Latest news with #Greenlandic
The Hill
6 days ago
- The Hill
Sled dogs and rare earths: Our journey through Greenland's growing pains
ILULISSAT, GREENLAND — Just after midday, we gripped the worn rope handles of a dogsled as 11 dogs surged across the frozen tundra of Western Greenland, inside the Arctic Circle. The wind lashed our faces, while the musher's sharp cries — quick bursts of 'Yip! Yip!' and a trilled 'Drrrrr!' — rose above the steady crunch of paws on snow. Our musher, Mamarut Nielsen, moved with grace, leaping off the sled to guide it over bare patches and exposed rock, then slipping back on without breaking stride. He snapped his whip gently for direction, but the dogs hardly needed it. They knew the way. After two hours, we stopped for a mountain view overlooking a field of icebergs. As the dogs rested, Mamarut handed us hot chocolate and described each dog — this one was the alpha, that one was rising in rank. The dogs, all male, swarmed us affectionately. Mamarut spoke with pride. His father and grandfather had hunted seals, narwhals, even polar bears. But at age 14, Mamarut told his father he wanted a different life. Today, Mamarut works for Diskobay Tours in Ilulissat, offering tourists (and visiting journalists) a glimpse of an Inuit tradition that's increasingly difficult to maintain. He speaks Greenlandic and fluent English — learned not from school nor from Danish instruction, but from video games and podcasts. He now translates for visiting film crews and tourists. This is no longer about survival. It's about preserving a culture, handed down but steadily fading. Our excursion connected us to the ancient traditions of Greenland. We landed in Greenland as President Trump's audacious suggestion to buy or annex the island was still reverberating across the Arctic. In May, U.S. officials reportedly began exploring a Compact of Free Association with Greenland — an agreement that could give Washington greater strategic access in exchange for services like defense and visa-free travel, similar to U.S. arrangements with certain Pacific Island nations. And in June, Trump ordered U.S. forces in Greenland to be transferred from the U.S. European Command to the U.S. Northern Command. The move tightens America's grip on Arctic defense at a time of escalating global conflict. But beneath the geopolitics lies a more complex story of a society at a crossroads, balancing centuries-old traditions with the pressures of modern life. The tension between self-rule and colonial legacy, environmental preservation and resource extraction, is reshaping not only Greenland's economy and environment but also its sense of identity. In Nuuk, Greenland's capital, modernity rises beside the remnants of a colonial past. Austere concrete apartment blocks from the mid-20th century stand beside new housing built for members of the Inatsisartut, Greenland's parliament. There's a sleek new international airport and a modern university specializing in Arctic research. Even the cemeteries are labeled 'old' and 'new.' Greenland's economy has long relied on fishing, propped up by an annual block grant of about $600 million from Denmark, Greenland's former colonial ruler. Although Greenland governs its own domestic affairs, Denmark retains control over its courts, foreign policy and defense. Polls indicate that 84 percent of Greenlanders support independence from Denmark. And parties favoring independence made gains in Greenland's national elections in March. Because Greenland's path to independence runs through economic self-sufficiency, many Greenlanders would welcome increased trade, including closer ties with the U.S. A new economy is emerging, driven by tourism and mineral wealth, but shadowed by fears of cultural loss and environmental cost. Greenland's challenge is to bridge the old and the new — to preserve traditional livelihoods not as relics, but as living parts of a modern, sovereign economy. Sofie Amondsen at Kittat, a museum of Greenlandic clothing in Nuuk (Bethany Williams) In Nuuk, a young woman named Sofie showed us some of the traditional Inuit sealskin clothing she sews and teaches others to make. She sometimes hunts and skins the seals herself. After studying further north, she began working at Kittat, a museum in Nuuk that showcases traditional Greenlandic clothes. As it has for Mamarut, language fluency has expanded Sofie's options. 'For me, because I can speak Danish and a bit English, I've been invited to Nunavut, Alaska and Norway to do sewing workshops,' she told us. For Sofie's mother's generation, wearing traditional sealskin clothing was a sign of poverty. But that stigma is fading. Young people are becoming more curious about the traditional clothes designed for the Arctic climate. With outside interest in Inuit traditions on the rise, Sofie believes the government may finally feel pressure to invest in cultural preservation. 