The Battle for Greenland: ‘I'm Going to Keep Fighting for This Until I Die'

Yahoo

03-04-2025

Waving red-and-white flags and blasting an independence song from a speaker box, a parade of about 40 Siumut faithful, long the dominant political party, is on the march in Nuuk, Greenland's frozen capital. Cloaked in parkas, they pass a cluster of wooden homes built by the first Danish settlers three centuries ago, and giant chunks of glacial ice stranded on the beach, before stopping in the old harbor. This is what passes for a big crowd in a vast country of nearly 57,000 people, and their full-throated fervor cuts through the bracing February cold. The week before, Prime Minister Múte Egede called for snap elections after President Donald Trump's repeated threats to acquire the strategically located and resource-rich Arctic island. 'We are in a serious time,' Egede wrote on Facebook. 'A time we have never experienced in our country. The time is not for internal division but for cooperation and unity for our country.'
Five of Greenland's six main political parties favor independence from Denmark, the former colonizer that still controls its foreign affairs and defense, and pays for more than half the government's public budget. But they differ on how quickly that should happen, and whether U.S. interest is ultimately more of an opportunity or menace to Greenland's long-term political and economic freedom. Siumut, a partner in the two-party government coalition, had days earlier announced its intention to hold a vote on independence. 'The first step will be free association, and after many years, full independence,' says Doris Jensen, a member of parliament leading the parade.
Minutes after the Siumut crowd moves on, the other half of the ruling left-wing coalition, Inuit Ataqatigiit, descends on the waterfront in a flurry of flags and slogans, their boots crunching the ice. Its party leaders had just broken ranks with Siumut, countering they would not rush an independence referendum after the vote. A more gradual approach, they reasoned, will ensure that welfare programs funded by Denmark are not disrupted, and the so-called right alliances maintained.
'We have always known that whatever we do in Greenland for full autonomy from the Danish realm, that the United States would try and grab us,' says Aqqaluk Lynge, a veteran Inuit-rights activist and party founder who once stood outside the Danish parliament demanding independence.
Compared with other indigenous people in the Arctic, 'we are the most independent country; we have rights to our own land and are accepted as a people according to international law.' Lynge, 77, now worries that the autonomy he fought for, and the island's considerable resource wealth, could be lost by hastily breaking away from Denmark. 'The situation right now with the U.S. is so threatening that people are having second thoughts about independence. My generation is very worried — people don't trust the U.S. like we did a few months ago. Anything is possible.'
A flash of the young activist comes in a parting message to Trump: 'Come freeze your effing ass off here. Come in the winter, then we will put you in the middle of the ice cap and you will see what Greenland is all about!'
As the rally ends, Lynge introduces me to Egede, the 37-year-old prime minister. He rejects Trump's overtures to buy or annex Greenland. But he's also been strident in his calls for full independence from Denmark to remove the 'shackles of colonialism,' saying it is 'now time to take the next step for our country' in a New Year's speech that hinted at a referendum. Of late, though, he's evaded foreign reporters pressing him about Trump.
We shake hands, and on hearing I'm an American journalist, he spins on a dime and breaks into a fast walk up the street.
Having spent most of its existence on the margins of the geopolitical map, Greenland now finds itself smack in its center. Warming temperatures are opening new shipping lanes and making oil, gas, and mineral reserves more accessible, turning the world's largest island into a strategic prize in the brewing competition between the U.S., China, and Russia for supremacy in the Arctic. President Trump wanted to buy Greenland during his first term, and in 2020 the U.S. reopened its consulate in Nuuk after nearly 70 years. Upon winning reelection, Trump declared Greenland to be an 'absolute necessity' for America's national security, while refusing to rule out using military conquest. 'One way or the other,' he told lawmakers in March, 'we're going to get it.'
The imperial bluster has sent shock waves through Denmark, an ostensible NATO ally. In a heated Jan. 15 phone call with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Trump doubled down on threats to target Denmark with trade tariffs if it doesn't cede or sell, igniting a full-blown panic. (The U.S. is Denmark's top export market outside of the European Union, receiving more than $12 billion worth of Danish products in 2023.) But in Greenland, the background tension has forced a popular reckoning on the country's future. 'Now the whole world knows where Greenland is,' says Erik Jensen, the outgoing minister of mineral resources and labor. 'And it has pushed a lot of issues to the forefront about becoming more independent from Denmark.'
