Ignored for most of its existence, the huge ice-bound island has been thrust into a geopolitical maelstrom. It’s trying to make the most of it.
Above the harbour, where little boats splattered with fish blood putter back to shore and men with ice-encrusted moustaches butcher seals, sits a two-storey building where Palle Jeremiassen works. He is the mayor of Ilulissat, a small town in the Arctic Circle, and he’s got a busy day.
Howling winds just wiped out the path to the best ice-fishing spot, and the fishermen, some of whom still stomp around in pants made of polar-bear fur, are getting upset.
In another settlement farther north, the ice is too thin to cross. Greenlanders call this “young ice,” and it shouldn’t be this young this deep into winter – another worrying sign of climate change. Unless Jeremiassen quickly organises emergency shipments by helicopter, the villagers who usually cruise around on snowmobiles and dog sleds could run out of food.
Out here on the western coast of Greenland, ice defines life. The endless snowfields glitter with millions of ice crystals. A skyline of sapphire icebergs rises from the semi-frozen sea. But something even bigger is occupying the mayor’s mind at the moment, and that of many people here. It boils down to one word: Trump.
Denmark, which once colonised Greenland, still oversees many of its affairs. But now President Donald Trump says the United States will take over Greenland, and he has not ruled out using force to do so.
“What can we do when he comes?” the mayor asks. “We will not be Americans. We don’t want to be Europeans. We want to be Greenlandic.”
That’s the refrain that echoed across Greenland during a nearly two-week trip in which New York Times journalists travelled by plane, boat, jeep, snowmobile and dogsled, speaking to dozens of Greenlanders, from bartenders and fishermen to the political class. We asked them what they thought about Trump’s covetousness and his confidence that Greenlanders “want to be with us”.
The consensus was clear: Greenlanders feel they have been under Danish control for too long, and they don’t want a new colonial master, especially a bigger and bossier one. A recent poll showed that 85% of the tiny population of 56,000 don’t want to be part of the United States. Still, many people expressed a desire to forge a closer relationship to Washington.
These competing tensions have thrust Greenland – a vast, enigmatic island that drew little attention for most of its existence – into an extraordinary geopolitical maelstrom it cannot control. The situation has deeply rattled Europe, which is now also alarmed by Trump’s warm embrace of Russia, and could carry consequences that go far beyond Greenland.
Denmark is anxious over a possible showdown. Europe’s leaders, alarmed at the President’s suggestion that he might take Greenland by force, have responded by lining up behind Denmark. France even offered to send in troops.
Superpowers like the United States, Russia and China are assessing the military and economic opportunities in the Arctic waterways around Greenland and jockeying for position.
At the same time, there’s a sudden fever for the island’s untapped mineral resources. Major American investors, including Trump allies, are involved with companies prospecting nickel, iron and rare earth elements, even though much of it is trapped far under frozen ground or ice (in some parts of Greenland, the ice is 3km thick). China has set its sights on Greenland’s mineral riches, too, and Greenlanders aren’t used to feeling like everyone wants a piece of them.
They’re part of a wider Inuit community stretching from Russia across Alaska and Canada where many people still follow a traditional life, hunting seals and the occasional whale and scraping a living from one of the most hostile environments on the planet. They have long felt marginalised and disrespected, and their resentment has been steadily building toward their former colonial overseers, the Danes, who first came to the island in 1721 and still control its foreign policy, defence and police forces.
Now that Trump has declared his intentions to control the island, Greenlanders are extracting some major concessions from the Danes, whom Trump keeps ridiculing.
“They put two dogsleds there two weeks ago,” Trump said recently, referring to Denmark’s efforts to safeguard Greenland. “They thought that was protection.”
Even though many Greenlanders said they are not fans of Trump, they enjoy watching him push Denmark around. In interviews, they expressed confidence that this would ultimately help them get a sovereign state of their own – something no other Inuit community has achieved – unless America swallows them first.
“Everyone I know is saying, ‘This is all so hilarious, it’s all so absurd, but it’s also so nice,’” said Svend Hardenberg, a mining executive and, more recently, a star in a hot Danish Netflix series that, serendipitously, had a whole season about Greenland.
“There’s going to be a lot of people trying to sway us this way or that,” he said. “So now we have to figure how to do the best for ourselves, to really see what the US and Denmark can offer.
“This,” he added, “is our moment.”
The political question
One afternoon last month in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, Kuno Fencker, a member of Parliament, marched out of a news conference, the frustration showing on his face. Greenland’s Prime Minister, Múte B. Egede, had ducked a question about independence, refusing to answer clearly why the Government should not push for it now.
Fencker wants Greenland to start divorce negotiations with Denmark immediately.
“Why shouldn’t we be a part of the global world?” he asked. “Why are we not allowed to become members of the UN? Why shouldn’t we be able to be members of the international organisations regarding our fisheries, whales, everything? Why is it that a Danish guy or woman in Denmark has to decide that?”
He spoke from his office, a modern, clean-lined, Scandinavian-designed building, as a bulldozer outside his window lifted away chunks of snow. Nuuk’s streets and sidewalks were coated in ice, and newcomers, including me, needed to strap plastic spikes on our boots to keep from suddenly finding ourselves airborne. Greenlanders, meanwhile, tramped quietly across the same sidewalks as if they were strolling across a carpet.
Fencker recently returned from Washington, where he managed to finagle a tour of the West Wing. He’s part of Greenland’s small pro-Trump group, which helped organise a visit by Donald Trump jnr in January.
Rival politicians were quick to call him a traitor, and there is a contingent of Greenlandic politicians who are wary of Trump, seeing him as imperious and unpredictable. But Fencker says that engaging with the Trump team is “necessary if Greenland wants to take its future into its own hands”.
