memoirs of Anne Sofie Hardenberg, written by Pia Christensen Bang

trans. title: The Right to a Father

the book

In the 40’s and 50’s many men from Denmark travelled to Greenland to work in shorter or longer periods of time. Here they met the beautiful Greenlandic women – which more than once resulted in pregnancies. Many of these men went back to Denmark, which meant that the children grew up as illegitimate children without even knowing their fathers. One of these children was Anne Sofie Hardenberg who was teased all through her childhood for having a Danish father – and an absent one at that. This was of course a great sadness of hers. By age 17 she gathered the courage to write to her father. To her surprise he was very glad to hear from her, and wished to make her a part of his family. Unluckily they only got three weeks together – then he died in a car accident…

The book is Anne Sofie’s memoirs accompanied by photos and letters between her and her Danish family.
Today, still, there is a problem with the legal rights of this generation of “fatherless” children.