Nuuk, GreenlandCNN —
The comings and goings at Greenland’s new international airport in its capital Nuuk look a bit different of late, as journalists like me come here to see what all the fuss is about.
The fuss, of course, is the result of US Donald Trump’s interest in taking control of the massive island that is geographically part of North America but legally is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a member of NATO, the European Union, and a US ally.
I wanted to drill down on what’s here, what makes it attractive and whether the local population is welcoming or hesitant about being in Trump’s sights.
“Greenland is the front door for North America,” said Tom Dans, leaning into the arguments of Greenland’s importance to US national security.
I’d wanted to speak to Dans, a private equity investor with prospective interests in the Arctic who campaigned for Trump, but I hadn’t expected to see him at the airport.
To be fair, Dans wasn’t hard to spot. He’s a tall Texan with one of those wide shiny smiles wealthy Americans tend to have. He was also wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with the American flag.
He didn’t have more time to chat then, so I stepped outside, into the 14 Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius) cold that was, I would learn, balmy compared to what was to come later in the week.
My CNN colleague Neil Bennett and I trudged through the snow to the back of a long line for taxis.
“You are here because Trump,” remarked a woman waiting in front of us. Not yet accustomed to the Nordic tone, I couldn’t quite tell if this was meant as a simple statement or an accusation. “We are,” I dutifully confirmed.
“They want more tourists to come here, they need to get more taxis,” she said. We needn’t worry too much though, she explained, we wouldn’t be waiting in the cold for too long. Despite the apparent shortage of taxis, they can’t go very far and return quickly. The trip to the center of Nuuk from the airport is about 4 miles — and then the roads just stop. There is nowhere else to go, at least by car. Greenland — three times the size of Texas — has only about 56 miles of paved roads.
She introduced herself as Lisbeth Højdal, a consultant from Denmark who was here to run a course training career counselors.
The Danish government provides Greenland a grant of about $500 million every year to support health, education and other services here. Højdal’s course was part of that package of support.
So, before I’d even had a chance to look around, I’d heard the views of outsiders — one American, one Dane.
But Greenlanders have many different views.
“We have always been told that Denmark is the big savior of Greenland,” Qupanuk Olsen recalls. The Danes, she says, look down on her and fellow native Greenlandic people who are Inuit: “You guys cannot stand on your own feet; you guys don’t have anything without us. You can’t study, you don’t have health care, you have nothing without us.”
Olsen is known as “Greenland’s biggest influencer” with more than a million subscribers combined across Youtube, TikTok and Instagram where she shows the world the best of Greenlandic, and specifically Inuit, culture.
For an introduction to that culture, she brings me to see the “Mother of the Sea” — a striking stone sculpture on Nuuk’s rocky coast, depicting Sedna, the goddess of the sea in the Inuit religion. At high tide the statue is partially submerged.
Inuits (sometimes incorrectly referred to as “Eskimos”) make up almost 90% of Greenland’s population of 57,000.
We walk a few steps away from the shoreline and the “Mother of the Sea,” and Olsen points to the top of a hill and another figure, “I really want this statue gone.”
The statue, which looks over all of Nuuk, is of Hans Egede, an 18th-century Dano-Norwegian missionary who brought Christianity to the island.
“Why should he be up there? Why isn’t it a Greenlander up there?” Olsen asks. “We Greenlanders should be more proud of who we are … not celebrate some foreigner who came here and changed our culture and colonized us.”
Danish control of Greenland dates to the time of Egede. Greenland was granted home-rule in 1979 and, after a referendum in 2008, the island was allowed more self-governing powers including the ability to hold a referendum on independence (though independence would also require approval from the Danish parliament.)
But despite the increased autonomy, for Olsen the statue of Egede is a daily reminder of Danish colonization — something she purposefully talks about in the present tense.
“I used to be a royalist. I used to look up to the Danish people and thought they were better than me. Now, I’ve really realized that’s not the case,” she says.
In the 1960s and 70s, doctors placed IUD contraceptives in young Inuit girls without their or their parents’ consent as a means of population control. An investigation by Danish and Greenlandic officials into what has become known as “the spiral case” is expected to finish this year.
“I should have a lot more cousins,” Olsen says.
Another practice known as “legally fatherless” allowed Danish men who impregnated unmarried women in Greenland to skirt any responsibilities for their child. Olsen says her mother was one of the “legally fatherless” children born here.
In recent weeks, Denmark has announced a boost in Arctic defense spending and the Danish king revealed a new design for the royal coast of arms, making far more prominent the symbols for Greenland and the Faroe Islands (also part of the Kingdom of Denmark.)
But it’s too little, too late, says Olsen, who supports independence for Greenland and is standing in upcoming elections.
She acknowledges an independent Greenland would need to sign new agreements with other countries for defense of its 27,000 miles of coastline, and other arrangements when it comes to trade and financial support, but for her that’s no reason to jump from Danish control to American.
“Why should I? I’m so proud of who we are as Inuit,” she says. “Why should we just be taken by another colonizer?”
The US already has strong connections with and interest in Greenland.
But even Boassen does not want Greenland to be taken over by the US.
He doesn’t want to be subsumed as the 51st state, he says, but wants the US to be Greenland’s “best and closest ally with everything — with defense, mining, oil exploration, trade, everything.”
Not all Greenlanders want to break free from Denmark.
“We might be ready someday, but not today, not tomorrow,” says Aqqalu C. Jerimiassen, the leader of Atassut, a party in favor of staying within the Danish kingdom.
He acknowledged the wrongs committed against native Greenlanders and said the Danes must accept responsibility.
“Every colonizer has made mistakes,” he said. “But we cannot live in the past.”
Atassut, which describes itself as a “moderate conservative” party, supports universal health care, free education, and other forms of welfare that are basic concepts across much of Europe, and which Denmark provides for Greenland.
He says while some here “very much would like to be US citizens and would like to follow the American dream,” most would not be in favor of joining the United States and losing universal access to these services.
Greenland is holding elections next month that may reveal more about its population’s views about future relationships with the world. And the parliament just fast-tracked a law banning foreign political funding.
That’s fine by Højdal — the Danish guidance counselor I met at the airport — who said Greenland’s future is for Greenland, not anyone else, to decide.
As she watches the news coming from the United States of the hectic first weeks of the second Trump administration, she says a Turkish proverb comes to mind.
“When a clown enters a castle, he doesn’t become a king. The castle becomes a circus.”
Greenland, she hopes, doesn’t become a circus.
