Taking its point of departure in a widely used general education textbook on Greenland, published in 1928 by the Danish geographer Sophie Petersen, the article demonstrates how nationalism and colonialism were closely linked in Denmark in the yesrs between the two world wars. The Greenlanders were raised on Danish nationalism framed in an ethnic/cultural understanding of the concept of the nation which was easily transferred to a Greenlandic context. Thus, Danish colonialim contained the seed of Greenlandic nationalism, which it eventually became difficult for Denmark to object to, born as it was of the same arguments that underpinned Danish nationalism. Thus, the history of Danish nationalism is also the key to understanding the developments that led to Greenlandic authonomy.