Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Egede, looked like he was being chased by an angry musk ox.
“Mr. Prime Minister, have you spoken to President Trump yet?” I asked as he fled a lunchtime news conference on Tuesday in the capital city, Nuuk (population 20,000). Egede, who is 37, wore a green zip-up sweater, stared straight ahead, and was walking toward me. He said nothing.
“Prime Minister Múte Egede,” I tried again, using his full name this time, for some reason.
He remained … mute.
I made one more attempt—“Have you talked to President Trump?”—to no avail.
As he walked out the door, Egede looked flushed and somewhat stunned. The briefing room had been tense, crowded with about three dozen journalists, several from other countries. This is—I’m guessing here—two and a half dozen more journalists than typically show up at his press conferences.
“This is not usual for us,” said Pele Broberg, a member of the Greenlandic Parliament and an off-and-on Egede nemesis, who had come to enjoy the spectacle and watch Egede squirm.
The briefing had lasted about 30 minutes and consisted of Egede giving a canned statement and then taking eight or nine questions, all on the same topic.
“Do we have reason to be afraid?” one Greenlandic journalist asked.
“Of course, what has happened is very serious,” Egede replied in Greenlandic. He projected the grave aura of a leader trying to be reassuring in a time of crisis; his tone and language seemed better suited to a natural disaster than a geopolitical quandary.
“We have to have faith that we can get through this,” Egede said. His hands shook slightly as he sipped from a glass of water.
“In Greenland,” he said, “there is a lot of unrest.”
Extreme cold was predicted for Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., so I figured I’d decamp to somewhere warmer: Nuuk.
Temperatures in the icy capital were in the low 30s, or several degrees balmier than those in Washington. More to the point, this autonomous Danish territory—the world’s biggest non-continental island—has surfaced as a subject of diplomatic dispute.
Trump had first announced his interest in America buying the territory in 2019. At the time, the Danish prime minister promptly rebuffed the overture (she called it “absurd”), to which Trump responded predictably (he called her “nasty”). And then, after a few weeks, the episode melted away. That is, until Trump managed to get himself reelected and started piping up again about how he still coveted the place. Ever since then, his renewed designs on Greenland have become a source of global fascination. The furor grew earlier this month, when Trump, in response to a reporter’s question, refused to rule out using military force to resolve the matter.
“Greenland is in the center of the world,” Egede proclaimed a few days later in Copenhagen, perhaps overstating things but still offering a whiff of the heady sense of relevance that’s been sweeping through Official Nuuk.
I went to Greenland to watch this peculiar production unfold in this most unlikely of places. Another big objective was to meet Egede, the young and ambitious prime minister. Like many other minor global figures who become overnight attention magnets, Egede had seemed at first exhilarated by all the interest, then overwhelmed, and then regretful. Watching his recent public appearances from afar, I had noticed his demeanor sometimes shift from the burly confidence of a local wunderkind to the nervousness of someone fully aware that his actions were being observed closely, especially by Washington and Copenhagen.
“We are Greenlanders,” Egede often says, robotically, when asked—as he is constantly—about Trump’s continued focus on his country. “We don’t want to be Americans. We don’t want to be Danish, either.”
Egede just wants to be left alone, is the impression he is leaving these days. I learned this before I set out for Nuuk, when I placed a few calls to his office in an attempt to watch Trump’s inaugural speech with the prime minister. He shouldn’t be that hard to track down, I figured, given that the total number of humans in Greenland, which is roughly three times the physical size of Texas, is 56,000—smaller than the population of Bethesda, Maryland.
“Can you call back tomorrow?” his communications aide, Andreas Poulsen, pleaded on the phone. “We are very busy right now. Thank you for understanding.”
I tried the next day.
“Can you call back tomorrow?” Poulsen said again. “We are very busy right now.”
I sensed a pattern.
“Hi, Andreas,” I said when Poulsen picked up again on the third day. (Clearly Greenland’s government offices need more robust call-screening protocols.) “Do you have a second to talk now?”
“Can you call back tomorrow?” he said again. “I am very busy right now.” Poor guy sounded more beleaguered with each call. I empathized.
