What to know about Greenland, the big frozen island Trump wants to control
Colorful red, blue and yellow houses dot its snow-covered hills. Seals, whales and fish swim in the frigid, glacial waters that lap its shores. And it’s covered in ice.
What else is there to know about Greenland? More than you might think.
President Donald Trump’s recent calls for the U.S. to acquire control of the large arctic island have put it in the spotlight. But Greenland has a rich history on the world stage.
Here’s what to know about the sparsely populated, frozen territory.
Greenland's relationship with Denmark
The first people migrated to Greenland around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago from Asia. They crossed the Bering Strait, a narrow passage between present day Russia and Alaska, into North America, and then traversed north into Greenland, according to Denmark's official website. Around 88% of Greenland’s population today are Inuit people, or indigenous descendants of those early migrants, according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.
Europeans first arrived in Greenland, around 1,050 years ago. A Norwegian Viking known as Eric the Red voyaged to Greenland after he was banished from Norway, and then Iceland for a series of murders. The story goes that he named the island because of the green meadows he found when he landed on its shores in the summer and because he believed the name would entice people to want to settle there.
After centuries of trading with the native Inuit people, Denmark began to colonize the island in the 18th Century and, according to the Danish Museum, officially declared its authority over Greenland in the 1930s.
Today, Greenland is recognized as an autonomous territory of Denmark with its own parliament and prime minister.
Greenland is a large island with a small population
Greenland is the world’s largest island, spanning more than 835,000 square miles, with around almost 80% of that land covered by ice caps and glaciers. The inhabitable, ice-free areas of the island, mostly located along the coast, are believed to be about the size of Sweden.
The island, itself, is about three times the size of Texas.
But Greenland’s population of roughly 56,000 is a small fraction of the Scandinavian country. For context, the least-populated U.S. state, Wyoming, had around 577,000 people at the time of the 2020 U.S. Census. Greenland’s entire population could just about fit into Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
Nuuk, Greenland’s most populated city, is home to roughly 35% of its residents.
Greenland's on-and-off relationship with the U.S.
Greenland has had a long, and at times tumultuous, relationship with the United States.
The island briefly fell under the protection of the United States, which was interested in its critical weather stations, after Germany occupied Denmark during World War II. President Harry Truman offered $100 million − about $1.3 billion today − in gold to Denmark for Greenland after the war but they declined the offer.
Later, during the Cold War, the U.S. established a military base called Camp Century in Greenland as a top-secret site for testing the feasibility of deploying nuclear missiles. The U.S. miliary was investigating whether it could store ballistic missiles in underground trenches below the ice that could reach Russia from Greenland. The base housed 85 to 200 soldiers and was powered by a nuclear reactor. It was abandoned in 1967.
In 2004, the Inuit people filed a human rights complaint against the U.S. arguing that it’s policies were substantially contributing to global warming and were threatening the livelihood of their people.
The U.S. opened its first consulate in Greenland in more than half a century in 2020 during Trump’s first term.
Mineral-rich territory
The U.S. has long sought a relationship with Greenland for strategic and resource reasons.
Melting ice in Greenland has exposed rich natural resources. A report published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Letters found that the ice covering Greenland is losing around 110 million Olympic size swimming pools worth of water annually.
The rare earth minerals found on the island have been described as “critical raw materials" by the European Commission that are used to make weapons, small electronics and clean-energy technologies, like electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines. Some of those sought-after minerals and metals include graphite, copper, nickel, zinc, gold, diamonds, iron ore, titanium-vandadium, tungsten and uranium.
Off the coast of Greenland, the U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that there are more than 31 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and natural gas.
The people of Greenland for years have been investigating ways to profit from the rich resources in their land while mitigating harmful environmental impacts that mining and drilling could bring.
Contributing: Elizabeth Weise