Nanortalik residents vote on forming separate municipality

Residents of Nanortalik, Greenland’s southernmost town, and five nearby settlements will vote on September 11 on whether to leave Kommune Kujalleq and become an independent municipality, DR reports.

The advisory referendum is the third in Greenland in recent years on dividing up a municipality. Avannaata Kommunia, the country’s northernmost municipality, and Qeqqata Kommunia held similar votes in 2024 and 2025. In both cases, voters supported splitting the municipalities.

Public meetings have been held in recent weeks ahead of the vote in Kommune Kujalleq, Greenland’s southernmost municipality.

Minik Serano Frederiksen, a member of the Kommune Kujalleq municipal council, helped launch a petition in 2024 calling for Nanortalik to become a municipality of its own, as it was before Greenland’s 2009 municipal reform.

Frederiksen told DR in a written response that many residents want Nanortalik to stand more independently and have greater local influence over the town’s development.

"This is not about being against Kommune Kujalleq. It is about believing that Nanortalik has the potential to stand more independently," Frederiksen wrote.

Discontent with municipal reform

The referendum is linked in part to Greenland’s 2009 municipal reform, according to Najaaraq Demant-Poort, a PhD student and assistant professor at Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland in Nuuk. The reform reduced the number of municipalities from 18 to four, before the structure was adjusted to five municipalities in 2018.

Demant-Poort said economic considerations supported the centralisation, while residents also valued greater equality between municipalities. However, residents in some places now feel that removing local functions to improve the finances of the same settlement has made conditions worse.

Municipal headquarters were also removed, creating greater distance from the accessibility and services that residents had previously experienced, she said. Satisfaction is particularly low in places where residents feel their towns are being run down, according to Demant-Poort.

She pointed to Maniitsoq and Nanortalik as places where residents feel that political decision-making has moved further away and that their towns have not been prioritised for development, new industries and jobs.

Reform commission established

A September 2024 evaluation of Greenland’s municipal structure found significant differences in satisfaction between main towns, other towns and settlements. It also described trust in municipal councils’ ability to represent local interests and solve local problems as alarmingly low.

Greenland’s politicians have established a reform commission to examine the organisation of the public sector. Its work includes the consequences of the municipal reform, demographic changes, moves towards greater self-government and how to build a public sector that supports those political aims, Demant-Poort said.

The Inatsisartut, Greenland’s parliament, will ultimately decide whether to follow the results of the advisory referendums. Even if politicians approve drawing new municipal boundaries, that will not necessarily reverse low satisfaction among some residents.

Residents’ expectations are closely tied to hopes of more money for their settlements, better services and higher-quality case processing, Demant-Poort said. If a new municipal structure does not deliver those improvements because finances remain under pressure or the necessary workforce cannot be brought back to towns where jobs have moved away, the result could instead be greater disappointment, she said.

The outcome of the Nanortalik referendum must first be sent to Inatsisartut for political consideration.