Trump covets Greenland. A Luxembourger knows better.

It wasn’t icy, but it was still chilly. A sharp wind blew over Ilulissat, cutting through even the best outdoor jacket, and we both still feel it today, this wind, as we talk about Greenland in the editorial office in Hollerich.

Albert Kalmes was a member of the citizens’ panel “180 Degrees – The Climate U-turn” in 2008, a group of Luxembourgers who travelled all the way to Greenland at the time. I accompanied them as a journalist for the Luxemburger Wort.

The huge island in the North Atlantic, 80% of which lies under ice and is seen as a barometer of global warming, has now once again moved to the centre of world politics.

US President Donald Trump is laying claim to the land – less out of actual necessity than as a gesture of power politics: the USA needs this Arctic outpost for its security, Trump has claimed.

Greenland, the USA, Trump, global warming, world politics and energy issues. Almost 20 years after our trip, we are talking about all of this again and are suddenly back in September 2008, on the way to the “great white void”.

It’s déjà vu all over again, only sharper

“We would never have thought it possible that the Americans would want to take Greenland,” says the now 69-year-old Albert Kalmes. There were a good dozen people in our group: ten members of the “180 degrees” panel, including Albert, then 51, a railway engineer. Also present were Jürgen Stoldt, then editorial director of Forum, as moderator, Cary Greisch, Greenpeace spokesman in 2008, RTL journalist Petz Bartz and his cameraman – and me.

The citizens’ forum was organised by three NGOs: Caritas, ASTM and Greenpeace. ILRES had organised the panel. The aim was not just to discuss climate change in theory, but to see it with our own eyes and report on it as a “messenger of climate change”.

Memories of “my expedition” to Greenland: newspaper articles and a photo album. © Photo credit: Marc Thill

Our base was Ilulissat on the west coast of Greenland: a small town of colourful cube houses on Disko Bay, with 4,000 people and just as many sled dogs. Back then, the saying there was: “The snow comes later every year, and the ice isn’t as thick as it used to be.”

By September, the bay should have frozen over long ago, but it wasn’t. There was a noticeable change in the air.

Albert said at the time: “The change is clearly visible. We just lack the framework to grasp its full extent.”

In 2026, this sentence acts like a magnifying glass. Climate change has long since arrived here, but a new threat is looming in Greenland: what lies beneath the ice is coming into the world’s sights. The renewed claim by the USA has awakened something within us; it’s a déjà vu, only more sharply defined.

Our trip focused on the melting of the ice. If the Greenland ice sheet were to disappear completely, sea levels would rise by seven meters. Therefore, the Greenland expedition was followed by a second study trip: to Bangladesh, a country that is slowly disappearing due to global warming.

But back to Greenland. “Do you remember when we flew over the Sermeq Kujalleq Glacier in the helicopter?” I ask Albert. His gaze wanders out the window, as if searching for a piece of that white stillness in the gray January light. Back then, we saw the endless expanses of ice and the deep crevasses below us. “If the ice melts…” he says thoughtfully, “then New York will be seven meters underwater, and the US will have a completely different problem. And yet, some people talk today as if Greenland is simply a piece of land that you can buy.”

Icebergs as high as skyscrapers

The Sermeq Kujalleq, this mighty glacier that advances some 40 meters towards the sea every day, was our first impressive encounter with Greenland’s geological history. From the helicopter, we saw icebergs as high as skyscrapers, sleeping giants trapped in a fjord: a traffic jam of frozen time. Everyone in the helicopter was silent, almost awestruck. We watched as chunks of ice crashed into the sea, the glacier calving, and it was as if we were hearing sounds from Jean Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony.

Today, almost two decades later, the ice has retreated about ten kilometres inland. So we would now have to fly much further to get exactly the same view.

Albert laughs quietly as we recall some funny little moments: the plate of meat from musk ox, seal and reindeer and, of course, whale. That told us more about the country than any conversation. Only Greenpeace spokesman Cary Greisch turned pale.

Greisch, who had fought against Japanese whaling for years, couldn’t bring himself to change his ways as a long-time Greenpeace activist and turned his nose up at the whale.

We remember Philippe, who calculated the fuel consumption of our flight from Luxembourg via Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq and then on to Ilulisat, and to offset it, later took the train much more often. And Jutta, who stayed home in protest, because flying was out of the question for her.

The ice showed him the way

For Albert, the journey was the beginning of many things: a parliamentary hearing on climate issues and demonstrations during COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, when politicians failed to reach a binding successor agreement to Kyoto.

He later founded an energy cooperative in Schifflange, became involved with the Green Party, and served as a city councilor and alderman in his home town.

The ice had broken open something inside him that could no longer be closed. The many crystals of ice showed him the way.

“If Trump wants Greenland’s natural resources, then the ice cap there has to melt first,” says Albert Kalmes, “and then New York will also be seven metres under water”. © Photo credit: Chris Karaba

Today, however, the winds of Ilulissat are blowing in our faces once again, not just climatically, but also politically. “Kalaallit Nunaat” – as the Inuit call their country – fears not only for its sled dogs, but now especially for its territory.

We both know that whoever lays claim to Greenland also lays claim to a future, but one as fragile as the ice on which it rests.

Nevertheless, a spark of hope remains: The Inuit possess precisely what we in the West lack: time. Six months of night each year teach them patience. “Imaqa,” they say, perhaps. Perhaps everything will be alright, perhaps not. Anything is possible, and perhaps not. The course of history does not belong to us humans, but to the forces that were already there before we arrived.

(This article was originally published by the Luxemburger Wort. Machine translated using AI, with editing and adaptation by John Monaghan.)