Sørine Steenholdt: When death enters the house: I miss my mother, but I don’t miss you

Sørine Steenholdt (1986) is one of the most interesting contemporary writers working in the Greenlandic language. Her short story collection Zombiet Nunaat (Land of Zombies, 2015) was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2016. The collection contains nine stories (Zombie, Dust, Mother Is Just a Word, Shaman, Voice, Qinngorput, Inequ, News, Land of Zombies) and seven short texts. Their leitmotif is a harsh depiction of social problems, violence, and alcoholism.

Sørine Steenholdt’s work is highly valued by Kirsten Thisted of the University of Copenhagen, particularly because “she writes completely fearlessly about social problems—about alcoholism and the lack of parental care—which are, unfortunately, also part of modern Greenlandic reality and play a very sad role in it. Many are trying to do something about it, but enormous social problems persist in Greenland” (see an interview with Kirsten Thisted in Plav magazine, no. 7/2026).