Like many leaders here, Jensen acknowledges it will take 'many years' to build up the kind of diversified, homegrown economy that would make independence viable. Greenland is heavily dependent on fishing exports, and an annual block grant of more than $500 million from Denmark covers employment, health care, and education. Its population is declining, with a workforce that lacks specialized training. And yet tourism is surging to record levels; fisheries have the potential to earn far more; and the country's diverse underground resources are mostly untapped — including rare earth elements used in green technologies that are the envy of U.S. officials looking to head off China's global monopoly.
Over the course of two weeks traveling around the capital and fishing villages on the southwest coast, conversations with politicians, hunters, artists, and entrepreneurs yielded a near-universal refrain: We aren't for sale, but we are open for business. While Greenlanders overwhelmingly oppose becoming the 51st state, most want independence. And some hope Trump's interest will usher in the jobs and investments needed to become more self-sufficient and turn the page on a colonial legacy marked by inequalities.
'MY GENERATION IS VERY WORRIED — PEOPLE DON'T TRUST THE U.S. LIKE WE DID A FEW MONTHS AGO.'
Still, that optimism is tempered by fears that Greenland's decades-long independence drive could be hijacked by a ham-fisted and unpredictable U.S. administration that is running roughshod over its closest allies. 'U.S. security is our security — we're allies — and we'd like to do more business with them,' Jensen says, 'but that doesn't mean that we would like to become a part of the U.S.'
On a hill overlooking the sprawling bay of Nuuk, a seven-foot-tall statue of a man clutching a shepherd staff and Bible faces the headwinds. Hans Egede, a Danish Norwegian Protestant missionary, arrived in 1721 with a royal mandate to convert Norse settlers who had occupied the island for several hundred years. They were long gone, so he set about converting the native Inuit population instead.
Brisk trade in whale blubber and seal skins eventually made Greenland the most prized possession in the Danish realm. In 1979, Greenland was granted home rule; this was expanded into self-rule 30 years later, allowing the country greater control over its domestic affairs. These days, Greenlanders enjoy a welfare system with universal health care and free education, paid for in part by Denmark. Danes view themselves as 'good colonizers' — at least compared with the brutalities exacted by powers like the U.S., Spain, and Belgium against native communities.
'The self-portrait of the Danes is that all or most of what the Danish state did as a colonial power was with the best intentions,' says Birger Poppel, a Danish economist at the University of Greenland who has lived in the country for 40 years. But in the eyes of many Inuit Greenlanders, the Egede statue is a lightning rod for cultural erasure and other state abuses that have come to light. Danish policies aimed at 'modernization' and assimilation saw forced relocation to larger towns and the suppression of the Inuit language and customs. Families were torn apart, with some children sent to Denmark for schooling. In the 1960s and 1970s, authorities carried out a large-scale involuntary birth-control campaign against Inuit girls and women, inserting devices without their knowledge or consent. (Prime Minister Egede has gone so far as to call this a 'genocide carried out by the Danish state against the Greenland population.') More recently, grievances have been inflamed by accusations that Danish companies and the state extracted billions of dollars in mineral wealth with little benefit to the local economy, further tainting the caretaker narrative at a vulnerable moment for Denmark.
'For the past 300 years, the riches we need to build our country have been delivered to Denmark, and I think it's sad,' says Timmy Zeeb, a 36-year-old former hash smuggler I find butchering a seal on a rocky beach below the Egede statue. Pot-bellied with a chin-strap beard, skull cap, and sleeve tattoos, Zeeb just happened to be walking by when a fisherman pulled up with the extra meat and called him over. He posted a message on Facebook and went to work with a pocket knife, turning the slabs red as locals lined up for their share. Even in Greenland's largest city, communal traditions still hold.
Zeeb carves me a piece of blubber, and I gulp it down. The gelatinous tissue is oily and salt-tinged. 'We are a peaceful people and we have everything here: fish, uranium, rare earths,' he tells me. 'We must make deals with other countries.'
When I tell Zeeb I'm from the U.S., he informs me that Trump shared one of his videos on social media to troll Denmark. In the clip, he wears a MAGA cap and booms: 'Buy us! Buy Greenland! We don't want to be colonized by the Danish government anymore.' Trump took the over-the-top bit and ran with it, proclaiming: 'I am hearing that the people of Greenland are 'MAGA' … Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation. We will protect it, and cherish it, from a very vicious outside World. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!'
