Denmark vs the US: What Greenland really wants

On a hill above Nuuk’s cathedral stands a 7ft statue of the protestant missionary Hans Egede. He had reopened Greenland’s link with Northern Europe in the early 1700s and laid the groundwork for the establishment of Denmark’s proudest colonial possession.

One day in the late 1970s, the bronze figure was suddenly covered in red paint.

I remember that day well – I passed the statue every day on my mile long walk to school. I spent two years living on Greenland while my father taught geography at Nuuk’s teacher training college.

It was apparent not everyone among the Inuit majority was happy about the changes that Egede had brought to Greenland a quarter of a millennium earlier.

The clinking of beer bottles in filled plastic bags carried home by the Inuit to their tiny apartments – much smaller, usually, than the ones we Danes lived in – was testimony to pervasive alcoholism, one of the ills that Denmark had brought to Greenland, amid a lot that was undeniably good: modern health, good education.

But apart from the paint-covered statue, the dream of Greenland being independent from Denmark was only slowly beginning to manifest itself.

At the Teacher Training College right next to my school, the closest Greenland got to having a radical student movement was developing – some young people at the college demanded to be taught in their native Greenland language.

By the late 1970s, the capital was called Nuuk and no longer Godthaab, its official name for well over two centuries.

Now, decades on, change is afoot once again, as Donald Trump has his eyes on gaining control of the country.

Asked in January if he would rule out using military or economic force in order to take over the autonomous Danish territory or the Panama canal, he responded: “No, I can’t assure you on either of those two. But I can say this, we need them for economic security.”

Later on Air Force One he told reporters: “I think we’re going to have it,” adding that the island’s 57,000 residents “want to be with us”.

The question is, do they?

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has, meanwhile, insisted Greenland is not for sale. “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders,” she said. “It’s the Greenlanders themselves who have to define their future.”

So, what do the island’s inhabitants want that future to look like – and if it does not involve them being part of the kingdom of Denmark, then what is the alternative?

One poll of Greenlanders suggested only 6% of Greenlanders want their country to become part of the US, with 9% undecided and 85% against. But despite this, Frederiksen knows that the question of what Greenlanders want is a delicate one.

Traditionally, Danes have viewed themselves as the world’s nicest imperialists ever since they started to colonise Greenland in the 1720s.

This self-image has been eroded in recent years, however, by a string of revelations about past high-handedness in dealing with the island’s population.

In particular, there have been reports of serious wrongs committed against Greenlanders – not in the distant past, but within living memory.

This included a controversial large-scale contraceptive campaign. A joint investigation by authorities in Denmark and Greenland is examining the fitting of intrauterine devices (coils) into women of child-bearing age on the island, often without their consent or even their knowledge.

It has been reported this happened to almost half of all the island’s women of child-bearing age between 1966 and 1970.

Last December, Greenland’s prime minister Múte Egede described this as “straightforward genocide, carried out by the Danish state against the Greenland population”.

He made the remark while talking to the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in an interview that dealt generally with relations between Greenland and Denmark.

Also, in the 1960s and 1970s hundreds of children from the island were taken from their mothers, often on dubious grounds, to be reared by foster parents in Denmark. In some cases, this happened without the consent of the biological mothers, and in other instances, they were not informed that their ties with their children would be cut completely.

This left a raw emotional wound that often was not healed decades later. Some of the adopted Greenlandic children were later able to trace their biological parents, but many others were not.

A small group demanded compensation from the Danish state in the summer of 2024. If they are successful, it could pave the way for a large number of similar claims by other adoptees.

Iben Mondrup, a novelist who was born in Denmark and spent her childhood in Greenland, sees the recent events as a rude wake-up call for the Danes who have been accustomed to viewing themselves as a benign influence in Greenland.

“The entire relationship has been based on a narrative that Denmark was helping Greenland, without getting anything in return,” she says.

“We have talked about Denmark as the motherland that took Greenland under its wing and taught it gradually to stand on its own feet. There has been a widespread use of educational metaphors.

“We Danes constantly return to the idea that Greenland owes us something, at least gratitude.”

Opinion polls carried out in recent years indicate a fairly consistent pattern in which around two-thirds of Greenland’s population say they want to be independent. A survey carried out in 2019 showed support of 67.7% for the move among adult Greenlanders.

Jenseeraq Poulsen, director of Oceans North Kalaallit Nunaat, an environmental charity in Nuuk, says: “As I see it, Greenland has now grown up, and our sense of self-worth and our self-confidence requires that we can start making our own decisions as adults on an equal footing with other nations.

“It’s important for a country to not be in a straitjacket,” Nunaat continues.

“We shouldn’t have to ask for permission to do anything. You know the feeling [as a child] when you have to ask your parents something and they say you can’t? That’s what it’s like.”

And yet the word “independence” may not fully capture the complexity of the challenges and choices that Greenland faces, according to Poulsen.

He says he doesn’t like the word “since everyone is interdependent in the modern world”.

He adds: “Even Denmark, which is a sovereign state, is interdependent… I prefer the word statehood.”

Not a huge amount is known about the mechanics of how Trump proposes to acquire Greenland. When he first floated the idea in 2019 he said it would be “essentially a large real-estate deal”.

The extent to which Greenland would remain autonomous under US rule is unclear. So too is how its benefits system would work.

After the proposal to buy the island, Trump has now doubled down on his rhetoric, apparently open to satisfying his territorial ambitions in the North Atlantic by military means.

