
Greenland MP earns Speech of the Year
The Greenlandic Danish Parliament member Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam from the Siumut party has won the Danish Speech of the Year award. She has been honoured for the speech she gave in Greenlandic in the Chamber in May during a debate on the Danish Commonwealth. The self-governing institution Danske Taler runs a speech collection making historical speeches publicly available, and awards the prize every year. The judging panel says, among other things, that the speech left a concrete imprint, as the speech subsequently led to the fact that there are now better opportunities to speak the Commonwealth’s three distinct languages Danish, Greenlandic and Faroese from Parliament’s rostrum. “What makes the Danish Speech of the Year extremely interesting is that Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam’s words had a great effect on the audience, even though they did not understand what she was saying. Some MPs were provoked by the fact that they did not understand a word,” says speechwriter and author Anita Furu from the judging panel in the announcement. The speech is also praised for being more than just “a successful happening”. /ritzau/