Like many Greenlanders, he believes the island should become independent. But just as important, he and many other Greenlanders argue, is establishing their own close relationship with the US. They believe this will open up more opportunities for investment and trade and ensure that no other country like Russia or China will cause trouble for them.
The hope among Fencker’s camp is that when Greenland breaks free from Denmark, it will sign a free association agreement with Washington, similar to what the US has arranged with the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau, three small independent countries in the South Pacific that rely heavily on US military protection and millions of dollars in subsidies.
That scenario is different from Trump’s insistence that America should simply take over. He hasn’t fully explained his fixation on Greenland, which goes back to his first term, when he unsuccessfully tried to buy it from Denmark, except to say that it’s important for “economic security” and “freedom throughout the world”. No one really knows what kind of arrangement Trump would ultimately accept.
As it is, the island gets some American protection: there’s a small US base in the north with around 150 personnel focused on missile defence and space surveillance.
But researchers say that the Arctic region is warming at nearly four times the pace of the rest of the planet, and as the polar ice melts, this whole area is becoming more accessible – and more contested. This includes the shipping lanes around Greenland coveted by Russia and China.
Denmark keeps stressing that Greenland is entitled to determine its own fate. Under Danish and Greenlandic law, the island has the right to hold a referendum on independence. And there’s a simple reason it hasn’t yet.
Greenland’s economy is small, based mostly on fishing and still dependent on Denmark for hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance each year. That money pays for good roads, cheap gas, nice schools and free medical care, a Scandinavian standard of living that many Greenlanders are reluctant to give up.
“We are fortunate here,” said Finn Damgaard, a retired office worker who was warming up the other day on a bench in one of Nuuk’s few malls. The weather was horrendous – vicious winds and subzero temperatures – and he was taking a break on his way to the library.
He said he had learned, by reading and watching TV, about inequality in America and the way Inuit people have been treated in Alaska.
“It’s not good,” he said.
Like others, Damgaard believes Greenland should pursue independence – but not right now.
“I don’t think we’re ready yet,” he said. “We need to develop a form of income.”
His answer: mining.
Greenland’s mines
“Greenland is like a paradise for geologists,” said Qupanuk Olsen, a Greenlander who wears many hats – mining engineer, social media influencer, mother, hunter, shaman-follower. “We have gold. We have iron. We have titanium. We have even diamonds,” she said. “We have rubies. We have rare earth elements. We have uranium. We have so many minerals. But the thing is, they’re not profitable at this moment because of the infrastructure.”
The few ports in Greenland are often blocked by ice. The entire 800,000-square-mile island has less than 160km of paved roads. Many promising mining areas are so hard to reach that it’s extremely difficult simply drilling for samples, let alone getting loaded ships out of ports boxed in by icebergs.
Still, some international mining companies are trying. Lumina, owned by European and Canadian investment firms, is digging out anorthosite, a greyish mineral used in paints and glass fibres.
Several hundred kilometres up the west coast from Nuuk sits Disko Island, where KoBold, a mining startup backed by investments from Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, among other billionaires, has explored for nickel.
Another player is Critical Metals Corp., which has a rare earth mine in southern Greenland and has drawn a significant investment from the New York financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary, has been the firm’s CEO for years.
These days, there’s a huge appetite for rare earth elements, which are used in new technologies like electric cars. Greenland is rich in them.
China bought a stake in another promising rare earth mine, but operations are now blocked because of environmental concerns.
Several years ago, the Chinese Government commissioned a geological study of Greenland, saying it had “great potential for minerals”. But “potential” remains the operative word.
“Greenland is like a huge deposit just sitting there waiting for the prices to rise dramatically enough so we can sell it,” Olsen said.
A complicated relationship
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Olsen spoke from her beautiful, new, airy house overlooking Nuuk’s port and the thin slices of what is called “pancake ice” floating in the harbour. (Greenlanders have a lot of categories of ice: pancake ice, young ice, old ice, pack ice, black ice, glacier ice and sea ice, to name a few.)
“I don’t want to become part of the US,” said Olsen, who is running in the next parliamentary elections, in March. “But at some point, we need to do business with them.”
As with many Greenlanders, Olsen’s feelings towards America are complicated. She knows that America’s attention on Greenland could deliver benefits. It already has.
Just in the past few weeks, with Trump breathing down their necks, the Danes have agreed to things that Greenlanders have been demanding for years. Greenlandic, for example, will be recognised as a legitimate national identity on passports, and Greenland can now export fish more easily to foreign markets.
Denmark also just announced a major increase in military spending for the Arctic, something Greenlanders say should have been done long ago.
People on the island are increasingly critical of Denmark, part of a broader reinterpretation of the 300-year-old relationship between mainland Denmark and an island 50 times as big.
What is important to Greenlanders, interviews revealed, is their strong sense of identity. They come from a small group of people who have survived for centuries in a bleak but beautiful homeland. They are proud of their icebergs, their red and white flag that represents the sun and the ice, and their traditions like ice fishing and dog sledding. They want to make sure that whatever happens in this next chapter of their history, they get the respect they deserve.
Many felt insulted by a visit from the Nelk Boys, a group of pro-Trump social media influencers known for their prank videos, who descended on Nuuk a few weeks ago, passing out red MAGA hats and crisp $100 bills. “You think you can buy us?” one man yelled, tearing a $100 bill in half.
If Trump were trying to win them over, his presumptuous tone hasn’t helped.
“We know full well that he sees us as nothing – because, at the end of the day, he’s just a businessman trying to make deals,” Olsen said.
“We are not furniture,” she added. “We have been colonised enough already, and we are tired of it.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Jeffrey Gettleman
Photographs by: Ivor Prickett
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
