Greenlanders Embrace an 'Exciting New Beginning'

World's largest island opts to stick with daylight saving time for good, with no more clock moving
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Mar 28, 2023 7:25 AM CDT
Greenlanders Just Changed Their Clocks for the Final Time
Small pieces of ice float in the water in Nuuk Fjord, Greenland, on June 15, 2019.   (AP Photo/Keith Virgo, File)

Residents of Greenland moved their clocks forward this past weekend and switched to daylight saving time for the very last time. Unlike most of Europe, Greenlanders will leave their clocks untouched come autumn when daylight saving time ends. While Europe and the US debate whether to stick to the twice-yearly practice, Greenland—a vast Danish semi-independent territory in the Arctic—has resolved to perennially remain only three hours behind Copenhagen and most other European countries instead of four, per the AP. Greenland's Parliament, the Inatsisartut, voted to stick to daylight saving time year-round on Nov. 24 last year. Officials say it will give Greenlanders another hour of daylight in the afternoons and more time to do business with Europe and farther afield.

"The shift of time zone marks an exciting new beginning, an equal connection to North America and Europe, and an opportunity to slow down in a fast-paced world," Visit Greenland, the local government's tourism office, said in a statement. Geographically, sparsely populated Greenland belongs to the North American continent, but geopolitically, it's in Europe. Greenland is part of the Danish Realm, and its southernmost tip is nearly 2,000 miles west of Copenhagen. Its 56,000 people are mainly Inuit, Indigenous people who chiefly live on the west coast in small towns and hamlets or remote coastal settlements.

(More Greenland stories.)

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