'I'm so excited about this airport,' she said, hoping it will draw more travelers eager to learn about Greenlandic customs and help ensure those traditions endure. We heard the same cautious optimism from Nuuna Papis Chemnitz, who runs Vlaajuk Pottery-Ceramics in Nuuk. Her elegant pottery incorporates salt collected from along Greenland's rugged coastline. The wood building that houses her workshop is nearly 100 years old, built by her husband's grandfather in an era when no outsiders came to Greenland. (Before 1950, Denmark's trade monopoly barred foreign visitors.) Nuuna started pottery as a hobby while working for Greenland Air. As demand grew, she quit the airline job. The morning we visited, a line of customers had greeted her outside the shop. She too credited the airport, and the attention sparked by Trump's comments, with boosting business. Most visitors still arrive from Denmark, but that's changing. In June, United Airlines launched a direct route from Newark — just four hours away. With only 56,000 people spread across a landmass the size of Western Europe, Greenland is the world's largest and emptiest island. To grow its economy, Greenland needs more people — not just tourists but also immigrants. In Ilulissat, famous for its massive icebergs, Rosé Busaco Andersen runs Ilulissat Services, an international staffing agency. Originally from the Philippines, she had never heard of Greenland when first offered a job there. Twelve years later, she is still here, recruiting workers from across the globe to staff local businesses, including at her own restaurants and rentals. Some are helping to build the new international airport in Ilulissat, set to open next April. She now travels abroad to recruit employees, interviewing candidates as far away as Argentina. Most who come, stay — especially Filipinos, Greenland's second-largest immigrant group after Danes. 'Twelve years ago, we were maybe 11 or 12 Filipinos here,' she said. 'Now in Nuuk, I think we are 1,800.' Rosé drove us to the new airport under construction outside Ilulissat where Rasmus, the foreman, explained how critical foreign workers, many recruited by Rosé, who have come to help with the airport's construction. 'I'm a foreign worker too,' he smiled, making air quotes around 'foreign.' 'I'm from Denmark,' he added. 'Our relationship, it's complicated.' Indeed, many Danes still hold top government and business posts in Greenland — a lingering reminder of colonial hierarchy. Some Greenlanders feel Denmark pushed them to modernize too quickly, disrupting traditional life and leaving deep scars. Greenland now has the world's highest suicide rate, especially among youth, which experts link to cultural dislocation. Climate change is another concern. Everyone in Greenland seems to have a story — of warmer winters, of thinning ice, of hunting routes that are no longer safe. The Arctic is reportedly warming almost four times faster than the global average. 'If you want to experience climate change, come here in Ilulissat,' Rosé said. 'You will see. The ice is melting. I never believed climate change before I came in Greenland and witnessed it with my two own eyes. It is real.' On our second day in Ilulissat we encountered a fisherman and hunter named Karl loading his sled and pack of dogs onto his boat for a seal hunt. Later over text message, we asked him whether he had seen any indications of climate change. 'Yes extreme yes,' he responded. He shared that, after 30 years of fishing, what he is seeing now in the melting ice is new. 'We should still [be] out and hunting in [safe] sea ice and a lot of snow, but not today. Too early that ice and snow [is] melting.' Olennguaq Kristensen, a polar bear hunter from the far north of Greenland, with his daughter in Ilulussat. (Bethany Williams) Mamarut's father, Ole Kristensen, echoed the concern. Sea ice arrives later and breaks up earlier, he told us, disrupting rhythms passed down through generations. The worst year was 2023, when his settlement nearly ran out of food. Ole is featured in 'The Color of the Ice,' a documentary film that follows his life as a hunter navigating the shrinking sea ice around Qaanaaq, one of the northernmost towns on Earth. When we met, Ole had just returned from a screening in Taiwan — his first trip abroad — and said some audience members wept as they watched his story. As Greenland's ice retreats, long-inaccessible parts of the island are opening up, exposing new shipping lanes and untapped reserves of oil, gas, and critical minerals. Climate change has turned this once-frozen frontier into a geopolitical prize, drawing interest not just from the U.S. but also from China and other global powers eager to stake claims in the resource-rich Arctic. For Greenland, the melting presents both opportunity and risk — a chance to bolster economic independence, but also a test of how much it's willing to trade for prosperity. When Mamarut told Ole he wanted to go to university instead of becoming a hunter, Ole didn't object. 'It's okay,' he remembered thinking. The sea ice was disappearing. Climate change was already reshaping their lives. Ole's family's path mirrors the broader trajectory of Greenland—a society navigating the dual pressures of political self-determination and climate upheaval. As calls for independence grow louder and warming temperatures upend traditional life, it may be that Greenland keeps its heritage alive precisely by opening itself up to the world.
