Greenlanders with Danish heritage that were born before 1963 have been granted the right to find their Danish fathers.
For decades, thousands of Greenlanders have been fathered out of wedlock by men from Denmark, the United States and the Faroe Islands that were living and working in North Atlantic territory, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s.
Like their wholly Danish counterparts in Europe, those born after 1963 have for nearly 50 years held the right to know the identity of their Danish fathers, to use his name and to claim a portion of inheritance from him.
But on Tuesday, years of court battles culminated in a ruling to extend the right to all Greenlanders, meaning that many Danes may soon be greeting a new member of the family.
Tida Ravn said on behalf of Greenland’s national association for fatherless children, “It means everything to us that we are able to use our father’s name after years of discrimination. It is important that we get a law now before it’s too late. Many of the fathers are already dead and a number of the fatherless are also older people,” the Kristeligt Dagblad newspaper reports.