The 51st State? Greenlanders Brace, Plot And Fret Ahead Of Trump’s Return

NUUK, GREENLAND — At a recent Friday night kaffemik — a traditional, coffee-fueled gathering — Jørgen Boassen reclined at the end of a long table covered in bits of leftover whale skin and cake, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “American Badass” and the famous image of a bloodied Donald Trump raising his fist in the air. 

Such brazen pro-Trump displays have made Boassen conspicuous — and famous — here in Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. But the 50-year-old bricklayer insists that as the island’s inhabitants strive for full independence from their old colonial patrons, there is more support for the incoming American president here than meets the eye. 

“Many want to use him to liberate us from Denmark,” he said, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

That prospect, laughed off when the idea that Trump might “buy” Greenland from Denmark was first floated five years ago, has come roaring back.

In recent days, Trump’s increasingly insistent posts about his desire to make Greenland part of the United States have set off an international furor. At a press conference on Tuesday, he threatened Denmark with tariffs over the island, refusing to rule out using military force to take it, as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen insisted that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.” Meanwhile, Denmark’s King Frederik has updated the royal coat of arms to more prominently feature a polar bear that symbolizes the island’s place in his realm.

Amid it all, Donald Trump Jr. traveled to Nuuk this week, where none other than Boassen showed him the sights on Tuesday.
 
There are real strategic reasons for the U.S. to seek closer relations with the island. Great power competition is heating up in the Arctic, with Russia and China increasingly active in the region. Greenland is located on NATO’s northern flank and contains large deposits of rare earth minerals, essential ingredients in smartphones and car batteries.

That said, Trump’s wildest ambitions face serious obstacles. The days when the U.S. government could outright purchase chunks of the Western hemisphere from a European power have passed. Even if Denmark were inclined to simply sell Greenland to the highest bidder, Greenlanders enjoy too much legal power over their island for that to happen.

The most recent opinion survey shows the Greenlandic public prefers several other potential international partners over the U.S., and, in public statements, the leaders of its government stress a desire for full independence, not annexation into another country.

At the same time, Greenland has been drifting out of Copenhagen’s orbit for decades as its people have gradually gained greater rights of self-determination. But full sovereignty remains a tall order for the fewer than 60,000 inhabitants who would need to take over full responsibility for defending and developing an island three times the size of Texas.

All of this means, according to discussions with observers of Arctic geopolitics, that some sort of deal in which the U.S. and Greenland cement a special relationship, with the blessing, or at least acquiescence, of America’s Danish allies, is not so far-fetched. Officials from Trump’s first administration have already begun advocating for a treaty arrangement, called a free association agreement, with the island, including in a recent  Wall Street Journal op-ed. (Such a deal would require Greenland to become independent from Denmark first.)

As for Boassen, he sees only opportunity for himself and his country. He is in regular touch with Tom Dans, a onetime Trump appointee to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission who runs a foreign policy nonprofit, American Daybreak, and has been advocating for closer ties between the U.S. and Greenland. Boassen is eager to pursue trade deals, and perhaps other arrangements, with the U.S. 

But first he will have to persuade his fellow Greenlanders, many of whom remain apprehensive about the overtures from the superpower next door.

Another kaffemik guest Allen Henson, 37, offered a glimpse into just how much unease America's shifting foreign policy is causing here.

“I had a dream we got invaded,” Henson confessed. “There were jet planes everywhere.” 

One way or another, change is coming to Nuuk. 

The first signs of it greet visitors at the airport, which, thanks to Danish government backing, reopened with a modern international terminal a week before my arrival in early December. To reach Nuuk from Washington, I had to first fly over Greenland, then take a prop jet from Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik. In June, United Airlines is set to begin seasonal direct flights from Newark to Nuuk, making travel between the two landmasses considerably more convenient, and the growth of American influence all but inevitable. Already, the internet has helped English gain a foothold here alongside the indigenous Greenlandic language and Danish. 

But Greenland still remains enmeshed in the Kingdom of Denmark. While the island has gained increasing control over its internal affairs in recent decades, most of its government budget comes in the form of an annual subsidy from Copenhagen, which maintains control of Greenland’s external affairs. Danish firms dominate much of the island’s economy.