Sydney Morning Herald
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
It was a groundbreaking crime book – and this TV adaptation is even stranger
Smilla's Sense of Snow ★★★ It's hard to overstate the impact Danish novelist Peter Hoeg had in 1992 with his literary thriller Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow. A crime mystery about an alienated Copenhagen woman who's convinced her neighbour, a young Greenlandic boy, died under suspicious circumstances, it spent months on the bestseller lists and was Time 's Book of the Year. Hoeg unfolded a fantastical conspiracy and a sly reckoning with his homeland's colonial past. It was a groundbreaking book, attuned to today's social and political currents. Hollywood put out a diligent, tidied-up movie adaptation in 1997, with Danish filmmaker Pelle August directing Julia Ormond in the title role, but Hoeg's prose, fluid and evocative, allows for no shortage of interpretations. Hence, this European co-production, a six-part existential thriller that takes more than enough liberties with the source material to sit distinctly aside from the feature film and, sometimes, even the book. A smidgeon of science-fiction, a mass of the metaphysical, Smilla's Sense of Snow is a curious reinvention. The setting remains Copenhagen, but it's now 2040 and the Danish capital is suffering through an energy crisis and constant surveillance; residents get a monthly allotment of power, but it's barely enough unless you can pay for more. The how and why is unclear, but the political chaos is obvious: nationalism and political violence is boiling over amidst an election. For Smilla Jaspersen (Filippa Coster-Waldau), it's a matter of little consequence – the former climate activist lives alone, aligning with her late mother's Inuit heritage over her privileged father's Danish outlook. She uses 'Europeans' as a pejorative phrase. Created by the British filmmaker Amma Asante (Belle) and the British writer Clive Bradley (Trapped), the show is focused on examining truths rather than teasing them out. Smilla's bond with Isaiah (Silver Wolfe), who has come to Copenhagen with his bereft Greenlandic mother after his father's death, is sketched out quickly, in the shadow of the solemn little boy's death after he falls from a rooftop. Smilla, who also grew up in Greenland, can tell from the footprints on the apartment building's roof that something was awry. The swift declaration of an accidental death by the authorities makes her start digging. The narrative is quick to show us that something is amiss, and that the stakes involved have compromised many. Smilla and Isaiah's neighbour, Tunisian political refugee Rahid Youseffi (Elyas M'Barek), quickly goes from helping the boy to spying on Smilla as she starts to reveal information. The schemes that connect Isaiah's past in Greenland to the energy crisis and the election are desperate and often crude. 'We only have 30 good years left,' one plotter, tech mogul Caspen Tork (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), tells the government minister he soon ensnares, Katja Claussen (Amanda Collin). What comes to the fore is Smilla's anguish. Investigating Isaiah's death reawakens her memories of Greenland, tapping into a mystical state that folds together historic visions and contemporary dream states. As with the last season of True Detective, Smilla's Sense of Snow looks at crime through the lens of Indigenous communities and their connection to the land that was long ago taken from them.
