{"id":37278,"date":"2026-03-10T22:42:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T22:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/37278\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T22:42:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T22:42:30","slug":"trump-used-to-be-mocked-in-greenland-this-time-its-far-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/37278\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump used to be mocked in Greenland. This time, it\u2019s far different."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n

Last February, I was in a remote town in northern Greenland and watching Donald Trump being discussed on the Danish news. My host, a lifelong Greenlander, waved his hand dismissively at the set in his living room and turned to me. \u201cTrump,\u201d he said. \u201cNo good.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fittingly succinct summation of the general feeling about the U.S. president I encountered during the few weeks I spent in Greenland almost a year ago. I wasn\u2019t there to write about politics, but my trip happened to come hot on the heels of Donald Trump Jr.\u2019s visit to the country and a recent round of Trump Sr. declaring things like \u201cGreenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a strange time to be there. The capital city, Nuuk, where I spent five days, was full of journalists, not least because heavy winds meant that flights out of Nuuk were canceled indefinitely and anyone already on the ground had to stay a few extra days. I met some German TV reporters who were in town covering the Trump situation; they told me that they were finding their assignment a little difficult because the city\u2019s residents were sick of talking to reporters about Trump. Nuuk only has 20,000 people, so if you were an adult living in the capital at the time, there was a fair chance you\u2019d been stopped on your way to the supermarket by someone with a recording device.<\/p>\n

Just like anywhere in the world, you could find a small scattering of people who have bought Trump\u2019s message, and the red hat besides. There are some in the country who think there\u2019s an opportunity for Greenland to achieve prosperity through some kind of deal with the U.S. But when my German friends did manage to persuade people to give an opinion, it was generally not a positive one. The message, by and large, was that \u201cGreenland belongs to us and to no one else,\u201d as one resident of Ilullisat, Ane Sofie Lauritzen, put it. \u201cI am very worried. The world is suddenly closing in on us,\u201d said another Greelandic woman called Esther Brandt Ahrens. \u201cI am almost 60 years old, but I have never experienced anything like this. We know that Trump is only after our resources.\u201d A poll taken just before I arrived found that 85 percent of people in Greenland did not want to become part of the U.S., with just 6 percent in favor and 9 percent undecided.<\/p>\n

I wondered at the time whether this all might prove to be a flash in the pan. Trump spoke about wanting to buy Greenland during his first term too, and he got a pretty firm no from both Greenland and Denmark. But then the world watched Trump storm into Venezuela and arrest its leader without anything resembling an international consequence in recent weeks. In Greenland, that was a different kind of alarm bell.<\/p>\n

Though Trump\u2019s ambitions to seize the Arctic state as U.S. territory went quiet for a time after about March of last year, they never went away. Just before Christmas, he appointed an envoy to Greenland, Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry. \u201cIt\u2019s an honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the U.S.,\u201d Landry said at the time. Trump did not discuss the appointment with officials in Denmark or in Greenland.<\/p>\n

After Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s capture, at a press conference held onboard Air Force One, a reporter asked Trump about what his plans were with Greenland now, to which he replied, \u201cWe need Greenland from a national security situation.\u201d (He\u2019s previously also said he wants it for its natural resources.) Last week, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller\u2019s wife Katie Miller posted a picture to X of Greenland with the American flag superimposed on it, captioned ominously \u201cSOON.\u201d In response, many Greenlanders are now posting pictures on Facebook of their country proudly emblazoned with the Greenlandic flag.<\/p>\n

Last year, I got the sense that while Greenlanders found Trump\u2019s grandstanding about Greenland disrespectful and troubling, they also found the whole thing ridiculous. Now, however, the threat feels more serious. A friend who works with the Arctic Economic Council put it bluntly when he told me the majority of Greenlanders are now \u201cshitting themselves.\u201d Greenlandic officials are, it seems, also furious. The Danish news outlet DR reported on Wednesday that an online meeting between Greenlandic representatives and their counterparts in Denmark descended into accusations by the former against the latter of \u201cneocolonialist\u201d exclusionary practices in holding meetings about the country\u2019s future without including Greenlandic officials.<\/p>\n

I caught up with Nicolas, a man I met who has spent the last 30 years living between Paris and Kullorsuaq, a settlement on Greenland\u2019s northwestern coast. He said that in his view, people were more worried about the threat of a U.S. takeover than ever before. He mentioned his local friends\u2019 response to Trump\u2019s offer to give somewhere between $10,000 to $100,000 per person in Greenland. (The country has 57,000 residents total.) \u201cThey feel completely offended about that kind of behavior,\u201d he said, \u201cand also they are upset by the fact that, internationally, people ask Denmark about the Trump question, people ask Europe, but no one asks the Greenlanders, and they feel they have no voice. Especially young people.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Heather Schwedel
\n Kimberly Guilfoyle Has Responded to Donald Trump Jr.\u2019s Humiliating Engagement as Only She Knows How
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

He recently put me in touch with his friend Ole Olsvig, a 32-year-old native of a village called Naajaat in Greenland\u2019s northern Upernavik area. \u201cPeople are exhausted,\u201d he told me. Part of that exhaustion with how their country is discussed internationally stems from deep colonial wounds about their relationship with Denmark. In 2025, for instance, Denmark finally issued an official apology for the widespread program of enforced sterilization of Inuit women without their knowledge. Eventual independence is something many Greenlanders have wanted for a long time. \u201cThere has been always a feeling of wanting to be independent; I think it has always been a dream,\u201d he said. A year ago, he remembered seeing a lot of Greenlanders making memes about what he called Trump\u2019s \u201cdelusional\u201d desire to take over their country. Things feel different now: \u201cThis time, everyone is seeing what\u2019s happening in Venezuela, so now I think people are more afraid of what might happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Most Dangerous Policy Dream Is Spreading From State to State. Much of the Country May Soon Be a No-Go Zone.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Unlike last year, their fears are taking real shape. \u201cWill there be isolation? Will towns be centralized? Will people be cut off in terms of supplies, if the U.S. focused on militarization or centralization of administration, for example? All the things that you haven\u2019t imagined last year, now you are discussing,\u201d he said. Still, however, he said most people can\u2019t shake off the sense that it is a ludicrous fantasy of Trump\u2019s that Greenland can just be \u201csold off for money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever is to come their way from the U.S., plenty of Greenlanders have another pressing issue on their minds at the moment. At the time of writing, troublingly warm weather means that sea ice, essential for the hunting season, has still not formed in northern Greenland, and it was expected a month ago. There are other, perhaps even bigger threats to life in the country besides Donald Trump\u2019s desire to buy up what he appears to view as little more than a very large piece<\/a> of prime real estate. And he\u2019s already making those worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[184,1584,57,762,1158,21419],"class_list":{"0":"post-37278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greenland","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-foreign-policy","10":"tag-greenland","11":"tag-international","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-slate-plus"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116207297849960355","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}