Christian Ulloriaq Jeppesen remembers how this all started.
In 2019, during Donald J. Trump’s first term as president, Mr. Trump floated the idea of the United States buying the island of Greenland. At the time, most people in Greenland (and Denmark, the European country that controls it) thought his suggestion was a joke.
“Everyone said, ‘Ha-ha, you can’t just buy a country, he doesn’t mean it,’” Mr. Jeppesen, a native Greenlander and a radio producer, said by telephone. “Obviously that was the wrong way to take it. Look at where we are today.”
Now Mr. Trump has doubled down on his insistence that the United States needs to annex Greenland for security reasons. And that has Greenlanders asking the same questions as everyone else, but with a lot more urgency.
Is Mr. Trump just being bombastic again, floating a fanciful annexation plan that he may know is a stretch?
Or is he serious?
Based on his comments in the last few weeks, Mr. Trump appears completely serious. Never mind that Denmark’s leadership has said the territory is not for sale, and its future must be determined by the local population.
“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,” Mr. Trump wrote in late December in a social media post announcing his choice for ambassador to Denmark.
At a news conference on Tuesday, the president-elect took an even more surprising swerve. He refused to rule out using military force to get Greenland. And that same day Donald Trump Jr., suddenly showed up on the island.
The president-elect’s son landed Tuesday afternoon in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, toured some sights like a statue of an 18th-century Danish-Norwegian missionary and was hosted by a Danish Trump supporter. He said the reason for the trip was personal, not official, but the president-elect posted about his son and “various representatives” visiting and said “MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN.”
“This is all getting scary,” Mr. Jeppesen said.
At 836,000 square miles, Greenland is the world’s largest island, about a fourth the size of the United States. It elects two representatives to Denmark’s Parliament and 31 to its own, which is responsible for most aspects of the island’s government, though Denmark retains control in a few policy areas, including defense and elements of international affairs.
Its location and landscape make it desirable to Mr. Trump on several levels.
It is strategically positioned at the top of the world, east of Canada along the Arctic Sea, and home to a large American military base. It is loaded with mineral resources such as cobalt, copper and nickel.
And as climate change melts the ice, it is opening up new paths through the Arctic Sea, which is becoming a fiercely contested region for shipping, energy and other natural resources, as well as military maneuvering.
Greenland could also find itself in the middle of a cross-Atlantic showdown over its sovereignty. On Wednesday, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said that Europe could not allow a nation to attack its sovereign borders — while adding that he did not expect the United States to invade Greenland.
The blast of attention falls on Greenland at a touchy time, with the local independence movement growing. Many Greenlanders feel increasingly resentful toward Denmark, which has played an overseer role for decades. For its size, Greenland has a tiny population and most of the 56,000 Greenlanders are Inuit, part of a group of peoples who also live in Canada and Alaska.
The Greenlandic language is completely different from Danish. Many people follow a culture and belief system quite apart from those in Western Europe. And, like Indigenous people in the United States and elsewhere, they have been treated unequally for a long time.
The Greenlanders’ disaffection with Denmark was heightened two years ago with revelations about Danish doctors fitting thousands of Indigenous women and girls with intrauterine contraceptive devices in the 1960s and 1970s, often without their knowledge.
Danish officials have repeatedly said that Greenland is not for sale, though they have emphasized their desire for warm relations with the United States. Last month, Denmark’s king jumped into the fray by abruptly changing the country’s coat of arms to more prominently feature symbols of Greenland and the Faroe Islands (another territory under Denmark’s control) — a polar bear and a sheep.
Amid this debate over identity, many people are now puzzling over Mr. Trump’s intentions.
“Is it just a distraction?” asked Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. “Or is it threat-based diplomacy?”
According to an agreement in 2009 that granted Greenland expanded self-rule, Greenlanders have the right to hold a referendum on independence. The reason it has happened yet, analysts say, is because Greenland is still heavily dependent on Denmark for many professional services — including doctors, nurses and teachers — as well as half a billion dollars a year in subsidies.
Aaja Chemnitz, one of the two representatives from Greenland in the Danish Parliament, said she worries that Mr. Trump is trying to pump up Greenland’s independence movement to further his own interests. In that case, she said, “We risk becoming a pawn in a game between Denmark and the US.”
Greenland benefits from the Danish welfare system, she said, and it would do a lot worse if it became part of the United States.
“I’ve seen the American system,” Ms. Chemnitz, who lived in New York while working for the United Nations, said in a telephone interview. “I know how harmful it can be for equality.”
Mr. Jeppesen, the radio producer, said Mr. Trump may also be misinterpreting the independent nature of Greenlanders. Greenland is not just a chunk of land. It is a nation, a story, a homeland.
“There is this enormous pride you get from being one of just 56,000,” Mr. Jeppesen said. “Greenland is amazing, it’s beautiful, it’s the most wonderful country in the world.”
“And it is a country fighting for independence,” he added. “Not a piece of property you can buy.”
