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A magazine of her own

Greenland's first magazine is all about women

JANE GEORGE

CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
Want a makeover? Arnanut shows the before and after results.

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The eye-catching covers of Arnanut, Greenland's new magazine for women, lead to a unique reading experience inside - even for someone who can't read Greenlandic or Danish.

The cover of Arnanut 5, which came out last September, features a striking shot of a fashionable Greenlandic model of about 40.

There's a feature article about a rising young Greenlandic opera singer, shorter articles about women in non-traditional roles, a fashion section, fitness and beauty tips, instructions with photos on how to fit a bra, and horoscopes.

There's also a celebrity gossip column showing Greenlandic celebrities at the posh gala last June celebrating the 25th anniversary of the home rule government.

Even the ads are great: Air Greenland's page shows a female flight engineer posing by a jet engine. A classy two-page spread for Snow Goose parkas features a cool-looking woman in a red parka who could have stepped out a Vogue ad. "Milan-Toyko-New York-Greenland... Now in Greenland!" reads the text.

The covers of Arnanut show that Greenland's first magazine is for and about Greenlandic women.

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A totally professional-looking magazine: that's what Inga Dora Godmundsdottir Markussen, the editor, is aiming for in the glossy pages of Arnanut.

Inga Dora also wants to produce a magazine that's unmistakably Greenlandic. In Arnanut 4, a series of beauty makeovers encourages you to read the Greenlandic text to learn about the women who participated in before-and-after photos.

"I wanted something I could to relate to myself, to read about my neighbours, or well-known people," she says. "I wanted to have something about ourselves because there is a lot of history behind every human being, and people like Arnanut a lot because they learn about people."

Each issue is focused on a theme such as natural resources, mental health or child-rearing.

"In every theme, there's something I can relate to and want to know more about myself," she says.

Arnanut is the result of hard work, and more than 10 years of dreaming.

When Inga Dora, now 32, was at a Danish university, she and her friends often talked about starting a women's magazine in Greenland.

"Some of my girlfriends and I just talked about it - that when we got home again we would make this kind of magazine," she says.

But before Arnanut became real, Inga Dora's life would take many detours. The daughter of an Icelandic father and a Greenlandic mother, she split her school years between Reykjavik and Qaqortoq in southern Greenland.

As a result, Inga Dora speaks several languages, including English, and writes more fluently in Danish than in Greenlandic, although she now speaks Greenlandic "well enough to be a politician."

After leaving university in Denmark, Inga Dora returned to Iceland where she became a flight attendant with Icelandair and then a travel agent.

Inga Dora moved to Nuuk in 1994. Three years later, she was elected to the city council and became deputy mayor.

Inga Dora Godmundsdottir Markussen made her magazine dream come true, even with a young family to take care of.

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But she decided not to run again for office, and returned to university in Nuuk instead, this time to study journalism.

"The summer before last I was pregnant with my second child, my son. There wasn't anyone asking me to work during this summer period, so I was thinking, why isn't anyone calling me? I had to create my own summer job," she says.

That's when Inga Dora went to see Poul Krarup, editor of the Sermitsiaq newspaper in Nuuk, to see if he was interested in publishing a women's magazine. He agreed.

It was a risk, of course, but advertising salespeople at Sermitsiaq soon found that advertisers wanted to reach Greenlandic women.

And, apart from in-flight magazines given away by airlines and a Christmas magazine at Nuuk's AG newspaper, Arnanut would become Greenland's first real magazine.

"So, I had a deadline. My son was set to be born on the 29th of August and the first issue was coming out the 5th of September," Inga Dora says. "I had a lot of time pressure. I had to be finished with the magazine by the time he was born."

The first two issues were included as free inserts with Sermitsiaq. The premiere issue is now a collectors' item in Greenland, Inga Dora says.

Arnanut comes out four times a year. It's written and laid out entirely by women and it's printed in Greenland, even though printing costs might be much lower in Europe. About 4,000 copies are distributed in Greenland, where the magazine now sells on newstands for 30 kroner, about $6, and through subscriptions.

"We also have readers in Denmark. It's very well-known in Denmark, where they know it and like it a lot. I want to get more advertisements from Denmark, because that's a market we haven't done enough about yet."

She's pleased, because women in the Faroe Islands, also a Danish colony with a home rule government, are putting out a similar magazine for women.

"I hope some women in Nunavut would be inspired to do this, too," Inga Dora says.

For more information on how to order Arnanut, email arnanut@sermitsiaq.gl.

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