Danish media were quick to report that Zeeb is a convicted criminal who once escaped from prison. Zeeb insists he's cleaned up his act since becoming a father, and downplays the viral please-buy-us! plea as lighthearted provocation. But he affirms his fondness for Trump and says he hopes that the U.S. partners with Greenland to tap resource wealth that could 'feed all the lands' and transform his country. 'We don't want to be part of Russia or China,' he says. 'Everyone else is welcome to come and make history.'
President Trump is hardly the first U.S. official to fixate on Greenland. Back in 1868, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, the man who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia, hailed Greenland as a place of almost bottomless natural resources that could empower the U.S. to 'command the commerce of the world.' He tried to buy it and Iceland for $5.5 million — and might have succeeded had the $7.2 million Alaska deal not been ridiculed as a folly. During World War II, Greenland became a de facto American protectorate where bases allowed U.S. forces to thwart Nazi Germany's control of critical air and sea lanes. In 1946, the U.S. offered $100 million in gold for the territory. Denmark declined but joined NATO and signed a treaty that established U.S. 'defense areas' to boost collective security during the Cold War.
'WE ARE A PEACEFUL PEOPLE AND WE HAVE EVERYTHING HERE: FISH, URANIUM, RARE EARTHS.'
Chief among them: the Thule Air Base, a massive installation 950 miles shy of the North Pole that allowed NATO to track Soviet submarines and missile activity over Greenland, the shortest flight path from Europe to North America. In the 1960s, a top-secret U.S. nuclear-weapons program, code-named Project Iceworm, was partially built under the ice sheet east of Thule with a plan to embed 600 nuclear missiles, each aimed at major Soviet cities. (The program was scrapped. In another notorious 1968 incident, a B-52 bomber carrying four thermonuclear bombs crashed near Thule.) At the height of the war, the U.S. had more than 10,000 troops stationed at Thule and 17 military installations across Greenland. In 2023, Thule was renamed the Pituffik Space Base, and it still hosts roughly 150 personnel who maintain a ballistic missile early-warning system.
Today, the Arctic is heating up four times faster than the rest of the world, and a new Great Game is intensifying in the north. As sea ice melts, Russia is ramping up naval patrols and expanding its fleet of 40 icebreakers. Not to be left out, China has focused more on economic inroads, acquiring mines, ports, and airfields as part of a broader 'Polar Silk Road' campaign in the region. Though Greenland is technically covered by U.S. security guarantees through Denmark's NATO membership, the Danes have admitted their defense capabilities are woefully out-of-date: four Thetis-­class patrol boats, a surveillance aircraft, and dogsled patrols to monitor a landmass three and a half times the size of Texas with more than 27,000 miles of coastline. (In the wake of Trump's threats, Denmark has pledged more than $2 billion in military upgrades.)
Kuno Fencker, a Greenlandic member of parliament fighting for independence, believes that the security concerns underlying Trump's threats are legitimate given Greenland's location and political trajectory. If Greenland becomes independent, he points out, Denmark has previously threatened to pull its annual subsidies and defense assistance, creating a security vacuum. 'Who will take over? Who has the national-security interest in regards to the geostrategic position of Greenland? That is the United States.'
Fifty years old with black-framed glasses and an urbane, matter-of-fact manner, Fencker belies the media caricature that pro-U.S. Greenlanders are a fringe collection of useful idiots for the Trump administration. He says he studied law to help Greenland break free of Denmark, and calls Trump's rhetoric 'the best marketing move in our history' for making Denmark and the wider world take its independence goals more seriously. Before we met up for coffee, he'd driven his fiancée, one of two Greenlandic members of Danish parliament, to the airport for a campaign trip, given interviews to a pair of foreign media outlets, and recorded a podcast.
Fencker likens Greenland's relationship with Denmark to a 'forced child marriage' that began in 1953, when Greenland was unilaterally absorbed. In principle, Greenland became constitutionally equal to Denmark; in practice, he says, this was not the case. Although his Danish grandfather had worked as an inspector for the colonial administration, Fencker says that as an adult he initially faced discrimination for his mixed background. Working for a shipping company, he struggled to understand why nearly all of the cargo went to Denmark. He saw that most companies in Greenland are run by Danes. But it was in remote northern villages conducting impact assessments for oil exploration that his social consciousness really awakened. The 'extreme discrimination' made 'my sense of protecting Inuit people become very much alive.'
