20 Skilling

Grønlands Administration issued this note after Denmark fell under German occupation in April 1940, severing the island's administrative and financial ties to Copenhagen. With no reliable supply line to the metropole, local authorities in Greenland had to improvise a functioning currency system essentially from scratch — these emergency issues were the result.

The 1942 series was printed locally under wartime conditions, and the production quality reflects those constraints. Paper sourced and printed on the island, far outside any established note-printing infrastructure.

Greenland's wartime currency was backed, informally, by American economic support as the U.S. took on a de facto protective role under the 1941 Kauffmann agreement.