When Aka Binzer-Johnsen prepared her two daughters for school and nursery after the holidays at the start of January, she felt compelled to tell them about Donald Trump.
“I asked my daughters if they could remember from last year that Trump really wants our country,” she says. “I tried to explain in a child-friendly way that this is happening again, and if they hear anything, that’s why.”
The 38-year-old mother, her husband Uju and their daughters, aged five and seven, live on the outskirts of Nuuk, the capital of Greenland.
Home to just 20,000 people, life in the quiet town with colourful wooden houses normally feels safe and far removed from the world’s troubles.
But the US president’s threats to seize Greenland have brought a crisis to Nuuk’s doorstep.
“This was always like a safe little bubble,” says Binzer-Johnsen, who is a project manager for a charity. “That’s what we are used to from growing up here.”
She adds: “Everything has changed so fast. People are very scared, and emotions are heightened. I’ve felt really bad about what is going on. I’ve had sleepless nights.
“I have so many questions, wondering what we are going to do. If I want to protect my family, is this the time to act?
“I constantly feel ready to flee and leave, just for a period. But at the same time, we can’t just stop living. Everything we’ve invested in is here: our dreams and our life.”
Such considerations are now weighing on the minds of many Greenlanders, regardless of the territory’s status as a Nato member and having served as an American ally for more than 80 years.
The fate of the world’s largest island has been thrust back into the spotlight this month following Trump’s capture of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president.
Buoyed by his coup in Latin America, Trump has now set his sights on Greenland, the sparsely populated autonomous Danish territory.
“We need Greenland from a national security situation,” Mr Trump said last week, adding that he may have to choose between preserving Nato or expanding America’s influence in the western hemisphere.
“It’s so strategic. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.”
The threats have sent alarm bells ringing in Copenhagen and Brussels, prompting stunned European leaders to issue a joint statement saying they will “not stop defending” Greenland.
However, it should not come as a surprise.
The US president has long been fascinated by Greenland, which has been part of the Danish kingdom for hundreds of years, like the Faroe Islands.
Trump first proposed buying the island during his first term in 2019, comparing it to “a large real estate deal”.
Seven years later, he has returned to the issue, alternating between threats of military force and offers to make Greenlanders rich.
All in all, last week’s events suggest the US president may be determined to make Greenlanders an offer they can’t refuse.
However, in Nuuk, the mood is one of anger and defiance.
“He can go f— himself,” is the verdict from a local pensioner. ‘The crossroads of the world’
So why has the world’s most powerful man decided that, come hell or high water, he must own the world’s largest island?
“The Arctic is the crossroads of the world,” says Dwayne Menezes, founder of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative in London.
“Greenland is strategically located along the shortest air and sea routes between three continents: North America, Europe and Asia.”
The country’s position means it would offer the shortest route for ballistic missiles targeting North America, and it is key to surveillance in the Arctic.
“It also is a vast resource frontier, all of which is becoming increasingly strategically important for the US, but also increasingly accessible because of climate change,” Menezes adds.
The US has cooperated with Greenland and Denmark on national security since the Second World War.
Americans operate the island’s only military base. Some 150 US soldiers staff the Pituffik Space Base on the north-west coast, down from 6,000 during the Cold War.
This is part of a defence agreement that has been in place between the US and Denmark since 1951.
“The US has had such critical infrastructure in Greenland since the Second World War, through the Cold War, and more recently, even now, it plays a very, very important role for the Space Force,” Menezes says.
American influence means the Stars and Stripes is hanging alongside the Greenlandic and Danish flags outside several buildings, including the Arctic Command centre, which is responsible for surveillance and defence in Nuuk. The US also has its own consulate there.
Copenhagen still ultimately decides foreign, defence and security matters on behalf of Nuuk, although Greenland has gradually achieved greater autonomy since it stopped being a colony in 1953.
Denmark has faced local criticism on occasion for prioritising US interests over those of Greenland, having sometimes kept its territory in the dark when it matters.
Examples date back to the 1950s, when Denmark allegedly allowed the US to store nuclear weapons at a local airbase without informing Greenland.
WikiLeaks also revealed in 2008 that CIA planes carrying terror suspects to countries such as Afghanistan for interrogation – and probably torture – refuelled in Greenland.
