, September 2, 1937, noting the opening of Overformynderiet, Copenhagen, by architect Frits Schlegel.

In 1935, just two years after the first test breaks, construction began on Overformynderiet, a large building at a prominent address in central Copenhagen dedicated to administering family guardianship. A cornerstone of welfare society, representing the relations between family and state, the building had outgrown its former city location. Clad completely in Greenland marble, it is teased here by Roskilde Dagblad as the world’s most beautiful “wash basin (servante)”. When the building was published in Arkitekten in 1938, Schlegel did not wax enthusiastic about Greenland marble but rather made it clear that the decision came from the need to support the marble extraction effort. In fact, he continued, the choice caused great difficulties due to problems in the quarry maintaining a consistent appearance and quality.

“Grønlansk Marmor finder Avendelse i mange Nybygninger” Aalborg Stiftstidende, April 23, 1939, written by Julius Galster, a civil engineer and technical consultant for Grønlands Styrelse.

In this article, Julius Galster describes the many opportunities and planned applications for the marble and states that the marble not only supports Danish State work but also the Greenlandic people. The marble is also described in the sub-line as a “dansk material”. Galster was a leading scientific voice on the extraction, testing and applications of Greenland marble, with the publication of "Grønlandsk Marmor: Forsøgsbrydningerne i Umånak Distrikt" in Det Grønlandske Selskabs Aarsskrift from 1937.  

Image from The Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen, Neg. 146824. Th. Stauning (left) and Knud Rasmussen (middle) in conversation, press photo (ca.1930-33).

Th. Stauning and the famous explorer Knud Rasmussen were close acquaintances and shared a passion toward Greenland. In 1934, the second year of the marble quarry operations, Rasmussen’s ground-breaking “Greenland film” premiered at Palads-Teatret in Copenhagen. Entitled The Wedding of Palo (Palos brudefærd), the film follows a love triangle between two young men competing for the hand of a young woman, set in a pre-Christianized east Greenland. The screenplay was written by Rasmussen and filmed during his seventh and final Thule expedition of 1932-33. Significantly, it was the first time that Greenlanders themselves were recruited as amateur actors (Previous films shot in Greenland used Greenlanders as passive props behind trained European actors). The film’s theatrical release included a five-minute introduction narrated by none other than Stauning himself. The primer was a notable tribute to Rasmussen, the arctic hero, who had just tragically died of pneumonia, but it also emphasized the history of ties between Denmark and Greenland.

“Raadhus for Lyngby-Taarbæk Kommune” by Hans Erling Langkilde and Ib Martin Jensen, Arkitekten Maanedschæfte XLV (1943): 43-46, introducing the Lyngby townhall. (first page, see full document in the exhibition)

The last significant use of Greenland marble from the 1930s appeared in the cladding of Lyngby Town Hall, designed by the architects Hans Erling Langkilde and Ib Martin Jensen. The architects’ winning competition entry called for a concrete frame construction with deep-set window frames, completely clad in stone panels. Later, as the project progressed, the architects chose a grey-yellow limestone from Gotland. This preference was overruled, however, under direct pressure from Stauning, who wished to support the marble extraction enterprise by covering the building in Greenland marble. The architects lamented the decision to use Greenland marble in their publication on the project in Arkitekten in 1943. Without stating the source of the decision, they wrote that the building authorities “did not follow our recommendation but wanted the building to be clad with Greenland marble”. During the opening of the town hall on 10 June 1941, alongside the royal dignitaries Stauning made a prominent appearance.

“Grønlandsk Marmor – et fornemt dansk materiale”, advertising material for Greenland marble, late 1960s, collection of Uummannaq museum. Photo by J. Foote.

At the conclusion of the World War II, the quarry was swiftly closed by the Greenland administrator Eske Brun, who saw no future export market with the United States or Canada. However, a large cache of previously extracted blocks remained on site, prompting an effort by entrepreneur Ole Fink-Jensen 1965 to revive the quarry operations, resulting in around thirty additional cubic meters of extracted blocks. A brief consumer market for flooring, window sills and bathroom tiles emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The expense and difficulty of working in such a remote location were ultimately too much to overcome for a small-scale enterprise, and shortly afterward a concession was given to Greenex, a large international mining conglomerate, for extracting high-grade zinc at the site. A profitable zinc mine was in place starting in 1973, eventually employing over three hundred people with a fully functioning village. Following a crash in zinc prices in the late 1980s, the mine closed, and the site was partially cleared in the early 1990s. The open marble quarry pit from the 1930s, which during the zinc mine hosted an ore processing plant, was filled with demolished material and toxic mining waste. Today, the site remains abandoned, although a licence continues to allow further zinc prospecting.

“Prins Valdemars Sarkofag” Nationaltidende, July 24, 1940, noting the unveiling of Prince Valdemar’s Sarcophagus, carved from a single block of Greenlands marble.

Prince Valdemar of Denmark, a lifelong man of the Royal Danish Navy, died on January 14, 1939. A large block of Greenland marble, donated by the the Østasiatisk Kompagni, was carved according to a neo-classical design by the Architect Carl Brummer. It was shown in Roskilde Cathedral to the public throughout July 1940.

Greenland marble, with its white-grey colour, garnered associations early on with Italian marble, monumental architecture, and classicism. This probably figured into the general undesirability by architects of the period to Greenland marble, in a period where concrete and functionalism had firmly superseded classical building styles. The coded references to antique building culture certainly underscore the continuity of the royal family with monumentality and classicist authority, while at the same time the material is carved out of a “Danish” material extracted from the country’s own soil. 

You can read the full article by Jonathan Foote from Imaginaries on Matter: Tools, Materials, Origins here.  

Jonathan Foote is an Architect (MAA) and Associate Professor at Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark. Previously, he taught at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Virginia Tech’s Alexandria Campus (WAAC). His teaching, editorial work and research focuses on the relation between architectural drawings and materials. He has published on the drawings and workshop practices of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Francesco Borromini, and Sigurd Lewerentz. In addition to his teaching and academic work, Jonathan runs a design research studio, Atelier U:W, which partners locally and internationally on special projects in design and fabrication.