In January, Danish soldiers arrived carrying explosives to destroy runways in Greenland’s capital Nuuk and in Kangerlussuaq, a small town north of the capital.<\/p>\n
The soldiers also carried supplies from blood banks to treat the wounded if war broke out.<\/p>\n
Sources from across the Danish Government, authorities, and European intelligence services told Danish public broadcaster DR the January 3 attack on Venezuela and capture of Nicolas Maduro served as a turning point for fears of a US invasion.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump insisted Greenland needed to be controlled by the US for strategic purposes<\/a> to counter Russian and Chinese threats in the arctic.<\/p>\n One high-ranking Danish source said: “When Trump keeps saying he wants to take over Greenland<\/a>, and then what happened in Venezuela happened, we had to take all scenarios seriously.”<\/p>\n Denmark began to seek political support from European countries, including France and Germany, in a series of talks which started after the 2024 US election.<\/p>\n Denmark was prepared to explode runways at Nuuk Airport (pictured) in order to prevent US military planes from landing on the island<\/p>\n | <\/p>\n GETTY<\/p>\n On January 19, Operation Arctic Endurance was presented as a joint military exercise – with Danish, French, German, Swedish, and Norwegian soldiers all flown to Greenland.<\/p>\n But sources said the operation was a serious mission, with Danish soldiers from its Dragoon Regiment, elite Jaeger Corps troops and French forces trained for war in cold, mountainous terrains.<\/p>\n Danish F-35 fighter planes and a French naval vessel were sent towards the North Atlantic.<\/p>\n Plans were already in place for Danish and European forces to be sent to Greenland, but these were brought forward.<\/p>\n German soldiers took part in Operation Arctic Endurance in a plan to bring as many nationalities to defend Greenland as possible<\/p>\n | <\/p>\n GETTY<\/p>\n A top French official said Europe was brought together as a result of the tensions.<\/p>\n The source said: “With the Greenland crisis, Europe realised once and for all that we need to be able to take care of our own security.”<\/p>\n While Copenhagen did not want to escalate tensions, Denmark did not want to do nothing in response to a US attack.<\/p>\n Part of the strategy was to bring as many different nationalities of soldiers as possible to Greenland so that if the Americans rolled in, it would provoke a much larger diplomatic crisis.<\/p>\n One British military officer was sent to Greenland<\/a> as part of Operation Arctic Endurance.<\/p>\n On January 15, Downing Street insisted the soldier’s participation was a “routine part of military planning”, saying it was not a deployment but a “military recce ahead of future Danish-led exercises”.<\/p>\n Danish military troops carrying explosives and blood banks were flown into Greenland<\/p>\n | <\/p>\n GETTY<\/p>\n When asked if European soldiers would have fought against the US, one top German official said it was a question the country was “very glad we didn’t have to answer”.<\/p>\n “If the US attacked Greenland \u2013 with Nato soldiers present \u2013 then you would have to put the biggest question mark on everything we believed in,” the source added.<\/p>\n On January 21, the President ruled out<\/a> taking the arctic island through military action.<\/p>\n “I won\u2019t use force, I don\u2019t want to use force…all the US is asking for is a place called Greenland,” Mr Trump said at the World Economic Forum at Davos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denmark planned to blow up Greenland’s runways to prevent US military planes from landing on the island. Explosives…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[10010,234,190,57,74,38,1161],"class_list":{"0":"post-44095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greenland","8":"tag-army","9":"tag-france","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-greenland","12":"tag-nato","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116258742341293833","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44095","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=44095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Nuuk](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/nuuk-airport-with-air-greenland-planes-landing-on-it.jpg\")
![\"German](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/german-soldiers.jpg\")
![\"Danish](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/danish-military-plane-on-nuuk-airport.jpg\")