'WE DON'T WANT TO BE PART OF RUSSIA OR CHINA. EVERYONE ELSE IS WECOME TO COME MAKE HISTORY.'
When Fencker began speaking up on behalf of Inuit rights, he claims, his job prospects dried up. So he plunged into politics, with a mission to develop Greenland's economy so it can stand on its own. 'We're a real people with the right to sovereignty,' he says, 'and we need businesspeople to come here and see the possibilities — instead of thinking we are a piece of ice.' He also wants to enact strict reforms that ensure more of the benefit from fishing, mining, and other potentially lucrative industries stays in Greenland. 'We have to think for ourselves and not just give up our resources all the time.'
In January, Fencker traveled to Trump's inauguration festivities in Washington to advocate for stronger ties with the U.S. The impromptu trip did not go down well with his party, Siumut. On returning, some accused him of being a Trojan horse for Trump's agenda. He switched to Naleraq, a secessionist party that seeks free-association status and a defense agreement with the U.S. 'People are fearmongering by misinterpreting Donald Trump and making him the Big Bad Wolf, even though we have a worse wolf — in the way Denmark is treating Greenland.'
President Trump has cherry-picked such affirmations as proof that Greenlanders 'want to be with us,' which couldn't be further from the truth; a January opinion poll taken after his annexation threats showed that while a large majority want independence, 85 percent of people oppose joining the U.S., with just six percent in favor. And though more than half of respondents said they'd vote 'yes' to an independent state referendum if it were held tomorrow, scarcely anyone thinks the country is ready. 'We have to learn from other former colonies around the world that just because they gained independence, it doesn't mean their whole situation just improved like that,' says Aka Niviâna, a 30-year-old Inuk poet and actor.
On a rare sunny afternoon, we take a walk up to the Egede statue, where a few tourists mill around snapping pictures. The statue has bothered Niviâna ever since she was a teen, and she still drives past it each day on her way to work. If she had her way, the missionary eyesore would be replaced by Arnarulunnguaq, the legendary Inuit woman explorer who traversed the Northwest Passage by sled dog. Her views about Denmark, however, have grown more complicated with age.
Niviâna was eight when she moved to Copenhagen with her parents in search of better opportunities. She lost her language, but says the cosmopolitan exposure was a 'gift' that awakened her to native struggles around the world, from Standing Rock to the Marshall Islands. On returning home at age 22, she rekindled her Inuit identity. She got a traditional chin tattoo, or talloquteq — two parallel lines from chin to lip — later complemented by 'healing dots' that recede from her eyes. She wrote poetry and performed onstage to raise awareness about the gathering impact of climate change on her homeland.
Despite having no film experience, she caught the attention in 2022 of a casting director for True Detective: Night Country and got the part of Agent Navarro's sister, a troubled soul who ends her life by stripping naked and walking out into the ice.
Niviâna's debut is haunting — the kind of virtuoso performance that brims with lived pain and grief.
Not long after she moved back to Greenland in 2020, vandals splashed the Egede statue with red paint and Inuit symbols. Niviâna was by then a prominent voice in the debate about decolonization and faced charges for the vandalism. She denied being involved and was ultimately acquitted, but the police case staggered on for almost two years and drove her to attempt suicide.
'Nuuk is a small place, a village really,' and 'the intensity of the internet debate,' she says, 'and the fear that I can't be safe in my own community anymore became too much.'
The ordeal moved her to be more outspoken about mental health and depression, topics that are becoming less taboo. Greenland has one the highest suicide rates in the world, and it is the leading cause of death among young men. Niviâna says the epidemic stems from a tangle of factors spanning isolation, poverty, alcoholism, and domestic abuse, all compounded by the 'hangover of intergenerational trauma.'
And yet for all the inequalities and racism that persist, Niviâna recognizes the social benefits of living in the Danish realm. 'If you compare [us] to the natives living in the U.S., I think we are in a bit better situation,' she says, citing the free health care and education provided by the Nordic welfare state. At the same time, she acknowledges the groundswell of anger toward Denmark. 'And I feel it, too — I feel enraged. You hear about the billions of dollars taken out of the land, and so much poverty.'
