Berlin enters the novel as a point where postwar business dealings and a later conspiracy over Greenland converge. It is associated with the 1946 Allied negotiations over aluminum supplies, with people from the Cryolite Corporation who were frequently present there, and with Smilla’s tentative theory that Loyen and Ving first encountered one another in the city.

Postwar Connections

Elsa Lübing recalls that Benedicte Clahn, whose name appeared in the corporation’s accounts as the recipient of a translator’s fee of 267 kroner in 1966, had lived in Germany and was acquainted with the director. Elsa’s impression was that the two knew one another from Berlin in 1946. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Allies negotiated there over the division of aluminum supplies, and corporation personnel often traveled to the city during those years.

When Smilla asks who else had been there, Elsa identifies Ottesen, the director of sales, and Councilor Ebel. Her recollection places corporate figures in Berlin amid negotiations over a resource central to the company’s business, though the evidence does not establish what any individual did there or prove the exact nature of Clahn’s connection to the director.

Berlin in Smilla’s Reconstruction

Later, Smilla assembles the remembered names into a provisional account of the Greenland expeditions. She imagines that Loyen and Ving may have met in Berlin: Loyen knew of something worth finding in Greenland, while Ving, as director and real leader of the Cryolite Corporation, could use the company as cover to obtain it. She adds Andreas Licht to the outline, but says only that he was familiar with conditions in Greenland.

In Smilla’s account, this possible meeting precedes the corporation’s 1966 expedition. Something went wrong—perhaps an accident involving explosives—and the expedition failed. The participants then waited twenty-five years before trying again. Smilla distinguishes that earlier undertaking from the later one: outside money paid for transportation, suggesting that the group had gained assistance or formed an alliance, yet the renewed attempt also ended disastrously, with four men dead, including Isaiah’s father.

Narrative Significance

Berlin is not presented through a scene of the 1946 negotiations themselves. Its history reaches the reader through Elsa’s remembered accounting details and Smilla’s later reconstruction, so the city functions as a hinge between an obscure corporate payment, postwar contacts, and the expeditions’ repeated attempts. The link remains partly conjectural: Elsa offers an impression about Clahn’s acquaintance with the director, and Smilla frames the meeting of Loyen and Ving as a possibility rather than a confirmed fact. That uncertainty makes Berlin a clue to the network’s origins, not a complete explanation of them.