While Denmark publicly rebuked the US for this, it privately reassured its ally that it would take no action, according to Danish newspapers.
As a result, many believe that Trump is kicking at an open door, if he wants greater security cooperation.
Experts and locals are also sceptical of US claims that the island’s waters are full of ships from hostile states that pose a threat.
“If there are so many Chinese and Russian ships here, then how can it be that only Donald Trump has seen them?” says Frans Heilmann, the boss of fishing company Sigguk.
Heilmann adds: “All of Greenland is full of fishing trawlers. I have not heard of a single trawler that has spotted either a Russian or Chinese vessel near our coasts.
“In Greenland, such rumours would spread quickly. But I’ve not heard anything.”
Many people close to the industry are equally baffled by American scaremongering. This includes Pâviâraq Heilmann, formerly a fishing minister in Greenland, who has also been at the helm of several of the territory’s largest seafood and freight companies, including Royal Greenland.
He recently stepped down as chairman of the publicly owned seaborne freight company, Royal Arctic Line and its subsidiary Arctic Umiaq Line, which operates the maritime line between coastal towns.
“I asked the daily management if the captains see any Chinese and Russian vessels in the waters around our country,” he says. “They had not made any such observations at all. Nothing.”
He adds: “The same goes for the fishing trawlers. They have not spotted any vessels.”
“I am not sure he [Trump] has much of a conscience. He says Greenland’s strategic position means he needs us for national security.
“But he already has that. That argument is worthless. He’s just after the minerals. He’s a trophy hunter.”
The suspicion that Trump’s interest in Greenland is its vast deposits of rare earths is widespread.
“It’s not really any more about wanting to get Greenland because of security reasons, but coming up with security reasons to get Greenland,” says Menezes.
The island is rich in resources ranging from uranium that can be used to power nuclear plants to obscure minerals critical for modern-day electronics.
The territory’s melting ice sheet, which covers 80pc of its surface, could also reveal new riches.
Greenland is believed to hold vast oil and gas reserves, though the government has banned new exploration since 2021.
The exploitation of uranium is also illegal because of environmental concerns, with a ban in place on extracting rare earths from one of the biggest-known deposits.
This has not deterred private investors from taking a punt, however.
Tony Sage, the Australian chief executive of Nasdaq-listed Critical Metals, describes the country as a “treasure trove of minerals”.
His firm has a rare earths mine in southern Greenland.
“Greenland probably holds 50 to 60pc of the world’s rare earths,” he says.
Sage adds: “You don’t even know what’s under the ice further up. There’s gold there. There’s a massive iron ore deposit that we know about. There’s tantalum, there’s titanium.
“There’s also a lot of oil and gas, but the Danish government banned drilling for it in Greenland. If [a US takeover] ever happens, maybe [the Americans] want to drill for oil and gas as well.”
Following Trump’s renewed threats concerning Greenland, shares in Sage’s company have almost doubled in the space of a week.
The Australian businessman is convinced that the president’s obsession with Greenland was initially sparked by another mining company’s stratospheric rise in value during his first term.
“Trump got told in 2018 about how many rare-earth materials there were in Greenland,” he says.
Sage adds: “There was a massive company that just zoomed up. It was called Greenland Minerals, and they had a lot of rare earths.
“Unfortunately, for Greenland Minerals, there was a lot of uranium and thorium in it, but their stock went from two cents to almost $2 [£1.50] on the back of it.
“Within two months of all that coming out, Trump wanted to buy Greenland. It was no coincidence.”
From a national security perspective, Sage is supportive of Trump in seeking to strengthen the West’s grip on rare earths.
“He’s probably the only president who has really cared about the supply chain for critical metals,” he says. “It’s serious. Look what’s happened to gas in Germany. The same is going to happen with rare earths, if China controls 97pc of the supply.”
Investors, however, must overcome the logistical challenges of operating in a territory with extreme weather and the world’s lowest population density.
Greenland is almost 10 times the size of the UK, with its inhabitants spread across small coastal towns with no road links on land. Domestic flights can easily cost £600 to £700.
Unemployment is also low, making it difficult to source enough workers without importing labour. In Nuuk, many workers in the service industry are immigrants from far-flung places such as the Philippines.