'At the end of the day, I think most people want independence,' she goes on. 'But I think for me, the older I get, the more I hesitate.' The birth of her first child, in 2023, was like a splash of cold water on her separatist politics. 'So we declare independence within the next few years, and we realize 'Fuck, that was a bad idea,' and then we go bankrupt; and we're super poor and even worse [than] right now. I'm not willing to risk anything like that anymore.'
Given Greenland's overdependence on fishing and that more than 40 percent of its people are employed by the state, Niviâna believes it will take a long time before the country has the economic foundation to go it alone. Ahead of the March elections, she was producing videos for Atassut, a small liberal movement that favors continued solidarity with Denmark. Her stance puts her at odds with many Greenlandic friends who want independence. 'The conversation right now is 'either-or,' but I'm trying to hold onto these nuances because it's not that simple,' she says. 'My daughter should not have to pay for my impatience in her life.'
In the subzero hours before dawn, Jørgen Inugsuttoq steers his skiff out of Nuuk's harbor, gliding past one of the Danish navy's aging gray frigates. The city of nearly 20,000 soon disappears behind a promontory, and he leans into the wind scanning the water for fish and stray blocks of ice. The barrel-chested 77-year-old says he's been hunting and fishing year-round since he was a boy and 'would not trade this life for anything.' His labors have enabled him to raise five children, and he's instructed all of them: 'Do not follow my path. It's too difficult!'
'THE CONVERSATION IS 'EITHER-OR,' BUT I'M TRYING TO HOLD ONTO NUANCES BECAUSE IT'S NOT SIMPLE.'
He takes us to a favorite fishing spot in a glassy cove ringed with crags, and deckhand Andreas Olsen pays out a line. At the dock, the state-owned company pays as low as $1.20 per pound of cod. By the time that catch reaches a grocer in Copenhagen, it could sell for more than 10 times that amount or higher.
'Our earnings cover our costs and not much more; we should be making a lot more than we do,' Olsen laments, echoing a frustration shared by many Greenlandic fishermen. At 35, he has yet to start a family.
The bounty of cod, halibut, prawns, and snow crab in Greenland's waters account for more than 90 percent of its national exports. Nearly all of it is sent directly to Denmark. According to Vittus Qujaukitsoq, a former minister of finance who heads an association of fishermen and hunters, the industry could help the country stand on its own feet but remains hamstrung by Danish-imposed quotas and 'ridiculously low' procurement prices that limit tax revenues at home. 'Denmark is gaining between 14 billion and 21 billion Danish krone [$2 billion to $3 billion] for the same fish that we catch on an annual basis,' he explains. He says the Danish state earns handsome tax revenues on the true export value. Based on his organization's analysis, if Greenland received an even cost value for all the commodities being exported, the country would gain around $262 million in annual revenues. 'We could easily fund our independence with fishing revenues.'
Several years ago, while serving as chairman of a shipping company, Fencker tried to broker a deal to sell cod directly to a U.S. processor to reduce supply-chain costs, only to see the company 'ousted' by the Danes. He claims Danish food authorities mandated that all the fish caught in Greenland had to be shipped to Denmark before they could be sold on to the U.S. One of his goals is to enact reforms that keep more of the value added in Greenland. For now, lean livelihoods compel many fishermen to supplement their income with hunting.
With cod running low this time of year, Inugsuttoq and Olsen spool in their lines and unsheathe .22-caliber rifles. A speedboat and gun may be easier to manage than the kayak and harpoon pairing used by their forefathers, but seals remain an elusive quarry. In two hours of prowling the water, the men take more than a dozen shots at passing pods — and miss them all — until a lone seal pops up about 30 yards in front of the boat. 'Got him!' Olsen exclaims, and Inugsuttoq throttles forward so he can follow up with a kill shot.
The men disembark on a barren islet and haul the seal up to be butchered. Although the EU has banned the import of seal products, there is an exemption for Greenlandic hunters using traditional methods. Olsen claims the meat will fetch a mere $3.30 a pound in the local market, the pelt about $65. 'It will sell for much, much more in Europe,' he says with a sigh.
The emerging narrative in Greenland and abroad is that resource extraction could be the best pathway to economic freedom. A 2023 survey showed that 25 of 34 minerals deemed 'critical raw materials' by the European Commission were found in Greenland, including graphite, copper, nickel, lithium, uranium, titanium, and gold, as well as an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of rare earths, said to be worth between $30 billion and $70 billion. Demand for rare earths — used in artificial intelligence and energy-transition technologies from electric-car engines to wind turbines and electronics — already outstrips supply, and it's expected to keep growing. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg have invested in companies that are prospecting in Greenland, along with Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick.