“Well, I’m going to be on my way to Greenland tomorrow,” I finally said, “so I’ll be in the air.”
(Silence.)
“Andreas, are you there?”
It’s not easy being in Greenland. Especially in January: never-ending snow, frigid winds, and maybe five or six hours of daylight, if you’re lucky. Greenland is known as Kalaallit Nunaat in the native tongue, which roughly translates, fittingly enough, to “Land of the Greenlanders.” Residents of Nuuk account for about one-third of the national population, the great majority of whom are all or part Inuit.
Greenland is also not easy to get to, even though Nuuk is in fact closer to the East Coast of the United States than to Copenhagen. There are currently no direct flights from the U.S., though United Airlines says it will begin direct routes to Nuuk from Newark in June. The few flights currently available, via Reykjavik, are often canceled due to weather. Until a recent renovation of the Nuuk airport, flying to the capital had required a stop in Kangerlussuaq, a former U.S. air base to the north, and then switching to a smaller plane. The airport-modernization project has been a source of local pride in Nuuk and a godsend of convenience to its visitors (no more nightmare layovers in Kangerlussuaq!).
On the Thursday before the inauguration, I managed to get the last seat on an Icelandair flight from Washington, which miraculously went off without major complication. When I arrived in Nuuk, I found the people of the capital to be nothing but warm and welcoming, starting with my cab driver from the airport. When I mentioned I was from Washington, he asked if I was in town “because of this situation with Trump.” Correct, I said.
In the grand and feverish scheme of Trump’s early agenda, Greenland remains a remote curiosity next to his higher-profile priorities such as mass deportations, mass pardons, and trying to end birthright citizenship. But his ongoing fascination with the country can’t be dismissed as merely the frivolous object of one egoist’s manifest destiny. For a variety of strategic reasons—energy, trade, and national security, among others—Greenland has become a legitimately prized territory. Melting ice has made for better access to valuable mineral deposits and potential oil bounties, and easier trade passage through Arctic waterways. To varying degrees, both Moscow and Beijing have shown that they want in on Greenland. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Not surprisingly, this message has been received as something rotten in Denmark. The NATO ally has held sovereignty over Greenland for more than a century. (Greenland was a colony until 1953, when it became a territory of the Danish kingdom, though it gained home rule in 1979.) Although the Danes provide about $600 million in subsidies to the island each year—about half of Greenland’s annual budget—critics of its stewardship have said that Denmark lacks the will and resources to fully realize Greenland’s potential or protect it militarily. A strong majority of Greenlanders—68 percent—want independence from Denmark, according to a 2019 poll.
The degree to which Greenlanders would welcome closer ties to America, much less actually becoming a part of the United States, is unclear. For the most part, Trump’s proposal has been met with something at the junction of amused, flattered, and resistant to being associated with such a thundering and aggressive entity, as embodied by its president. These qualities, to say the least, run counter to the affable, happily innocuous, and slightly mysterious national image that Greenlanders have traditionally preferred.
If nothing else, Trump’s Greenland campaign has set off a blizzard of conspicuous attention from Copenhagen. Denmark recently increased its military spending on the island, stepped up its government services, and offered two new dog-sled patrol teams. In a truly magnanimous pander to Greenland from His Majesty, the Danish king even slapped a big new image of a polar bear onto the monarchy’s royal coat of arms.
“It’s a show for the Danes to try to reassure everybody else that they still have full control of Greenland,” said Broberg, the member of Parliament, who is a strong advocate for independence from Denmark.
I met him last Sunday, at a televised forum of Greenlandic political officials that was broadcast across Denmark and Greenland. The event, which included the prime minister, was held at a theater next to the Parliament building and drew a packed house of engaged students and professionals, similar to a suburban Manchester or Nashua town hall before the New Hampshire primary. The panelists included Greenlandic and Danish politicians debating the various permutations of “independence,” how realistic they would be, and the merits of Danish and U.S. proprietorship, if any.
“It’s a historic time that we live in,” an audience member named Niels-Olav Holst-Larsen, who moved to Nuuk from Denmark 18 months ago, told me. “Today was, I think, the biggest television-broadcasting event from Denmark in Greenland in a lot of years.”