However, Sage insists that concerns over logistical hurdles are overblown.
“They’ve built a brand new international airport 12km [7.5 miles] from our mine,” he says.
“It sits 250 metres away from the fjord, which is 68 metres deep, so a Panamax ship can come right up, put the ore in and take it out,” he says, adding that only three months ago a new gold mine opened nearby.
‘I don’t want to be American’
Trump has several times suggested he would reward Greenlanders handsomely for taking their country.
US officials – including White House aides – have even discussed handing lump sums to each of the island’s 57,000 inhabitants, it emerged last week.
They reportedly considered figures ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 per person..
It comes after Trump last year promised to make Greenlanders “rich”.
“We will keep you safe, we will make you rich, and together, we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before,” he told Congress in March.
Such offers, interlaced with threats of force, have hardly gone down well in Nuuk, where local shops sell T-shirts saying “Greenland is not for sale”.
Down by the harbour, local fisherman Nikolaj Josefsen is braving the cold and preparing his boat to go cod fishing with his brother.
“It’s unthinkable,” he says. “I don’t want his cash. I can work for my own money. It would destroy my humanity to accept it. We’re not interested.”
This sentiment is shared by many.
“I don’t want to be American. I’m not wanting for anything,” says an older Greenlandic woman, who asks to speak anonymously because of her job in the public administration.
She adds: “This whole ordeal has made me want to move somewhere else. It’s very scary. My granddaughter is so terrified she can’t sleep at night. I’m trying my best to comfort her.”
Members of other households are equally anxious.
“Even my teenage daughter asked me if we could move somewhere else,” says Aka Hansen, a filmmaker and independence activist. “She wanted to flee.” Others suspect Trump is trying to wear them down with confusing and shifting demands.
“Everything suggests this is a ploy to weaken their counterparty, make them nervous so they’ll surrender. It’s scary,” says Frans Heilmann, the fishing boss.
Kasper Skifte, a local pensioner, adds: “I don’t believe a thing Trump says, with his promises of sunlit uplands. What one might fear is that he’ll [take Greenland], and Denmark, the EU, and Nato members [will] do nothing.
“They won’t intervene militarily. I don’t like the implications of that. We’ve seen how the US treats our peers in Alaska, and the indigenous people in the US.”
It is a point several people highlight. Some 90pc of Greenlanders are indigenous Inuit. Many point to painful experiences under Danish colonial rule, such as children being removed for “re-education” and a mass programme forcibly fitting women with coils in the 1960s and 1970s. Unsurprisingly, many are wary of lofty promises from outsiders.
“People don’t think about our history,” says Hansen.
Hansen adds: “We have already been annexed by Denmark. That has been going on for 300 years. I hear a lot of European leaders today say that Greenland belongs to Greenlandic people, but actually, Greenland right now belongs to the kingdom of Denmark.
“There are no good colonisers anywhere in the world. They all are interested in the same thing, and it’s definitely not the indigenous peoples who are on the indigenous lands,” she adds.
Greenland’s leading opposition party is hopeful that any potential deal with the US could pave the way for independence.
“We’ve been seeking independence for many years now, and there’s a window of opportunity here for us, where we could actually go into a dialogue about concrete steps we can take to better Greenlandic people’s lives,” says Juno Berthelsen, an MP and foreign policy spokesman for the leading opposition party, Naleraq. He is convinced that Trump’s recent threats are mere posturing, adding that talk of military force is “unrealistic”.
Should an agreement be struck, Berthelsen hopes it will ultimately result in financial support for households in Greenland.
“It’s very expensive to live in Greenland,” he says. “The Greenlandic population are struggling, and will keep struggling because everything gets more and more expensive.”
Berthelsen adds: “We need to look at how the relationship with the US and the situation that we have now, how we can use that to build the partnerships that we have for the benefit of Greenlandic people.
“We have a lot of problems in terms of our infrastructure. Many smaller villages and cities along the coast have a problem in terms of being supplied. We need a better structure and a better system than we currently have, and we need to explore how the US can also be a part of finding solutions in terms of that.”
However, he is clear about one thing: “Greenland cannot be bought. We’ve said it openly. We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danish. We want to be Greenlanders.”
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