But there's no reason to expect windfall profits anytime soon. For starters, Greenland is a tough place to do business. Infrastructure is minimal, and there are virtually no intercity roads. Ports are few, and freezing ice obstructs maritime access. A lack of manpower and technical training means a lot of labor must be imported. Private ownership of land is forbidden (residents can own their homes, not the land on which they sit), as are new licenses for oil and gas extraction. And while everyone agrees mining will play a pivotal role in the country's future, there's a robust environmental movement backed by strict laws to ensure Mother Nature is protected. In the last election cycle, the governing party campaigned — and won — on a pledge to stop a rare-earth project in southern Greenland that would have dug up radioactive elements.
'Right now, we don't really have a mining sector,' says Naaja Nathanielsen, the minister for mineral resources, noting that of the more than 100 government licenses granted, only one mine is operational. (Just one license is held by an American company, which is exploring rare earths.) 'It takes 16 years to develop a mine, and in that period of time, you just spend a lot of money — you don't really earn a lot of money — so there's a gap there because there are not a lot of investors willing to take such a high risk over such a long period of time.' A ruby mine went bankrupt last year; others remain on hold due to funding shortages.
'IT'S MORE THAN MOUNTAIN AND MINERALS — IT'S WHERE WE RELAX WITH OUR FAMILIES.'
Greenland only gained authority over its underground resources in 2010, after securing self-rule from Denmark. Days before my arrival, a controversial documentary called White Gold of Greenland screened in Nuuk and inflamed an old wound. The filmmakers allege that the exploitation of cryolite, a rare mineral used in aluminum production that was mined on Greenland's west coast from 1854 to 1987, generated Danish companies and the state nearly $58.5 billion before reserves ran out. (Danish Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt has said the figures were exaggerated, and the film was pulled by Denmark's national broadcaster.) Nathanielsen calls it 'another brick in the wall' in the exploitation of Greenland's resources: 'You can debate the numbers, but not the power structure.' She keeps a hunk of cryolite on a wooden stand in her office, a symbol of both betrayal and potential.
'Today it's our hands at the steering wheel,' she asserts. 'Everybody asks the companies, can you provide jobs? Can you make sure that you don't mess everything up environmentally? And if the companies can say 'yes and yes,' then people are very open to their projects. If they can't, they're gonna shut it out — like the instance with [Narsaq and uranium].'
When the bad weather finally breaks, I try to book a flight to Narsaq, the southern hamlet that edges the largest rare-earth field in the country. Flights are backlogged, so I hop on a twin prop to Narsarsuaq, the nearest airport. Beyond the windows, rugged mountains vanish into a foreboding white abyss: the ice sheet, which blankets some 80 percent of the country and is more than two miles deep in places. We land at an old U.S.-military-built airstrip. And I hustle down to the port to catch a boat that bears us through a jaw-dropping fjord, past hardscrabble farms and icebergs that glow like emeralds in the fading light.
Narsaq is a postcard town of some 1,300 people dotted with A-frame houses in primary colors. But the mountains that rise behind it are home to Kvanefjeld (or Kuannersuit in Greenlandic), a deposit that holds a quarter of the world's rare earth minerals, making it a strategic lodestone. Oleeraq Nielsen, the caretaker of the local museum, escorts me through a special wing, past gold and rubies to a dazzling spread of rare earths like terbium and neodymium, essential components in smartphones, wind turbines, and electric cars. China controls some 60 percent of the world's rare earth elements and processes 85 percent of those (and has banned their export on national-security grounds) — a market dominance that has compelled the U.S. and other countries to start diversifying their sources to avoid supply-chain disruptions. 'We're not stupid,' Nielsen says. 'We know these minerals can save our economy.'
The museum, like the new gym and handball team, were sponsored in part by Energy Transition Minerals, a Chinese-backed Australian company that acquired a license in 2007 and has invested more than $150 million developing Kvanefjeld. The company estimates the holding is worth $7.5 billion, and initially drew support from locals in a hard-up economy dependent on fishing, hunting, and livestock. Enthusiasm began to ebb when people learned that uranium and other radioactive substances would be unearthed, risking permanent damage to a pristine environment.
