NUUK, Greenland — Canada will open a new consulate in Greenland on Friday, a show of diplomatic support as rattled Nordic islanders there react to President Donald Trump’s aggressive rhetoric about acquiring their homeland.
In Nuuk, many say Trump’s attention is leaving them feeling ground down — and yearning to be left alone — in spite of allies in Canada and Europe rallying to support them.
“It’s really important for us to know that we are not alone in this, that we actually have people from other countries who care about us,” Nuuk Mayor Avaaraq Olsen told the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes POLITICO. “People are scared and they are more and more concerned. Because of Trump's statements, they get very worse and worse.”
Canada announced its plan to open a Greenland consulate more than a year ago, but the timing could hardly be more unpredictable. The opening comes amid escalating trade tensions and Trump’s revived talk of acquiring Greenland, adding strain to already fraught U.S.-Europe and U.S.-Canada relations.
Canada is adding diplomatic heft to Friday’s consulate opening with the presence of Gov. Gen. Mary Simon, an Inuk who serves as King Charles III’s representative in Canada. The veteran Arctic diplomat is on a week-long Nordic tour, including this autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark.
“I have been working with Denmark and Greenland for many, many years. We understand each other, and it's important to talk about the lessons learned in each of our countries,” Simon told POLITICO Thursday via videolink from Denmark.
“At this moment, we're focusing a lot on Denmark and Greenland because of the recent developments that have happened. But it could be any other place in the world where this could happen as well.”The show of solidarity comes even as Canada faces its own pressures from Washington ahead of this summer’s review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Simon will join Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand and Canada’s top diplomat in Greenland, Virginia Mearns.
A Canadian coast guard ship has been dispatched to Greenland to help mark the occasion.
Ottawa has been careful to emphasize that it does not want to escalate tensions.
Canadian Defense Minister David McGuinty said this week that Canada has no immediate plans to send additional troops to join European allies in Greenland for military exercises but noted NATO allies could soon head to Canada for other drills.
“We are looking at inviting more countries to join us in our exercises in the North, in the Arctic,” he said.
On Thursday night in downtown Nuuk, 37-year-old Pipaluk Olsen offered a succinct reply when asked about her hope for the future.
“Forget Greenland. Forget Greenland, Trump,” she said. “And just give us normal life back.”
Nuuk at night
Greenland’s capital was unseasonably warm on Thursday evening, with temperatures hovering just below freezing while light snow flurries gave the town a fresh coating of whiteness.
The mood beneath the surface was darker.
In a shuttered shopping mall store window, Greenland’s now distinctive MAGA baseball cap spoof was on full display, with its slogan that translates into “enough is enough.”
At Nuuk’s art museum, an exhibit titled “Melting Barricades” celebrated Greenland’s military grit with slogans such as “We Protect You!” and “Join the Greenlandic Forces” predated the current Trump standoff by almost three months but is built for the moment.
Jakob Faerch, a Copenhagen-based consultant working to develop a new recreational centre in Nuuk, said Simon’s visit to Greenland mattered, and is built on the shared history of its Inuit peoples. Faerch, 50, offered his take on what he’s seen here in the past week.
“There's a lot of good energy and positivity because people are really strong, standing together. At the same time, we hear that there's been a lot of anxiety,” he said after a post-work coffee.
Olsen said friendship from foreign countries is welcome, but it doesn’t address an underlying angst.
“It's not good for us and it’s not good for our land. It could be some bad things,” she said, her voice trailing off: “Like Ukraine.”
While Trump may have backed down from his annexation threats, Danish and European officials are wary of facing an online assaultfrom the U.S.
“Greenland is a target of influence campaigns of various kinds,” Denmark’s Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told POLITICO.
A new poll Wednesday from Danish pollster Sune Steffen Hansen for The Copenhagen Post suggested Greenlanders found that 65 percent of respondents said the territory should strengthen cooperation with the European Union, while only 5 percent favored boosting ties with the U.S.
In a speech earlier this week in Norway, Simon recalled growing up in Nunavik in Canada’s north and being enthralled by radio waves reaching her across frozen waters.
“My grandmother, Jeannie, would turn on our short-wave radio and, sometimes, come across beautiful Greenlandic Inuit songs on the BBC,” Simon said.
Notwithstanding the outpouring of European — and now Canadian — solidarity, sentiment toward the U.S. is raw in Greenland, and locals’ patience is growing thin with international media and influencers descending on the community of 20,000 — which makes up more than one-third of its population.
Last week, a German comedian was widely condemned when he tried to raise the Stars and Stripes near a Nuuk cultural centre. And Canadian comedian and Trump impersonator Mark Critch was slapped when he showed up outside the U.S. consulate dressed as the president to take the pulse of Greenlanders.
The mayor of Nuuk says her constituents are simply tired of it all.
“We just want to go back to normal, to the Greenland that we know, to the daily life that we know,” said Olsen.
Northern exposure
Across the Davis Strait in Canada’s Arctic territories, locals are feeling the ripples and the tension.
“I hope they feel that we're standing strong with them, and that as Inuit from all over the Arctic, we stand united with our cause, our self-determination causes and our Arctic sovereignty causes,” Adamie Delisle Alaku, vice president of environment, wildlife and research with the Inuit organization Makivvik, told POLITICO.
Alaku was one of 90 Inuit Canadians who flew to Nuuk on a charter flight from Montreal on Thursday to support their governor general — and to bring a message to Indigenous Greenlanders drawn from their shared history.
“When I heard about Trump wanting to take over Greenland, I was like, well, this history is just repeating itself all over again,” said Susie-Ann Kudluk, a 28-year-old community leader from the same northern community where Simon was raised, who was also on the flight.
“We've been here since time immemorial, and I don't think that's gonna change anytime soon,” Kudluk said. “Stand strong, stand together. Know that Canadian Inuit are there to support. We'll fight this together.”
That defiance extends across Canada’s vast Arctic. R.J. Simpson, the premier of Northwest Territories, was asked about the mood of his region when he testified last week before a Canadian parliamentary committee.
“I actually know someone who's a bit of a pacifist — they went out and they booked an appointment to get their firearms license. So some people are taking this very, very seriously,” he said.
Premier John Main of Nunavut, the closest Canadian territory to Greenland, told the same committee that there “is a mix of concern, anger, also solidarity [with Greenland].”
“Obviously there's strong cultural links between Inuit and Nunavut and Inuit in Greenland,” Main told Ottawa lawmakers. “There's ancestral links, there's links in terms of language. They're our neighbors, and it's very unsettling for us, and in general sense, to be hearing that type of talk.”
Over a decade in power through 2015, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made an annual trip to Canada’s Arctic. What’s new, he said, is Trump’s Greenland preoccupation.
“There are lots of threats to the North that are actually quite serious,” he said this week in Ottawa. “But I didn’t think it would be our southern neighbor.”
Ultimately, Harper said, Canada must “defend all of our lands, seas and skies without the support of allies.”
Simon, meanwhile, treads carefully to avoid pointed political commentary, in keeping with the largely ceremonial function of her office.
“I've been both a politician and a governor general,” she noted Thursday.
But she is adept at finding openings, including in a speech she delivered in Norway earlier this week.
“We are at a decisive moment in history,” she said at the start of a weeklong trip. “Challenges in the Arctic affect all peoples on earth. More than ever, we recognize the profound interconnectedness of our world.”
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