“Nobody in Greenland takes such an absurd scenario seriously.” That was the assessment of James Meek, in the London Review of Books last April, when discussing with the island’s inhabitants the possibility of a US marine-led invasion.
Of course, in the wake of the US special forces operation in Venezuela and Donald Trump’s desire to claim Greenland for the US, that “absurd scenario” may look a little less absurd.
While an invasion of territory that belongs to a Nato ally might be too outrageous, even for Trump, economic coercion appears a more likely route. To that end US officials “have discussed sending lump sum payments to Greenlanders as part of a bid to convince them to secede from Denmark and potentially join the US”, said Reuters.
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But for those who live in Greenland, there remains a strong desire for self-determination. “We are not for sale” and “we will not be annexed”, Jess Berthelsen, chair of SIK, Greenland’s national trade union confederation, told The Guardian. “We will determine our own future, and we will continue to work with Denmark and the United States.”
Greenlanders “are taking it in their stride”, said Sky News’ international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn. “They are getting used to Donald Trump's advances on their country” and a “very small minority welcomes them”.
"He will come. He has decided, you know. Nobody can change his mind,” Jorgen Boassen, one of the island’s most fervent Trump supporters, told Waghorn. “I can feel that. But I think it’s not bad. It’s a new opportunity for us."
The vast majority of islanders, though, reject the US attempt to annex their land. When Trump first said he wanted to buy Greenland, “I asked many local people what they thought. I didn’t hear a single person say it would be a good idea then, and I am still waiting”, said Dennis Lehtonen, who has lived in Greenland for the past three years, in The Independent.
While feelings towards Denmark “are generally less hostile than those directed at the United States, many people here remain angry at being treated as inferiors”, said Lehtonen. “Most people here hope Greenland will eventually become independent.”
Aleqatsiaq Peary, a 42-year-old Inuit hunter from the remote northerly town of Qaanaaq, “seemed unfazed” by the prospect of US ownership, said the BBC. “It would be switching from one master to another, from one occupier to another,” he said. “We are a colony under Denmark. We are already losing a lot from being under the Danish government.”
It’s for that reason perhaps that the leader of Greenland’s main opposition party this week said Copenhagen should get out of the way and allow Greenland to come to an arrangement directly with the US.
“We encourage our current [Greenlandic] government actually to have a dialogue with the US government without Denmark,” said Pele Broberg, the leader of Naleraq, according to Reuters. “Because Denmark is antagonising both Greenland and the US with their mediation.” Naleraq won 25% of the national vote last year, doubling its number of seats.
What next?
The Trump administration has stressed its intention has always been to buy Greenland from Denmark, while insisting that a military intervention remains an option too.
For Masaana Egede, editor of Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq, the rhetoric from the US is pushing a binary choice that no one in Greenland agrees with. “We really have to try to avoid getting the story going to a place where it’s Greenland that has to decide between the US and Denmark, because that is not the choice that the Greenlandic people want.”
There remains hope, though, as well that the threat from Trump will be a unifying force on the island.
“For years, I’ve felt that Denmark has struggled to show a balanced picture of Greenland,” Greenlander Josepha Kuitse Kunak Thomsen told LBC. But now “I’ve seen people in Denmark speak up and show support for Greenland in a visible way,” she said. “That matters. It makes me believe we’ll come through this in a better place.”