'We are living side by side with nature,' says Mariane Paviasen, a soft-spoken yet stoic former heliport operator who ran for parliament to stop the project. She adds, 'We cannot risk our home being destroyed for the next generation.'
When Greenlanders went to the polls in 2021, Paviasen's Inuit Ataqatigiit party was swept to power as part of a left-wing government that banned uranium mining, effectively locking down Kvanefjeld. Now, Energy Transition Minerals is suing Greenland's government, demanding the right to exploit the deposit or receive compensation of up to $11.5 billion — the value of the holdings, plus interest. Trump's threats have spurred the company's shareholder prices to more than quadruple. An arbitration case is expected to be resolved by the end of the year, and it's unclear whether the new government will allow the project to proceed or not.
Paviasen had just come from Nuuk to do some campaigning. She mourns how the looming project has stymied her town's rebound after years of decline due to the closure of its shrimp factory. 'If you came in the summertime, you'd see a lot of potential for agriculture and tourism. Everybody was working, and we were developing the right way.' These days, hostels around town are boarded up, and more people are decamping for larger cities. 'It makes me so sad that we have lost many years.' The reluctant politician says she longs to return to the quiet life, but with uncertainty over the pending court ruling, and Trump's threats, she doesn't think she'll be able to rest anytime soon. 'It seems like my party is the only one that is saying a direct 'no' to uranium.'
The next morning, Avaaraq Bendtsen, a plucky 26-year-old activist and Paviasen protégé, drives me out to the base of Kvanefjeld. We pass the heliport where she protested a February visit by Energy Transition ­Minerals executives who expressed their hopes that the next government would repeal its uranium ban, an episode that left Bendtsen 'shaking mad.' 'How about us indigenous people?' she asks, ticking off a list of historic cases in Greenland and abroad where foreign companies exploited native resources, then left the land with the damage. 'They've been playing us for years. Do we even matter?'
Beyond the town limits, Kvanefjeld's snow-covered flank sweeps into the clouds, its bounty hidden for the time being. 'It's a lot more than a mountain and just minerals — this is where we pick our berries, this is where we hunt, this is where we relax with our families,' Bendtsen says. 'I'm going to keep fighting for this until I die — no matter who comes to try and take it.'
'I'M GOING TO KEEP FIGHTING FOR THIS UNTIL I DIE — NO MATTER WHO COMES TO TRY AND TAKE IT.'
On the eve of Greenland's March 11 election, President Trump softened his tone, posting on social media: 'The United States strongly supports the people of Greenland's right to determine their own future,' he posted. 'We will continue to KEEP YOU SAFE, as we have since World War II. We are ready to INVEST BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to create new jobs and MAKE YOU RICH — and, if you so choose, we welcome you to be a part of the Greatest Nation anywhere in the World, the United States of America!'
When all the votes were tallied, the pro-business Demokraatit Party came in first. Fencker's party, Naleraq, the rapid-independence party that wants more collaboration with the United States, was a close second, doubling its seat holdings from the prior election. Demokraatit supports market reforms and innovation, opening an opportunity for the Trump administration that didn't exist under the previous, left-wing government, according to Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, a ­professor of political science at the Uni­versity of Copenhagen. 'The fact that a large part of the electorate has supported parties in favor of an independence referendum means positions on the board are much more favorable to President Trump's designs on Greenland.''
Days after the election, however, the top five parties issued a joint statement rejecting Trump's annexation threats as 'unacceptable.' Greenland's new coalition government will have to grapple with critical issues like the pace of independence, the future of stalled mining projects, and how to deal with a capricious U.S. administration. No one expects American warships to appear off-shore anytime soon — though no one can completely rule it out, either.
For now, a kind of soft-power offensive is underway. In January, Donald Trump Jr. landed his father's 'Trump Force One' for a five-hour visit to Nuuk. Accompanied by right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk and other hangers-on, Trump Jr. was all smiles and good cheer, telling a local broadcaster, 'We're here as tourists to see this incredible place.' His team hosted a lunch at the top-floor restaurant of the Hotel Hans Egede, where a group of locals enjoyed a free buffet meal. (One down-and-out attendee wearing a MAGA hat tells me he was invited off the street and gifted $200 cash.) Trump Jr. also posed for a photo in front of the Egede statue.
