I got my first hit from Greenland today!  (We’ve discussed my inner stats whore earlier, so never mind that creepy bit.)

See, there it is on Mint:

What on earth brought my Greenlandic visitor to my site?  Well, I click on the little icon and I discover that what’s on the minds of today’s Greenlanders is:

A la Dr. Evil: Riiiiiight.

I get my first hit from Greenland, and it’s someone looking for gay porn.  Fabulous.

Well, then I got to thinking.  Like most of the rest of the world, what I know about Greenland is as follows: it’s not as big as it looks on maps, being the main victim of distortion put about by the Mercator projection.  It’s ruled by Denmark, as I have known from the fifth grade when we had to research it as a class project after several of us more literate types questioned our teacher when she said it was an independent country while the map in our social studies book clearly labeled it as a possession of Denmark.

Oh, and there’s some sort of asteroid on the west coast that could power the universe if only extraterrestrial worms weren’t eating peoples’ brains.  I got that last by reading Smilla’s Sense of Snow (the book being far, far better than the movie which now airs regularly on Lifetime as part of their court ordered Julia Ormond quota).  I also recall something about Greenland having low humidity (“I’ve been colder in Denmark than I ever have in Greenland”), a high rate of both alcoholism and suicide (has something to do with the long hours of night in the winter–as I recall Smilla’s brother had committed suicide), and Greenlanders being rather resentful of their forced inclusion into the Greater Danish Sphere (Smilla herself being a prime example).

And since I’m sure that author Peter Høeg is an expert on Greenland, this must all be correct…

So, I pulled it up on the Interwebz, and I discovered that Nuuk (formerly Godthåb) is one of the smallest capital cities in the world by population–right around 18,000, which comprises one quarter of Greenland’s entire population.

Which leads me to the following thought: no wonder my Greenlandic visitor was seeking out gay porn on the Internet.  The most accessible gay bar is in Copenhagen–six hours away by plane (among my other random knowledge is that it is far, far easier to fly from Greenland to Denmark than to either Canada or the U.S., even though they’re closer).  Can you imagine what it must be like trying to find a date on a Friday night?

One can imagine the drama that would ensue in the small dating pool: everyone knows everyone else’s business, that’s for sure.  Plus, it’s that part of the year when there are a scant few hours of daylight.  Who wouldn’t want to hang around the house and surf the Interwebz?

Sure offers a new lens to the concept of being the only gay in the village, don’t it?  (BTW, the title of the post is “the only gay in the village” rendered into Danish by Google translate, and I’d be happy to change it if a real Dane happens by and wants to correct it … )

*photos by Peter Løvstrøm.  Used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.