After a week on high alert, everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. Donald Trump has pulled back on his tariff threats and made a deal – one that the Danes would happily have agreed to a fortnight ago. Supported by a chorus of European leaders, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen clarified that sovereignty was a red line: ‘It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.’
But this state of affairs was not a given. Before this crisis, if you had asked a Dane to point to their country on a map, they would not have pointed to what Trump called a ‘cold and poorly located’ ‘piece of ice’. The Greenlanders, for their part, have long been moving towards the idea of full independence. The island’s general election last year quickly became a referendum on Greenland’s membership of the Kingdom of Denmark after Trump first floated acquiring the island. At the time, Frederiksen was careful to say that Greenland’s future was to be determined by Greenlanders, and Greenlanders only.
From the Danish perspective, one of the most important moments in the crisis was when Greenlandic prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen made clear last week that ‘if we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark.’ But the ‘here and now’ was telling. From the Greenlandic perspective, debates about independence have merely been put on hold.
The Kingdom of Denmark has been able to put on a united front – for now
Since 1979, Greenland has had home rule, and in 2009 the devolved administration in Nuuk took over control of more areas of policy. The Greenlanders don’t want to be as reliant on Danish financial support as they currently are and hope that, in the future, a larger tourism sector could strengthen the country’s economy. Independence was the ultimate goal, but that may prove a pipe dream as tensions rise in the Arctic (it was, already, a lofty ambition for a country the size of a small town, with few local economic prospects). Independence always used to imply some form of free association with America, but now this looks less advantageous: 85 per cent of Greenlanders do not want to be part of America.
In this crisis, the Kingdom of Denmark has been able to put on a united front – for now. Nothing consolidates a kingdom like a threat of invasion. But as with most former colonies, the Danish-Greenlandic relationship has been reconsidered in recent years. In 2020, following the death of George Floyd, statues of Hans Egede, the missionary who landed in Greenland in 1721, were doused in red paint in Nuuk and Copenhagen in protest against the Danish colonisation of Greenland. Apprehension about the role of Greenland in the kingdom has been fuelled by a general postcolonial mood.
Despite their anti-woke posturing, this line of attack against Denmark has eagerly been picked up by the Trump administration (the Americans, of course, have always enjoyed an ‘anticolonial’ pose). Last week, the New York Post ran with the headline ‘Greenlanders speak out against Danish rule after decades of forced sterilisation, poor living conditions: “They stole our future’’’. This was in reference to a Danish programme between the 1960s to the 1990s, in which some Greenlandic women had IUD contraceptive devices inserted without their knowledge or proper consultation.
This medical scandal has come to represent centuries of Danish wrongdoing in Greenland. Last year, the Danish PM issued an apology, and reparations were paid to the women who were wronged. But as with most 2020 postcolonialism, the scandal was twisted out of proportion: Greenlandic politicians have accused Denmark of genocide even though general Danish policy in Greenland during that period led to lower child mortality and higher living standards.
Just before the election in Greenland last year, the Danish national broadcast put out a documentary which purported to show that Denmark had profited off the mining of the mineral cryolite on the island – the only problem was that it wasn’t true. The documentary was pulled. Denmark has an interest in righting the wrongs of the past, especially if its kingdom is to prevail. But with the Maga movement developing postcolonial sympathies, they must be proportionate. Trump’s threats have brought this home to the Greenlanders, too.
On Fox News last week, Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen asked whether the US would be prepared to run a Scandinavian-style welfare state in Greenland – a question that has long been put to the Greenlandic independence bloc. Polling shows that while 56 per cent of Greenlanders want independence, whatever that might mean in practice, 85 per cent think that welfare, education and health care are more important priorities. Most would want Danish financial support to continue after independence.
Trump’s deal may not offer up anything that Denmark wouldn’t already have been giving the island. That doesn’t mean things won’t have to change now. Greenlandic independence is looking more remote, both because Trump’s threats have in some ways consolidated the Kingdom of Denmark and because of the changing geopolitical situation in the Arctic.
Recent weeks have proven that the bond between Greenland and Denmark is more than just Copenhagen flinging money at some far-flung ice block. If the Kingdom of Denmark is to survive, it will be necessary for Copenhagen to strengthen the ties between its constituent parts (thankfully Trump doesn’t seem to have discovered the Faroe Islands yet). Bolstering exchange programmes and putting the whole kingdom front and centre in history lessons might be a way of achieving this: Denmark’s King Frederik X will be useful in this respect. In the years ahead, Copenhagen will have to wrestle with its colonial legacy more carefully, never forgetting the scrutinising eyes of the American empire.
Comments