Whether or not full sovereignty is a realistic option for an isolated island of 56,000-odd souls, it is a popular goal, and anti-colonial sentiment runs strong here. In his New Year's address earlier this month, Prime Minister Múte Egede decried “the shackles of the colonial era" and renewed his calls to leave the Kingdom of Denmark.

Over lunch in downtown Nuuk, Rasmus Leander Nielsen, a professor at the University of Greenland, a bearded Dane who has lived here for the better part of a decade, said that Greenlanders have discussed transitioning to a free association arrangement with Denmark — in which Greenland would gain full sovereignty but maintain special economic, military and immigration privileges with Copenhagen.

But recent proposals from former Trump officials for free association with the U.S. have also been noticed here, he said. (Such proposals are modeled on U.S. arrangements with a handful of Pacific islands like Micronesia that grant the U.S. exclusive military access in exchange for economic benefits such as development grants and infrastructure funding.)

Nielsen recounted a recent phone call he had with a Greenlandic official, whom he declined to name for the record, in which the official floated a new idea: after independence, free association agreements with the U.S. and  Denmark. 

As Russia and China step up their presence in the Arctic, Greenlanders are increasingly acknowledging that American security guarantees, which already exist with Denmark and Greeland, through NATO, will be an indefinite fact of life in this corner of the world. 

“Push come to shove,” Nielsen said. “It’s still the U.S. that is going to save our ass.”

Boassen has his own vision: Embrace Trump, and make some sort of deal with the U.S. that will enrich Greenland while breaking it free of its dependence on Denmark.

On a whirlwind tour of Nuuk’s eating and drinking establishments, he gave me the local lay of the land from a Trump-centric perspective. He was sure to point out who in town is a closet Trump supporter, and who, like a former mayor whose voice came on his car radio during a news segment, is a Kamala Harris supporter who no longer speaks to him.

At every stop in Nuuk, locals approached him to tease or congratulate him about the election results. At Unicorn, a restaurant in the old town, revelers at Christmas office parties drank and gorged on reindeer. Some wore costumes for the occasion, and upon our entrance, a man dressed as Trump dressed as a garbage collector made a beeline for Boassen, then asked for a photo. 

Boassen, who has a beard and stocky build, is of mixed Inuit and Danish heritage, like many Greenlanders. Also like many Greenlanders, he nurses resentments toward the distant European power, which at times has imposed policies of forced cultural assimilation and birth control here. It does not help that as a child he had light skin and blonde hair and was beaten up for looking too Danish.

On a more practical level, he said that Greenlanders are chafing under inflation, and he points at the market power enjoyed by Danish businesses over many of the goods Greenlanders consume.

The Danes, he said, are more worried about losing Greenland than they let on.

 “I think many Danish government members know me,” he said. “They fear me. I think. I don’t know.”

He recounted an argument with a conservative Danish man who pointed to the treatment of Native Americans in the U.S. and warned him that America would forcibly relocate Greenlanders to Disko Island, off the west coast of Greenland north of here.

Boassen said he harbors no illusions that the United States and its incoming president are motivated by selfless love of Greenlanders, but he believes that they offer his people their best leverage against Denmark. As for the specifics: Boassen said the ultimate shape of a deal with the U.S. would be up to the people of Greenland. “Of course he cannot buy us,” he said, “but we can be partners with [the] U.S.”

Two centuries after President James Monroe declared the Western hemisphere off limits to European colonial powers, the world’s largest island has remained a mostly overlooked exception.

At its closest point, the island is just 16 miles east of Canada, and scholars believe that the first humans to eke out an existence here were Indigenous Americans, with roots in northeast Asia, who arrived thousands of years ago. More is known about early European settlers. Famously, the Norse explorer Erik the Red sailed West from Iceland, named the island he encountered “Greenland” and established settlements there toward the end of the 10th century. 

Those settlements eventually died out, but Europeans returned in the 18th century under Danish sponsorship. The Danes converted many of the Indigenous Inuit people they encountered to Christianity and made the island part of their kingdom.