Trump’s inaugural address the next day was shaping up to be another major television event in Greenland. “Don’t we all have to watch this speech?” Qupanuk Olsen, a candidate for Parliament who describes herself as “Greenland’s biggest influencer on social media,” told me.
I first encountered Olsen, who goes by “Q,” via a delightful YouTube video titled “How Do We Say ‘Hello’ in Greenlandic.” I resolved to find and meet her. This did not take long. Olsen told me that she considers Trump’s interest to be an “amazing” boon for her country, at least from a PR perspective. Spreading Greenland’s abundant charms, she said, is something of a life’s mission for her. “I’ve been working on showing the rest of the world what Greenland is really about.”
I asked Olsen whether she was hoping for an inaugural mention of Greenland. She paused for several seconds before declaring herself a yes. “If he doesn’t mention Greenland”—she turned strangely plaintive—“we’re just going to be forgotten again.”
I spent much of January 20 visiting members of the Greenlandic Parliament. Called Inatsisartut, or “those who make the law,” the Parliament consists of 31 members, who, from what I can tell, represent 31 nuanced flavors of pro-Greenlandic-independence. Egede, for instance, is a former member of Inatsisartut, where he represented the left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit party, which supports independence. But as the nation’s chief executive now, he recognizes the pragmatic benefits of the status quo, which requires working closely with Denmark, especially given the recent uncertainty that Trump has introduced.
The low-slung parliamentary-office building felt a bit like a small college dorm. MPs wandered in and out of conference rooms, bantered in hallways, and shouted to one another across a courtyard. My first stop on my tour of Greenland’s greatest deliberative body was a meeting with Broberg. A member of the (also) pro-independence Naleraq party, he served for a while as foreign minister until his anti-Danish rhetoric began to wear thin in Copenhagen, as well as with key figures in Nuuk—notably, Egede.
Broberg told me he admires politicians who eschew niceties and jump right to the point. He appreciates this about Trump, whose pursuit of Greenland he says has been a blessing to the cause of independence. I noted the obvious contradiction here: that Trump’s desire to “buy” Greenland is by definition antithetical to independence. Broberg argued that existing laws and treaties would make it impossible for the U.S. to actually “own” Greenland. Still, Trump’s public zest for the country enhances its cachet, Broberg explained. It also brings the added benefit of freaking out Denmark, he said.
As he spoke, I noticed a bright-red baseball hat on a shelf. I pointed to it, wondering if it was a Trump hat. In fact, the cap was emblazoned with the words Great Greenland, which Broberg told me is a Greenlandic company that makes sealskin furs and jackets. He added that he is not a Trumper; he enjoys watching people react to the hat.
At the end of the interview, Qarsoq Høegh-Dam, a top official with the Naleraq party and an adviser to Olsen, popped in to say hello. Høegh-Dam is a gregarious politico, of a familiar sort you often find in insular government towns. He said he was trying to organize a “watch party” for Trump’s inauguration.
I noticed that he was wearing a massive claw on a necklace. A polar-bear nail, he told me. As I studied the menacing trinket—roughly the size of a small croissant broken in half—Høegh-Dam launched into an aside. “It’s an age-old debate,” he said—who would win a fight between a tiger and a polar bear? I told him I was just here to learn. “I’ve seen a tiger,” Høegh-Dam said. “I was surprised how small they were.” He told me his sister had once almost been eaten by a polar bear. “Nobody is for polar bears eating people,” Høegh-Dam said—a seemingly safe position, even within the blood sport of Greenlandic politics.
This was all riveting, but I was late for a meeting with Aqqalu Jerimiassen, a conservative member of Parliament, who was waiting down the hall. I noticed a photo in Jerimiassen’s office of him wearing a Trump shirt and drinking a Guinness. He told me he belongs to “likely the most right-wing party in Greenland.” This does not mean he would call himself a Trump supporter (and, in fact, he told me a few days later that he had taken down the Trump-shirt photo). If he lived in the U.S., he said, he would probably have voted for Nikki Haley.
Still, Jerimiassen appreciates the recognition Trump has brought to his country. “If someone asked me 10 years ago where I’m from, and I say Greenland—for example, if I’m in Europe, in Bulgaria—nobody knows where that is,” he said.
