https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/26/donald-trump-resi...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/26/donald-trump-residents-greenland-us

Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Egede, who wants independence from Denmark, has said the territory is not for sale but is open for closer ties with the US in areas such as mining.

Writing on X on Saturday, the chair of the Danish parliament’s defence committee, Conservative MP Rasmus Jarlov, said Denmark would never hand over 57,000 of its citizens to become Americans against their will. “We understand that the US is a powerful country. We are not. It is up to the US how far they will go. But come what may. We are still going to say no.”

Strategically located between the US and Europe, Greenland is a potential geopolitical battleground, as the climate crisis worsens.

The rapid melting of the island’s huge ice sheets and glaciers has raised interest in oil drilling (although Greenland in 2021 stopped granting exploration licences) and mining for essential minerals including copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel.

Melting Arctic ice is also opening up new shipping routes, making alternatives to the Suez canal, while the Panama canal is seeing less traffic as a result of severe drought.

Since the cold war, Greenland is also home to a US military base and its ballistic missile early warning system.

Speaking to the Sunday Times, a former senior Danish official and expert on Greenland said that in 1917, the US president Woodrow Wilson gave Copenhagen assurances that the territory “will for ever be Danish”.

Tom Høyem, Denmark’s representative to Greenland between 1982 and 1987, also said that if Denmark were to sell Greenland, it would have to give the UK first refusal under the 1917 agreement.

The British government at that time demanded it should have the first right to buy Greenland, because of the island’s proximity to Canada, then a British dominion.