The Age
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
It was a groundbreaking crime book – and this TV adaptation is even stranger
Smilla's Sense of Snow ★★★ It's hard to overstate the impact Danish novelist Peter Hoeg had in 1992 with his literary thriller Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow. A crime mystery about an alienated Copenhagen woman who's convinced her neighbour, a young Greenlandic boy, died under suspicious circumstances, it spent months on the bestseller lists and was Time 's Book of the Year. Hoeg unfolded a fantastical conspiracy and a sly reckoning with his homeland's colonial past. It was a groundbreaking book, attuned to today's social and political currents. Hollywood put out a diligent, tidied-up movie adaptation in 1997, with Danish filmmaker Pelle August directing Julia Ormond in the title role, but Hoeg's prose, fluid and evocative, allows for no shortage of interpretations. Hence, this European co-production, a six-part existential thriller that takes more than enough liberties with the source material to sit distinctly aside from the feature film and, sometimes, even the book. A smidgeon of science-fiction, a mass of the metaphysical, Smilla's Sense of Snow is a curious reinvention. The setting remains Copenhagen, but it's now 2040 and the Danish capital is suffering through an energy crisis and constant surveillance; residents get a monthly allotment of power, but it's barely enough unless you can pay for more. The how and why is unclear, but the political chaos is obvious: nationalism and political violence is boiling over amidst an election. For Smilla Jaspersen (Filippa Coster-Waldau), it's a matter of little consequence – the former climate activist lives alone, aligning with her late mother's Inuit heritage over her privileged father's Danish outlook. She uses 'Europeans' as a pejorative phrase. Created by the British filmmaker Amma Asante (Belle) and the British writer Clive Bradley (Trapped), the show is focused on examining truths rather than teasing them out. Smilla's bond with Isaiah (Silver Wolfe), who has come to Copenhagen with his bereft Greenlandic mother after his father's death, is sketched out quickly, in the shadow of the solemn little boy's death after he falls from a rooftop. Smilla, who also grew up in Greenland, can tell from the footprints on the apartment building's roof that something was awry. The swift declaration of an accidental death by the authorities makes her start digging. The narrative is quick to show us that something is amiss, and that the stakes involved have compromised many. Smilla and Isaiah's neighbour, Tunisian political refugee Rahid Youseffi (Elyas M'Barek), quickly goes from helping the boy to spying on Smilla as she starts to reveal information. The schemes that connect Isaiah's past in Greenland to the energy crisis and the election are desperate and often crude. 'We only have 30 good years left,' one plotter, tech mogul Caspen Tork (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), tells the government minister he soon ensnares, Katja Claussen (Amanda Collin). What comes to the fore is Smilla's anguish. Investigating Isaiah's death reawakens her memories of Greenland, tapping into a mystical state that folds together historic visions and contemporary dream states. As with the last season of True Detective, Smilla's Sense of Snow looks at crime through the lens of Indigenous communities and their connection to the land that was long ago taken from them.
West Australian
23-07-2025
- West Australian
Greenland's culture of the kayak
Hanging against the timber rafters of an old shop in a remote fjord in Greenland is the delicate prow of a sea kayak. It is a familiar shape — it could be the one hanging on my own kayak rack. But the frame of this kayak is wood, where others might have been whalebone, and it is covered with seal skins, sewn together so that the stitches don't fully pierce the hide. This is an original, authentic Greenland kayak; in Greenlandic, qajaq. This is the home of this style of kayak, and this room in the remote community of Upernavik is a place I have longed to see. I have been paddling an equivalent sea kayak since my first, a Nordkapp, bought soon after it was designed for the British Norway expedition in 1975 and a rounding of Cape Horn by kayak in 1977. I still paddle my much-used and ancient Nordkapp, alongside my new sea kayaks, as it feels authentic. Indeed, there is a Nordkapp in the National Maritime Museum in the UK. In my Nordkapp, I feel at one with the water. It feels almost Inuit. 'Inuit are the true masters of sea kayaking,' says Adventure Canada expedition team member and Arctic filmmaker Julia Szucs, a keen kayaker. On Adventure Canada's Out of the Northwest Passage expedition on the Ocean Endeavour, she offers guests an insightful presentation on kayaks and their history — and there is no better place to do it. For, perhaps as far back as 4000 years ago, men hunted sea animals from such a slender single-seat boat. If it flipped over, it was easily righted, which was vital in these cold waters. 