U.S. interest in Greenland, meanwhile, dates back at least to the mid-19th century. Around the time that Secretary of State William Seward was acquiring Alaska from Russia, he explored a purchase of both Greenland and Iceland from Denmark, but did not see it through.

During World War II, the U.S. assumed de facto control of the world’s largest island and established Thule Air Base in the far North. After the war, the Truman administration offered Denmark $100 million worth of gold for Greenland, but was rebuffed. The State Department retreated from the island in 1953, when it closed its consulate. The U.S. air base — which is now named Pituffik and hosts an early warning system for ballistic missiles — remained open, thanks to an agreement between the U.S. and Denmark.

Since then, the Greenlandic people — a group that is mostly Inuit, with significant Danish admixture — have won greater rights of self-determination from Copenhagen and charted a slow course toward independence. 

One milestone came in 1979, when Greenland won home rule and established its own parliament. Another came in 2004, when it became a signatory to the World War II-era defense agreement between Denmark and the U.S.  In 2009, Greenlanders assumed fuller control of the island’s internal affairs, including its natural resources.

As Greenland has inched closer to independence, its melting glaciers have attracted the world’s attention as a symbol of climate change.

It also started to attract strategic interest from the U.S. government.

As early as 2007, the State Department was eyeing a renewed push into Greenland, a diplomatic cable sent from the U.S. Embassy in Denmark to the CIA and other agencies, and later published by Wikileaks, reveals. The cable notes Greenland’s drift toward independence as well as growing Chinese interest in the island’s resources. It calls for the State Department to establish, after consultations with Denmark, a seasonal presence there.

“With Greenlandic independence glinting on the Horizon,” the cable argues, “the U.S. has a unique opportunity to shape the circumstances in which an independent nation may emerge.”

U.S. interest in Greenland remained the stuff of private, long-range government planning until news broke in August 2019 that Trump had become preoccupied with the idea of buying the island.

The idea reportedly sprang from a conversation with Estée Lauder heir Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, though a person close to Lauder said that notion of an outright purchase originated elsewhere. “Lauder never said to buy Greenland,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss a private conversation. Instead, the person said, Lauder merely told Trump it was “in our interest to engage more, have deeper ties.”

Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton has said that he also urged Trump to purchase the island, and he reportedly floated the idea in a 2018 meeting with Denmark’s then-ambassador to Washington, Lars Gert Lose.

Trump went public with his interest, likening it to a real estate deal and tweeting a mocked-up image of a Trump Tower skyscraper looming over a grouping of modest Greenlandic homes.

The notion was treated as a non-starter at best and a provocation at worst. 

Some of the stumbling blocks to a U.S. purchase were practical: Denmark provides most of Greenland’s government budget in the form of a $500 million annual subsidy, which allows the island to fund a Scandinavian-style welfare state. The U.S. would, presumably, have to take on that cost.

Others were more fundamental: Many Greenlanders were especially offended by the notion that the U.S. could buy their island because there is no land ownership in Greenland, where all land use is allowed by government permit.

Greenlandic officials settled on a stock response to inquiries: “Greenland is open for business, but we’re not for sale.”

The float also complicated U.S. relations with Denmark, which are marked by close security cooperation aimed at countering Russia, and increasingly, China, which has declared itself a “near-Arctic state.” Earlier in Trump’s term, when Beijing offered state-backed loans for three new airports in Greenland, the Pentagon had leaned on Denmark to offer financing in a successful bid to box the Chinese out of the projects.

But when Danish Prime Minister Frederiksen called Trump’s purchase idea “absurd,” the then-president retaliated by canceling an upcoming state visit to Copenhagen.

The idea faded from the headlines, but the Trump administration continued to pursue deeper direct relations with the Danish territory. 

In June 2020, the State Department reopened a consulate here after a 70-year absence. Some in and around the administration continued to nurse more ambitious ideas: everything from increasing trade to adding it as the 51st state.

“I worked on Greenland until the final day of the last administration,” said Dans, the Trump Arctic Research Commission appointee who is working with Boassen, in an interview. “All of the same reasons that existed then for increasing our partnership exist today.”

The arrival of the Biden administration restored an Obama-era emphasis on multilateral cooperation and climate leadership to U.S. engagement in the Arctic. 