Before we finished, Jerimiassen detoured to a topic about which he becomes endlessly animated: how the Nuussuaq Peninsula, near where he is from, boasts the finest-tasting reindeer in all of Greenland. Up north, he said, the reindeer eat more moss, as opposed to grass, which makes for a more piquant cervine experience. “The smell. Aromatic. It’s very, very aromatic, and the savoriness,” he raved. And the reindeer in Nuuk?
“Very plain,” he opined.
The inauguration watch party took place in a Naleraq meeting room near Broberg’s office. Broberg was there. So was Olsen, or “Q,” the influencer, along with a few parliamentary staffers, operatives, and assorted European broadcasters on hand to capture “the scene.” As with most watch parties, this “scene” was not much to watch: a bunch of people sitting around staring at a TV and sharing a communal bowl of Bugles, or whatever the Greenland equivalent of those crunchy cone-shaped snacks is.
“Greenland, Greenland, Greenland,” Broberg called out as the newly sworn-in Trump began speaking at the Capitol. I took this to mean that he wanted Trump to mention Greenland, but Broberg had told me earlier that he couldn’t care less. “We are getting all the attention that we need anyways,” he said.
Soon, the room turned quiet. Trump’s dark and aggressive tenor appeared to make the viewers uneasy. I watched Olsen, who kept fidgeting whenever it seemed Trump might name-check Greenland. This was something she was no longer wishing for, it appeared.
“Here it comes,” I heard one person say, when Trump started talking about changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and how the U.S. should retake control of the Panama Canal. But the president did not mention Greenland.
The speech still had a ways to go. Trump stated his goal “to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.” He declared that “the spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts.” Olsen began nervously tapping her black boot on the floor. She grimaced. A few minutes later, the speech ended. No Greenland. Harpoon, dodged.
“Can you feel the sigh of relief in here?” Høegh-Dam remarked.
I asked Broberg what he thought of the speech. He chuckled and read aloud a text he’d just received.
“Greenland has a code name now,” he said. “Mars.”
Before I blew out of Nuuk, I figured I would make a final approach to Egede for an interview. His press conference on Tuesday felt like my best bet.
A pack of international journalists filed into the briefing room, like scavengers descending on a fresh caribou carcass. There were cursory checks of our press IDs, but no security checkpoints or metal detectors. The prime minister wandered in pretty much by himself, with no visible protective detail.
Egede, who has been Greenland’s prime minister since 2021, hewed closely to his scripted lines about how Greenland will decide its own future, and to a theme of national unity. “We are a small population, but togetherness is our strength,” he said via translation headphones issued to the press. He urged Greenlanders to stand firm, and said, “Together, we can get over this incident.”
As Egede’s news conference wore on, and the questions became more pointed, the prime minister looked a bit frozen. I noticed a guy in a black T-shirt standing behind a pane of glass, waving to get Egede’s attention. He looked familiar. I soon realized who it was: Andreas Poulsen, the PM’s snowed-under communications officer, whom I’d been harassing for days. He was trying to tell Egede to wrap things up.
I made a point of introducing myself to Poulsen, who stepped out from his glass booth. “I’m sorry I kept calling you last week,” I said. Not to worry, he replied. Nothing is normal in Nuuk these days. We chatted a bit, and then I shot my last shot.
“Would it be possible to interview the prime minister while I’m in Nuuk?”
“Not today, not today,” Poulsen said.
“How about tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’re very busy.”
Postscript: I was supposed to leave Greenland on Wednesday, but my flight home got snowed out. I was stuck indefinitely. (Nuuk in January, man. Next year, I’ll bring my whole family.) As it happened, I had a phone interview scheduled for Thursday, related to another project: a conversation with, of all people, Paul McCartney.
“Greenland?” McCartney greeted me when he came on the phone. Apparently someone had told him about my situation.
Yeah, I seem to be stranded here, I told him.
“Trump’s gonna buy it,” Sir Paul said. “So don’t worry.”
The post Watching Trump From the Future State of Greenland appeared first on The Atlantic.