'Traditionally kayaks were used for short distances and for hunting,' Julia says. Like the Dorset and Thule people who were the ancestors of Inuit, kayaks migrated from Siberia, through Alaska. In the Aleutian Islands, they were deep and beamy for rough seas. In the Canadian Arctic, kayaks developed with a long, upturned prow. Here in Greenland, their lower profile reflected these calmer waters. 'They hunted among the ice — their kayaks had to be easy to roll,' says Julia. The bigger, open umiak, which might be from 5.1m to 18.2m long, was used to transport goods and as a family boat. They are thought to have reached Greenland around 1200AD. The climate was warmer and there was less ice. For both umiaks and kayaks, men made the frames, women prepared the skins, and they worked together to cover the boats. They needed constant oiling, as saltwater dries out hide. A good relationship with the boat was important. You took care of it; it took care of you. The decks were full of gear. Harpoons were attached to an inflated seal skin, which floated behind a speared animal and prevented them diving, tiring them; a round frame to spool the line; a kayak knife. Hunters mounted a white rectangular screen on the foredeck to disguise themselves and used a throwing board to propel harpoons, like an Aboriginal woomera. Great skills were needed to hunt — I try to imagine hunting a walrus from kayaks. Paddlers wore a tuilik — a soft sealskin anorak which tied around the hoop that formed the cockpit coaming, sealing the paddler in the boat. Paddles were thin and short. Inuit kayak builders had specific plans for their kayaks, and each kayak was built specifically for a paddler. The cockpit was as wide as the paddler's hips, plus two fists. Its length was three times that of his outstretched arms. It was as deep as his fist with its thumb outstretched. And this ended up, on average 5.18m long and 50cm wide. There were different styles — the rounded lines and many chines of the baidarkas of Alaska, the more angular shape and rising bow and stern of the west Greenland kayaks and the east Greenland kayaks, which were lower volume and a tighter fit. They were for hunting — mainly seals, and of those, mostly ringed seals, a staple food of the Inuit, but also for narwhals, walrus and even belugas and polar bears. There is an effort to reconnect young Inuit in Nunavut, in the Canadian Arctic, to their kayaking roots through the 'Q is for Qajaq' program. 'Q is for Qajaq' was the idea of Eric McNair-Landry, a young adventurer who took part in a 1000km Baffin Island expedition using traditional kayaks built with students in Nunavut. 'Q is for Qajaq' is a collaboration between the Canadian Canoe Museum and the Students on Ice Foundation, which takes youngsters on educational expeditions. Eric led the building of three more traditional Baffin design kayaks at the museum, which were paddled by youngsters during the Students on Ice Arctic expedition last year. And it was another young adventurer who took sea kayaks to the wider world. There had been a long connection between the traditional craft of Greenland and early sea kayakers in Scotland. Then in 1959, a student at the University of Glasgow called Kenneth Taylor undertook a solo expedition to the Uummannaq Fjord area of West Greenland to study kayaks, kayaking techniques and to learn about seal hunting by kayak. There, kayak builder Emanuele Kornielsen made him a sealskin kayak. Kenneth took it home, showed it and the techniques he had learned, and soon a plywood version was being made. That Anas Acuta kayak opened the way for the Nordkapp. In the Oceanographic Museum and Aquarium in Monaco last year, I saw a Greenland kayak with a small sail mounted on the front. History continues to be written. The migration of the kayak from Siberia to the Aleutian Islands, Nunavut in Arctic Canada and Greenland has continued east to Scotland, Norway and beyond. Further south-east along the Greenland coast, in Ilulissat, I will see traditional wooden kayak frames, tied at the joints and covered with modern fabrics. One paddler shows me the frame in his boat — his grandfather's, covered now not in seal skin, but in 'painted linen'. There is a big rack of unlocked boats on the foreshore, overlooking a bay full of the icebergs that spew from the Ilulissat Icefjord. They vary from glass fibre to canvas-skinned, chined boats very like the Anas Acuta, to kayaks almost identical to the Nordkapp. But they still have round hoop coamings. In the Inuit Cafe there, a new frame hangs from the timber ceiling. In the Ilulissat museum I see old carved toys — tiny wooden kayaks and one with the simple shape of a person inside. Further still down the coast, in Sisimiut, there's a healthy kayak club on the banks of its fjord, and one of its Inuit paddlers demonstrates some of the 90 kayak rolls that were developed to right boats quickly, under any circumstance, in these dangerously cold waters. Kayaks are both alive today and embedded in Greenlandic history and culture. After nearly 40 years of sea kayaking, it feels quite surreal to be in this upstairs room of kayaks at Upernavik Museum. There are three hanging over rafters, two at the end of the room, a tuilik, paddles and the hunting tools they used. Along one side, on a stand, fully kitted out, is a kayak complete with all its accessories used by a hunter called Pavia Grim, from Aappilattoq, until the mid 1960s. And above me, the delicate prow of a sea kayak that could be my own.