The visit by Donald Trump Jr and members of Trump’s team added visual emphasis to the then president-elect’s words but not everyone on Greenland was wowed.

“That makes us dig in our heels and say, ‘Please control yourself,'” says Janus Chemnitz Kleist, an IT manager for the Greenland government. “Some people who might previously have had a positive attitude towards closer ties with the United States have started reconsidering.”

Aaja Chemnitz, a member of Danish parliament for the left-leaning party Inuit Ataqatigiit, has her own take on what needs to be done to pave the way for independence, in whatever form that may take.

First, she argues that it is important to reverse what she describes as a mild brain drain out of Greenland. She says only 56% of young Greenlanders who are educated at universities and colleges in Denmark and other countries return upon graduation.

“That’s not a very high number. It would be good if we could make it more attractive for them to return home and take up some of the positions that are important in Greenland society,” she says.

But in her view there is a broader economic issue too.

“Political and economic independence are interconnected,” she says, “and it’s crucial that we cooperate with Denmark on the development of business in Greenland but also work with the Americans on the extraction of raw materials and the development of tourism.”

At present, the Greenland economy is heavily reliant on the so-called block grant, a subsidy paid by the Danish government that in 2024 amounted to the equivalent of around £480m a year.

As this subsidy would likely disappear after independence, one of the most important challenges facing the Greenlanders is to find ways to replace it, explains Javier Arnaut, an economist at the University of Greenland in Nuuk.

“The economy is one of the main factors holding back the movement towards independence,” he says. “The economy is reliant on the Danish block grant, and if it disappeared, Greenland would have a large hole in the public budget that would need to be filled.

“The question is how. If the gap could be filled, for example, by increasing fiscal revenue through projects in mining with new partners, a clearer path towards economic independence could emerge.”

There is another question – not unimportant in a Nordic-style welfare state where a large part of the economy is under government control – of what would happen to all those health and social benefits that Greenland currently receives as a result of its relationship with Denmark.

Currently, these benefits include access to treatment in Danish hospitals.

Ask Greenlanders whether they want separation from Denmark, and most who say they do have a caveat – only if it does not cost them their welfare system.

The question of what happens to the welfare system would be particularly acute in the event of a US takeover of Greenland given the American welfare state is not only smaller than those in the Nordic countries but of those in most other Western countries.

But not everyone is convinced by suggestions that Greenland’s cancer patients, for example, would suddenly have nowhere to go in case of independence. Pele Broberg, Greenland’s former foreign minister and now chairman of the political party Naleraq, cites Iceland, which left the Danish kingdom in 1944 as an example.

“Iceland still sends medical patients to Denmark,” he says. “They still have students studying in Denmark, and vice versa. I have a hard time seeing what kind of obstacles Denmark would like to put up if we decide to leave the kingdom.

“It’s rhetoric meant to scare us from having a discussion about independence,” he argues.

However, some Greenlanders believe that true independence may never be accomplished because of these very concerns. Mr Chemnitz Kleist argues: “The kind of independence that you see in countries like Denmark or Belgium or Angola will never happen here.

“With such a small population, some of it not well educated, and with a complex welfare system which we would like to keep, we can never become independent in the way the word is usually understood.”

All of these issues have been discussed for years, but they have suddenly attained a new sense of urgency with Trump’s apparent bid for control of Greenland.

But regardless of who sits in the White House, the question is whether Greenlanders would see any benefit in raising cooperation levels with the United States – and if so, to what extent?

“Greenland’s national project is all about spreading out the island’s dependence in order to have as many ties as possible with the outside world,” says Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and an expert on the Arctic region.

It is in this context that some Greenlanders are warming to the model of a “free association” with either Denmark or the United States – replicating a similar loose arrangement between the United States and certain islands in the Pacific.

“The problem is that Greenland feels swallowed up by Denmark,” says Mr Pram Gad. “It aims to feel less constrained and less dependent on just one country. Free association is not so much about ‘association’ and more about ‘free’. It’s about having one’s own sovereignty.”

Donald Trump’s threat to take over Greenland may have been unexpected but with the trip to Nuuk his team were well aware there was a thread to be pulled at, that his security concerns come at a time when many Greenlanders are considering their future.

“In recent years all these stories have emerged and placed the modernisation narrative in a different light. The whole idea that Denmark was pursuing an altruistic project in Greenland has been challenged,” says Iben Mondrup.

“The project that the Greenlanders were told was for their own good was actually not good for them after all. This gives rise to all kinds of thoughts about the status of the Greenlanders inside the Danish kingdom. It adds fuel to the criticism that has developed in Greenland in recent years about the idea of a community with Denmark.”

But if it’s not only Denmark and it’s not only America, who else can Greenland turn to? Surveys suggest that a majority of the island’s inhabitants would like to step up cooperation with Canada and Iceland. Mr Broberg, the party chairman, likes the idea, and he throws Norway into the equation as well.

“We have more in common with Norway and Iceland than we have with Denmark,” he says. “All three of us have a presence in the Arctic, unlike Denmark. The only reason I leave open the possibility of a free association with Denmark after independence is it may put some Greenlanders at ease because they are used to the relationship with Denmark.”

Still, the question is: Would Canada and Iceland want to take on the task of providing the social benefits that Greenlanders covet? The answer would almost certainly be no.

In this way, the future presenting itself to the Greenlanders is both exhilaratingly open and at the same time depressingly narrow.

Peter Harmsen is a journalist at Weekendavisen. He spent time as a child living in Greenland.

Top picture credit: Getty Images

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