But in the wake of Trump’s victory, America’s role in the world is once again poised to shift, and big ideas about Greenland have resurfaced.

In fact, the idea of increased U.S. involvement in Greenland has been percolating in policy and tech circles for months: A week before the election, Mike Solana, a venture capitalist at Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, hosted the latest installment of his “Hereticon,” a gathering to discuss provocative ideas, at the luxe Faena Hotel in Miami. Nick Solheim, co-founder of American Moment, a group dedicated to staffing Trump’s second term, gave a talk about acquiring Greenland, telling attendees that Trump had been dead serious about the idea. Solheim alluded to the Homestead Act, a 19th century law that incentivized the settlement of the American West, according to a person present, raising the prospect of Americans settling the island. Solheim declined to comment.

Two days after the election, Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins posted on X an electoral map of the results with Greenland tacked onto it in red, along with the caption “Project 2029.” (Some in Nuuk remarked to me that, if admitted to the union, their island would not be a red state.)

Meanwhile, an entrepreneur from California is pushing an even stranger vision: Dryden Brown, the founder of a startup that aims to create high-tech colonies around the world, drew attention with posts on X suggesting that American interests should use Greenland to practice making Mars habitable for humans. (“Nice fantasy,” conservative Danish parliamentarian Rasmus Jarlov responded, “But forget it.” In an email, Jarlov declined to comment to further on the matter, writing, “I will not discuss something that far-fetched in the media. I will leave that for teenagers on Twitter.”)

Despite the renewed talk of colonies and buying, others in Trump’s orbit are proposing arrangements that are more in line with recent precedent in international affairs, and therefore, perhaps, more realistic.

In the weeks before the election, Dans and Alexander Gray, who served as chief of staff to Trump’s National Security Council, publicly proposed that the U.S. and Greenland enter into a Compact of Free Association. After the election, Gray doubled down on the idea in his Wall Street Journal op-ed.

“At this point it's less about the details,” Gray said in an interview, “than there’s a coalescing of views that a greater U.S. commitment to Greenland is a logical and strategically defensible approach.”

The issue of the island’s future is complicated by the delicate three-way dynamics at play between the U.S., Denmark and the Greenlandic people.

While Danes might not like the idea of the U.S. moving in on their kingdom’s largest landmass, they have a close security relationship with the U.S., focused on countering Russia. As Trump’s 2019 snub of Frederiksen — whose office declined to comment for this story — showed, protesting too loudly could damage it.

Then there’s the Greenlandic people. The 2009 self-governance law passed in Denmark grants them decision-making power over their independence and outlines the process for a referendum, while stipulating that the terms of independence would be subject to negotiation with the Danish government. While the law says Denmark’s parliament must consent to an independence agreement, it is not clear what would happen if Greenlanders voted for independence and Denmark’s parliament voted against. 

“A constitutional crisis run amok,” Nielsen predicted.

Most Greenlanders — two-thirds in one 2019 poll — aspire for eventual independence, but the stately pace at which they have pursued it could frustrate the ambitions of a term-limited American president. In 2023, after four years of study, a parliamentary commission presented a draft constitution for an independent republic, but its implementation remains theoretical.

In a chance encounter at the Nuuk airport, Finance Minister Erik Jensen, who is also leader of the island’s dominant party, Siumut, said he expects the next round of parliamentary commission recommendations to come around 2026. 

As for independence itself, it is too soon to say when that might happen. “In our organization we don’t discuss the year,” he said. “But we would like to move faster.” 

Full independence would give Greenlanders the ability to control their own relations with the U.S. How close they would want those relations to be remains to be seen.

Fifty-nine percent of them would like to see more cooperation with the U.S., according to survey results published last month by Nielsen. But an even greater number, two-thirds, say they would like to see greater cooperation with Denmark and with the EU. Canada, Iceland and the Arctic Council, a multilateral organization, all rank even higher in the survey. 

The stance of Greenlandic officials reflects those results. Many say they welcome more trade with the U.S., but they appear unenthusiastic about more ambitious American proposals.