The Herald Scotland
20-07-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
An evening with Trump's unofficial Greenland envoy
Several hours and rounds later - not the boxing kind - Boassen showed up at Nuuk's largest hotel, where he shook a couple of hands, listened to a lounge singer run through some jazz standards, and shook off a few hostile stares. Former bricklayer. Political influencer. Would-be mining consultant. Man on a mission to help tap Greenland's untapped resources and economic potential. Traitor, some say - especially the guy who slugged him in the face in a Nuuk dive bar in late April. Boassen, 51, says he is versions of all these things. Most of them are a consequence of his championing of President Donald Trump in a place where rare support for an American president who has vowed to take over Greenland "one way or the other" tends to end in eyes rolled, or in Boassen's case, blackened. Boassen is Greenland's de facto MAGA representative. "This is about a fight for the Greenlandic people," Boassen said one evening in June as he sat on a sofa in his cozy home in Greenland's capital. "It's not because I hate Denmark. It's about the Danish power in Greenland." Boassen's mostly stopped wearing them now because of the Trump backlash in Greenland, but he still occasionally dons a MAGA cap and T-shirts with American flags with things like "American badass" emblazoned on them. He's been a fan of Trump since 2019, when the U.S. president first started talking about acquiring Greenland. Trump says the United States needs to "get Greenland" for national security reasons. It's in a strategic location in the Arctic. Due to melting ice, new shipping Arctic routes and military activity are increasing. It is also rich in commodities like oil and gold and rare earth minerals essential for manufacturing smartphones and other advanced technologies. Boassen is part of a very small but vocal minority of Greenlanders who appreciate Trump's interest, polls show. But his support for Trump hasn't always been carefree. Boassen's been teased and mocked and even faced death threats on social media. He professes to have an almost spiritual connection to Trump. He doesn't agree with every word he says. Boassen wants Greenland to be an independent country, but wants it to to have a close security and economic alliance with the United States. A Greenlandic son who's into Trump Born in Qaqortoq, a town in southern Greenland, Boassen was raised by a single mother. Money was tight. Their home was modest. Heat was in short supply. That world is a far cry from the one he now seeks to inhabit as an Arctic political player with the ear of some in Trump's inner circle. "Trump is the one who can save us, though it's hard to support him when we don't know his plan," he said. 'One way or the other': Five ways Trump's Greenland saga could play out Boassen isn't a social media influencer. But he owes some of his nascent influence to social media. He was discovered on Facebook by Thomas Dans, an American advisor to the under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs during Trump's first term. Dans was also a member of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. Now he promotes closer U.S.-Greenland ties. "I learned of Jorgen from friends in the Greenlandic community," said Dans. "He was being called 'Trump's Greenlandic Son.' I said, 'I need to meet this guy.'" Usha Vance's Greenland adventure: Why it got derailed by a dogsled race across ice and snow Dans eventually tapped Boassen to serve as Greenland director for American Daybreak, a nonprofit organization he founded that works to educate and advance Trump's America First foreign policy, particularly in the Arctic. It was American Daybreak that, in March, sought to arrange a visit to Greenland by Usha Vance, wife of U.S. Vice President JD Vance, for Greenland's national sled dog race. But after reports of planned protests by Greenlandic activists, the visit was revised to a brief stop by the Vances at a remote U.S. military outpost on the island. A Greenlandic pugilist Boassen has an imposing build. He's a boxing enthusiast and used to box and train boxers. He wears his hair swept sharply to one side. Like more than 90% of 57,000 Greenlanders, he identifies as Inuit, the indigenous people who inhabit the Arctic region. But Boassen's father is from Denmark, which he said accounts for his light skin tone and blue eyes. Greenland was colonized by Denmark beginning in the 18th century. That era ended in 1953, when Greenland became a self-governing territory. Boassen is also a fast talker who courts publicity. 'Buy us!': Greenlanders shocked, intrigued, bewildered by Trump zeal for Arctic territory He has not shied away from the relative fame that his association with the Trump cause has brought him Greenland. Most days he fields requests from journalists from around the world who want to see or talk to the guy they see as Trump's unofficial local "Greenland envoy." More than a few journalists have been to his house. "He's a natural leader with a deep love for Greenland and its people, coupled with a bold and gregarious personality and expert communication skills," Dans said of Boassen. "He's also a true fighter, both as a former boxer as well as a modern Inuit man, formed in his people's great Arctic traditions." 