In January 2025, two friends in Nuuk, Greenland — one a full-time musician, the other a police officer who composes and plays guitar in his spare time — began fooling around with a new tune. At first, it was just a melody, but as President Trump’s intention to acquire the island nation became clear, the friends, Glenn Moller and Steffen Lynge, decided it should be a protest song. They approached Siiva Fleischer, one of Greenland’s most renowned singer-songwriters, for the lyrics and vocals.
Little did they know they were creating an anthem.
At a protest in Nuuk last Saturday over Mr. Trump’s aim of taking the territory, their song, “Greenland Belongs to Greenlanders,” which had been released only days earlier, blared from the loudspeakers. Many of the thousands of gathered Greenlanders sang along with the chorus.
“We are already seeing the song entering as a soundtrack of the movement, spreading across social media, in addition to being played at the demonstration in Nuuk,” said Najaaraq Fleischer, who sings backup on the track. “I think the song is a shared voice for this specific moment in our history.”
The song takes its title — “Kalaallit Nunaat, Kalaallit Pigaat” in Greenlandic — from a phrase that has become a slogan for the movement to stop U.S. incursion in the island, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. Chanted at marches and intoned by Greenlandic politicians, the phrase has also become the title of several other protest songs.
That includes a haunting one by the Inuit multidisciplinary artist Varna Marianne Nielsen. Although she does not consider herself political and had never written a protest song, a visit by Vice President JD Vance to Greenland last March pushed her into action. She wrote her song, she said, “to voice the urgent opinion that we will not let go of the land of our ancestors or the hope for our children to continue our way of life after us.”
Lynge and Moller’s song sprang out of demonstrations last year in Nuuk. With annexation by the United States seeming imminent, Lynge said, “I knew I had to do something, because we could not simply accept the state of affairs.”
Transforming their melody into a protest song seemed an obvious answer. “We aren’t soldiers, and we don’t have an army,” Moller said. “But we could do something through our music.”
For maximum impact, the two decided to approach Siiva Fleischer, who, as lead singer for the Greenlandic pop band Zikaza, is one of the country’s most famous musicians and the force behind one of its highest-selling albums, “Miki Goes to Nuussuaq.”
“In a country of 57,000 people, I think it sold something like 10,000 copies,” said Andreas Otte, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Greenlandic music and is the founder of the website Greenlandic Popular Music. “You can hardly find a Greenlander who doesn’t know Siiva.”
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When Lynge and Moller showed up unannounced on Fleischer’s doorstep in Nuuk, he didn’t want to let them in, Moller recalled. But after he came outside for a smoke and heard about their project, Fleischer, who declined to be interviewed for this article, signed on enthusiastically.
“While the threats of attack or purchase of our country have been ongoing, it has never been more important that we stand together,” Fleischer told the Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq of his motivation.
About a month later, he had written the lyrics, which include the lines:
Let us stand together here in our land We protect what we love In the land of hope for us all We rise and shout aloud
The musicians finished production of their protest song in December and released it on streaming platforms on Jan. 11, two days after Mr. Trump threatened to acquire Greenland “whether they like it or not.”
They’ve been gratified by the song’s reception. “It’s a fantastic feeling to be able to contribute something to the country, the people and the culture,” Lynge said. “Something that can unite emotions.”
Nivikka Falksen, a graphic designer who attended Saturday’s protest in Nuuk, heard the song for the first time at the demonstration. At the time she didn’t take in the lyrics, she said, but when she got home later that day, she listened to the track more closely.
“The song perfectly captures the energy and vibe of what so many of us in Greenland were feeling,” Falksen said. “Calm, proud, united and clear about who we are.”
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