“It depends of course on a more realistic approach than what we’re seeing now,” said Aaja Chemnitz, one of Greenland’s two representatives to Denmark’s parliament, who predicted that Copenhagen would remain Greenland’s primary international partner.

 “I haven't seen many results from U.S. engagement with Greenland,” she said.

That may be in part because of the current government’s reticence towards American overtures, even when they come from relatively high-ranking officials.

In late November, when Undersecretary of State Jose Fernandez traveled to Nuuk to discuss development of the island’s mineral resources, he was unable to secure a meeting with Prime Minister Egede. 

“Due to the business in the meetings at the parliament, the prime minister was not able to find time,” said his spokesperson, Julia Ezekiassen, who declined to make Egede available for an interview.

A State Department spokesperson touted Fernandez’s meetings with other senior officials and private sector representatives.

While a prime minister snubbing an undersecretary of state might be expected in many places, the size of the two polities involved makes it notable: The State Department has more employees than Greenland has citizens.

Local feelings about far-off power centers figure prominently in the local politics and culture: The government titled its most recent foreign policy road map “Nothing about us without us.”

During my visit, Nuuk’s modest art museum was restaging an old exhibit that imagines Greenland as a belligerent expansionist power, complete with agitprop extolling the virtues of its attack kayaks. A map hanging on the wall imagined a Denmark colonized by Greenland, with its regions renamed for famous islanders. The original intent of the project was satirical, one museum staffer explained, but she said that these days, not everyone takes it that way.

At a Friday night concert at a community center, Nuuk’s young and old gathered to dance. A local musician, Tupaarnaq Ingemann Mathiassen, sang a song in Greenlandic lamenting the removal of Indigenous people to make way for the U.S. air base during World War II: “The kind people with no evil inside … will not see their land again.”

Boassen appeared unbothered by the song. He is more interested in what the U.S. and its incoming president could do for Greenland’s future. 

Boassen argues the incoming president could be a liberating figure around the world. He cited the first Trump administration’s launching of a task force to address the problem of missing Native women and said that such actions set a tone that strengthens the hand of Indigenous people elsewhere.

Though he conceded that Trump is unpopular here, he blamed the island’s reliance on Danish news outlets, which he accused of tilting toward Democrats.

But between Trump’s victory and the growing influence of social media here, the political status quo here may be primed for disruption. Boassen certainly detects an opening.

He said that while his Facebook posts in Danish are often flagged for moderation, he can post more freely in Greenlandic. He showed me an inbox stuffed with private messages and said that people from all over the island’s small, scattered settlements agree with his pro-Trump writings.

Boassen also showed me the protest videos proliferating on TikTok after the Danish government determined a woman of Greenlandic extraction was not competent to raise her newborn child and separated them. 

He views it as another sign that Greenlanders are more ready for change than the island’s current leaders acknowledge — and said he is ready to press the advantage.

This past fall, he traveled to the U.S. and knocked on doors in Pennsylvania with Dans. Then he attended Trump’s election night rally at the Palm Beach Convention Center, snagging a photo with Donald Trump Jr.

On Tuesday, when Trump Jr. arrived in Nuuk, Boassen was waiting to greet him inside the airport terminal, sporting a white anorak, a traditional Greenlandic jacket. Boassen said that he got a call two days prior from Greenland’s diplomatic office in Washington, relaying a request for his contact information.

Boassen said he took Trump Jr. to see a handful of sights around Nuuk and then to a gathering of local Trump supporters at the steakhouse atop the Hotel Hans Egede, the city’s premier lodging for international travelers.

Boassen said that Trump Jr. quizzed him about Greenland’s culture and climate, and about local attitudes toward the U.S. and Denmark. “Not so much about politics,” he said. Andy Surabian, a spokesperson for Trump Jr., declined to comment.

There will be plenty of time for politics. Boassen and Dans are working to put together a Greenlandic delegation to Washington for the inauguration. To promote exports, Boassen wants to present Trump with a sealskin coat.

His plans do not end there. By April, Greenland is due to hold elections. The vote will test Boassen’s conviction that his homeland is ripe for change.

He intends to run for a seat in parliament on a pro-Trump, pro-America platform. He has the pitch down cold. The only question is whether Greenlanders are ready to buy it.