'We are different from Denmark' Over the course of an evening spent with a USA TODAY reporter this summer, Boassen's phone constantly pinged. He called Dans and put him on speakerphone. He video-called a friend in Greenland's high North, not far from the Pituffik Space Base the Vances visited, because he wanted to prove there were Greenlandic fellow-travelers when it came to support for Trump. Boassen is considering whether he wants to grant a Danish filmmaker access to his life story for a documentary. 'Crazy beautiful place with dark side': Greenland, but not as you know it Boassen's wife did not want to participate in the interview but she occasionally sighed deeply as her husband spoke and gave him a knowing side-eye. She sometimes tried to shush him from the other end of the sofa if his comments wandered too closely into their personal lives. "We are different from Denmark even if the Danes have been here for 300 years," said Boassen, as he held forth on all the ways he believes that Greenland's Inuit population has suffered under Danish rule: sterilization scandals from colonial times, poor job prospects, elevated rates of suicide and alcoholism. Boassen insisted on sharing a selection of his "greatest hits," preserved in YouTube video clips saved on his TV. There he was at the arrivals door at the airport in Nuuk when Donald Trump Jr. visited Greenland in January, a trip he helped coordinate. It came about after Boassen spent a few weeks canvassing for the former president on the streets of Pittsburgh during the November 2024 U.S. presidential election. Boassen went to an election night party in Palm Beach, Florida, near Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. He attended Trump's inauguration, along with Kuno Fenker, an opposition lawmaker who is a member of Greenland's nationalist Naleraq party. It too wants closer relations with the United States, though it seeks independence for Greenland. On his cellphone, Boassen had photos of himself with the American musician Kid Rock, MMA fighter Conor McGregor, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, political commentator Ben Shapiro and other MAGA-affiliated personalities. Greenland not for sale: It is welcoming Americans with direct flights "He has a very good feeling for how ordinary people in Greenland are feeling about the issues that impact their lives day-to-day," said Fenker, the lawmaker, who is a close friend of Boassen's. In his home, while sipping a gin and tonic, then a beer, then coffee, Boassen said of himself, "I'm the Che Guevara of Greenland." It was a reference to the Argentine doctor and revolutionary who fought for social change in Latin America before he was killed in a Bolivian jungle with the help of the CIA. That characterization, of course, is a stretch and was made partly in jest, which Boassen admitted, but it still speaks to how serious he takes his dream of one day seeing an independent Greenland. MAGA in Romania A few weeks earlier, Boassen had been in Romania with Dans. Boassen said they were invited to observe Romania's election by George Simion, a far-right candidate in that country's presidential election. Simion, Boassen said, was a big believer in Trump's MAGA ideology. (Simion lost the vote, and later alleged it was due to foreign interference.) When Boassen's wife spied an opportunity, she grabbed the TV remote and switched channels to a rerun of a music festival where some of her favorite bands, such as Green Day, the American punk rockers, and Radiohead, a British alternative rock band, were playing. She came along to the boxing match, too. Reluctantly. On the walk to the sports hall from their house, Boassen said he was trying to form more partnerships with Greenlandic officials to be useful to Trump's White House, but it's been difficult lately to get the attention of the U.S. administration because it is preoccupied with other crises in Ukraine, Iran and the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. He said he's convinced his phone is being tapped by the Danish authorities. He admitted that he is not making a living from his work with American Daybreak. He that said people often ask him if he's concerned that maybe Trump is just "using him" in a way that isn't in Greenland's best interests, in ways he doesn't appreciate. "I don't know," was Boassen's answer to that question. "But I'd rather have Trump as the U.S. president right now than Kamala Harris," he said. "And anyway, bricklaying wasn't making me much money. It's too honest. No one will hire me because I support Trump." Kim Hjelmgaard is an international correspondent for USA TODAY. Follow him on Bluesky, Instagram and LinkedIn.