His guide for the day was Jørgen Boassen, a.k.a. 'Trump's Greenlandic son,' a blunt 50-year-old bricklayer who traveled to the U.S. to campaign for him in Pennsylvania. He picks me up wearing a Thug Life T-shirt featuring the president, and we head to a shopping-mall cafe to meet with his friend Tom Dans, a smooth-talking venture capitalist working his cellphone in a Trump pullover and camo stars-and-stripes hat. The pair had just wrapped a three-week tour as part of Dans' latest project, American Daybreak, a nonprofit that aims to foster closer ties between the U.S. and Greenland. Between media interviews, they traveled south to pay homage to U.S. servicemen whose boat was sunk in February 1943 off the coast by a German sub; and north of the Arctic Circle to promote a dogsled race, co-sponsored by the U.S. Consulate, that Dans likens to 'Greenland's Super Bowl.'
Dans says his interest stretches back to his grandfather, a merchant mariner who sailed to the island during World War II and helped build the Thule base afterward. Dans first dealt with the president in the early 1990s as a cub banker in New York, when Trump was trying to buy the Miss Universe pageant. During his first term, Trump appointed Dans to the Arctic Research Commission and Treasury. 'It was classified, but broadly speaking, the point of departure was: Greenland wants to be independent. How do you help an asset-rich, cash-poor country get there?'
Dans is sober about the difficulties of building up Greenland's mining industry. In the near term, he says, 'there's opportunity for less capital-intensive businesses that could be really profitable,' touting real estate potential and fisheries. 'Tourism is a money spinner, too — if they do it right.' Starting on June 14, twice-weekly direct flights will begin between New York and Nuuk.
'WE ARE NOT STUPID. WE KNOW THAT THESE [RARE EARTH] MINERALS CAN SAVE OUR ECONOMY.'
One of Dans' other lines of work is procuring icebreakers to help strengthen America's hand in the north. When I raise Trump's threats to take over Greenland, he sidesteps: 'I think he's a dealmaker first, and there's a deal to be had.' Dans would like to see the U.S. and Greenland cement a mutually beneficial partnership that 'ensures U.S. security, protection, and economic depth.'
The day before his departure, on Feb. 14, Dans paid a visit to the Katuaq Cultural Center, where a painting by artist Kristian Keto Christiansen is on display. In the painting, a Trump hotel shimmers as troops swarm and a Chinook helicopter hauls away a sling load. In the foreground, Trump, wielding an oar, stares down at a mineral deposit. On his Twitter account (with @realDonaldTrump copied), Dans posted a photo of the artwork, exclaiming: 'Hang it in the Louvre!' Today, the painting's price tag reads 'Not for sale.'
In late March, a U.S. delegation led by J.D. Vance flew to the Pituffik Space Base. His wife, Usha, was initially scheduled to head the group, which included National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, with plans to attend the national dogsled race, until a furor broke out in Greenland and forced a change of plans to avoid ­protesters. Prime Minister Egede blasted the uncoordinated visit as an aggressive 'provocation.'
Vance, the highest-level U.S. official to ever visit Greenland, joked on arriving that 'it's cold as shit here!' before taking aim at Denmark. 'You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,' he said, alleging that 'underinvestment' has left U.S. military forces and Greenlanders exposed to incursions by Russia, China, and other nations taking 'an extraordinary interest' in Arctic passageways and minerals. 'When the president says, 'We've got to have Greenland,' ' Vance commented, 'he's saying, 'This island is not safe.' ' Tempering Trump's annexation talk, Vance pledged respect for Greenland's sovereignty. But the next day, Trump said in an interview: 'There's a good possibility that we could do it without military force.' Then he added, 'This is world peace, this is international security. I don't take anything off the table.'
Nathanielsen remains cool amid all of the chaos. Seated in an office that looks out onto the capital's main commercial strip, she says Greenland has always had an 'open door' to the U.S. military and potential investors, adding that she suspects the president's fixation on her homeland may ultimately be about something else. 'I lean towards the idea of expansionism: More than just money and security, [Trump's focus] is about positioning America in a new way in the world' through grand territorial claims. Recent threats to annex Canada and take back the Panama Canal, along with his penchant for renaming mountains and bodies of water, seem to affirm her notion. 'In this country, we have a saying that men of a certain age get into the building of statues, to leave a legacy behind.'
The minister smiles, then makes a sincere appeal. 'Come and do business, but please respect we're a democracy. We have pride, you know. We're Greenlanders, and this is our land.'
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