Hans Jakob Helms

Hans Jakob Helms is a Danish author and former civil servant with a long career in Greenlandic and Danish institutions. He is also known for his role in the negotiations that led to the establishment of the Arctic Council and for his publications that draw on his knowledge of Greenland.

Hans Jakob Helms was born in 1949 in Angmassalik, East Greenland. He studied Danish and ethnography at Aarhus University and graduated with a cand. mag. degree in 1979. His early professional work combined cultural and political experience in both Denmark and Greenland.

He made his literary debut in 1977 with the environmental crime novel Giftpølen. Since then, he has published several books, often inspired by Greenlandic society and politics. His later work Hold da kræft mand is a personal account of living with prostate cancer. Helms has described his writing as closely connected to his professional and personal experiences.

Helms served in senior roles in the Greenland Home Rule Government. He worked as the head of the Directorate for Tourism, Transport, Trade, and Communication, later becoming the director of the North Atlantic House Foundation. He also served as secretary of the North Atlantic Group in the Danish Parliament and, from 2008 to 2015, was an adviser to the political party Siumut.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Helms represented the Greenland Home Rule Government in international environmental talks. He participated in the negotiations that led to the creation of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy and the establishment of the Arctic Council. One of his main objectives was to secure a place for Arctic Indigenous Peoples in the new forum.

Helms considered the establishment of the Arctic Council a historic breakthrough. He explained, “The biggest accomplishment of the Arctic Council is bringing the Arctic world together — it is as simple as that.”

Hans Jakob Helms later published Hold da kræft mand (2016), a memoir describing his personal experience of being diagnosed with prostate cancer. The book recounts his first shock when a routine blood test revealed the disease and follows his struggle to understand the physical and emotional impact of treatment.

Helms writes openly about questions of masculinity, intimacy, and identity during illness, and his reflections include moments of fear, doubt, and resilience. He described the diagnosis as “my identity as a man was at stake,” underlining how the illness affected not only his health but also his sense of self.