Wearing Red in Greenland
By : Adam Wordsmith
[ A ] day wears what? We don’t know with certainty. The naked truth about days is that, like the fabled king, they have nothing on. But a feeling heart finds February’s first Friday fabulous. It arrives wearing red and refuses to let a heart miss a beat.
Since 2004, February’s first Friday (today) has been observed as Wear Red Day in the United States. But the WHO should consider announcing it as a global awareness day due to its importance. This day is dedicated to women’s heart health. A woman’s heart is often sought after by a man, but the health of that same heart is too often ignored.
Wearing red on this day is to raise awareness about women’s heart health. It is not a woman’s heart-favourite colour statement. Red is not a random wardrobe choice. It is not fashion on this day, but function. It is not decorative but declarative, and decidedly medical.
Red is the colour of blood, urgency, and emergency. It works because it speaks without words. It is a red alert that reminds, a red line that says “mind the heart,” a red-letter day that asks the romantics to remember arteries first, and roses later on Valentine’s Day. Wearing red on the first Friday of February for women’s heart health awareness is chromatic activism with a cardiac connection.
Colours play their own politics, and politics is colourful everywhere. Power politics is, however, more coloured than colourful, especially in the USA, an acronym that was reinterpreted by Professor Jay Parini as the United States of Amnesia.
This column is primarily for language lovers and logophiles. Some may see it as colourful (the colour-blind are not bound), but it is not political. Sorry, Sartre, it is meant to inform, educate, and entertain, with words wandering and playing on the playground of an op-ed page. Any political allusion herein may be an illusion. This is to open the paint box of lexical colours, not to open the Pandora’s box of political killers.
Even political satire, including the Nobel Peace Prize, is not the subject of this piece. But when a property dealer turned politician claims Greenland, isn’t it a red rag to Denmark, whose flag is already red?
Perhaps that property dealer plus politician doesn’t know Greenland is not green. Even its flag is not green, but red and white. It is green only in name and, ironically, it had been named by Red, yes, Erik the Red, who died in 1003 AD, 773 years before American independence.
Erik the Red was born in Norway, with an innate attitude of my way or the highway. History tells he had the epithet “the Red” due to the colour of his hair and beard. But as a bloodthirsty murderer he deserved this title by all means and meanness. He had that thirst for blood in his blood, from his father, who was also a cold-blooded murderer. His father was banished from Norway, and he settled with family in Iceland. Erik the Red killed Eyjolf the Foul around the year 982 in Iceland. Even in those dark days, killing the Foul was a foul in Iceland, so Erik was exiled as convicted. Like father, like son.
But unlike his father, Erik the Red discovered a land that he named Greenland, which was not green at all. Erik’s skill in killing was at par with his Norse sense of no-nonsense marketing. Like the property dealer plus politician, he was a murderer-cum-marketer. Exile enhanced his excellence in this field. He understood marketing before marketing understood itself.
He found an ice-covered landmass and named it Greenland. It was a green signal to settlers to set their feet on an icy island that was, in fact, otherwise but wisely named. Erik was a killer with a killer instinct for strategic branding. If he were a narcissist like most politicians, especially the property dealer turned politician, he would have named the land Redland. But he didn’t cross the red line. He stopped when he saw the red light and chose instead an appealing, rather alluring name.
Erik knew what Shakespeare didn’t. He knew what’s in a name. Shakespeare should have been either red-faced whilst facing Erik the Red, or green with envy whenever he heard the name Greenland.
Iceland is greener than Greenland, but Erik the Red’s revenge from Iceland, as a branding strategy, made Iceland icier than Greenland. That is why the property dealer turned politician claims Greenland, not Iceland.
Should this claim be calmly responded to the way adults do when a child asks whether the moon is available in instalments? Should Greenland be prepared to roll out the red carpet for the first couple of the first world? Waiting, if not on this February’s first Friday, then any February’s first Friday, the first lady may be landing in Greenland wearing red.
But before any red carpet is rolled out for politics, let red be rolled out for purpose. Let red remain the colour not of conquest but of care. Greenland may not be green, yet the heart must stay green with life, and the blood must stay red with health. On Wear Red Day, the message is simple: wear red and think green. Think green for the hearts filled with hopes for a healthy life.
The writer researches the world’s languages and unique words, and can be contacted at:
adamwordsmith@yahoo.com
