Why a warming up Arctic island is at the centre of a new cold war

Donald Trump sparked controversy by claiming that the United States should annex Greenland. Before digging into it, however, let us understand the territory, beginning with a personal moment when all was quiet on the Western Front.

A few years ago, one of the authors was preparing for a journey from Norway to the United States.

To travel from Europe to North America, aircraft usually cross the Atlantic Ocean from east to west. There is, however, a ‘Trans-Artic’ or polar route that is chosen by some airlines operating from the Nordic countries.

Such planes fly north into the Arctic, cross Greenland, and then descend southward via Canada toward the west coast of the United States – often referred to in aviation parlance as the ‘Santa Claus shortcut’.

The polar route was chosen for a reason. It was a desire to fly over Greenland, never seen before, but long familiar from our school textbooks.

The voice of the geography teacher, punctuated by the tap of a pointing cane against the world map on the classroom wall of a Kerala school in the 1980s, still echoes in the ears: “Take a look at Greenland – the world's largest island, always covered with ice”.

Spending a few extra dollars on a window seat aboard the Norwegian Airlines flight from Oslo to San Francisco left little room for regret.

Frozen vastness 
Taking off from Oslo, the flight crosses the Norwegian Sea, and Greenland slowly comes into view. From the air, one sees a vast landmass buried under thick snow across almost its entire breadth, in some areas hundreds of meters deep.

As the aircraft crosses the eastern and western coasts, only a very narrow strip of green becomes visible for a brief moment. The view instantly and unmistakably conveys how barren the island is. Life in Greenland is confined to the coastal edges!

More intriguing than its geography is how a frozen and largely inhospitable land with very limited greenery came to be known as Greenland.

Greenland was first called so around 1,000 years ago. Contrary to what one might expect, this naming was a Viking marketing stunt.

Here it goes, if we believe the Norse sagas – as most historians do.

Viking explorer Erik the Red, banished from Norway after a series of killings, sailed west and named the newly discovered icy land ‘Greenland’. By his logic, a pleasant name mattered more than the landscape itself – it would lure settlers to an ungreen, ice-sheet-covered terrain.

However, the legendary explorer’s logic didn’t work. Even after a millennium, Greenland remains one of the least densely populated territories on Earth, with 0.14 people per square km.

Vast yet little explored, the landmass existed as a semiautonomous, self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark and remained largely absent from global political calculations.

Inuits and Vikings
Greenland is inhabited predominantly by Inuit people – once commonly referred to as Eskimos, a term now considered outdated. Images of igloos made of cut ice are often associated with them, though most Inuit today live in modern housing.

Human settlement in Greenland occurred in waves as far back as 2500 BCE. Some populations endured; others disappeared.

The Inuit mastered life in extreme cold, hunting marine animals using kayaks made of animal skin and tools refined over generations.

With a population of just about 56,000, Greenland was colonised by Europeans, specifically Norwegian Vikings. However, unlike much of the world, not through large-scale warfare. Who would venture out to fight wars where survival itself is a daily struggle?

For centuries, Norse settlers and the Inuit coexisted in relative peace. Meanwhile, Norway entered into a union with Denmark, in which Denmark gradually became the dominant power. When the union dissolved in the nineteenth century, Greenland remained under Danish control.

Norwegians sometimes joke that they forgot to include Greenland in the separation agreement. The joke is historically false, but it reflects a deeper truth: for a long time, Greenland was seen as strategically and economically irrelevant.   

Climate change effects
Climate change has emerged as a game-changer for the world’s largest island, making its fanciful name real. Global warming is melting Greenland’s ancient ice sheets, quite literally turning it greener – both ecologically and economically.

Many studies have shown that Greenland’s green cover along its coastal regions has increased several-fold, transforming formerly icy and rocky landscapes into tundra, shrubland, and wetland vegetation.

As the ice melts, Greenland’s vast reserves of minerals, natural gas, and oil are coming within human reach for the first time. Moreover, melting Arctic sea ice is opening a shorter summer shipping route near Greenland, saving thousands of miles compared to the Suez Canal.

With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Greenland has emerged as an attractive site for massive data centres, driven by its Arctic climate, which lowers cooling costs, and its vast renewable energy potential.

No wonder then that a real estate developer turned American president was drawn to Greenland, even as the official White House position framed it as a strategic necessity to contain the increasing role of Russia and China in the Arctic.

The American claim
Donald Trump laid bare his intention to acquire Greenland from Denmark, invoking a blunt logic: “The fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn’t mean they own the land.”

The US President even claimed that the United States would acquire Greenland “the easy way or the hard way.”

In fact, Trump’s reasoning drew on historical precedent. In 1917, the United States purchased the Danish-controlled islands in the West Indies, later renaming them the US Virgin Islands. From Copenhagen’s perspective, however, Greenland – though semiautonomous – remains embedded within Denmark’s constitutional framework, forged through centuries of governance and cultural ties.

Following the US threat, Denmark – backed by its European allies – reinforced its diplomatic and military posture in the Arctic. In addition to deploying troops to Greenland, several European nations adopted symbolic diplomatic measures, including France’s recent decision to open a consulate in the capital Nuuk.

For now, Trump appears to have withdrawn attempts to annex Greenland in the face of staunch opposition from European NATO allies.

The Greenland controversy initiated by Donald Trump evoked an earlier era of rule by might and territorial acquisition through force. Yet history also offers examples of peaceful coexistence in the Arctic.

The Svalbard model
Svalbard is a remote, frozen archipelago north of mainland Norway, where the sun does not rise for nearly three and a half months each winter – resembling Greenland in many respects. Once used by hunters and fishermen from Norway and Russia, its future was settled through diplomacy rather than conflict.

In 1920, the Svalbard Treaty was signed by the United States, several European powers, Japan, and British India, and was later ratified by more than 40 countries. The treaty grants Norway sovereignty over Svalbard, but under strict conditions: the islands cannot be used for military purposes, and all signatory states enjoy equal rights to conduct scientific research and economic activity.

Today, 10 countries operate permanent research stations there – one of them belonging to India.

Interestingly, Svalbard is home to a global seed vault built deep inside a frozen mountain. It functions as a backup repository for the world’s crop seeds, safeguarding the genetic diversity of food plants against war, natural disasters, climate change, and other crises that might destroy seed collections elsewhere.

Svalbard remains a reminder that humanity is better served through cooperation and diplomacy, rather than through the imposition of power, in a climate-critical region of the planet such as the Arctic.

Tailpiece
Interestingly, there is a historical connection in reverse between Greenland and the United States. Erik the Red, the Viking who “discovered” Greenland for Europeans, had a son named Leif Erikson. He voyaged further west from Greenland, partly guided by Inuit oral accounts of lands beyond the horizon.

Apparently, Leif Erikson reached the North American continent nearly five centuries before Christopher Columbus, and named the new place ‘Vinland’.

Archaeological evidence from L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, present-day Canada, strongly supports Norse presence in North America before Columbus, though it did not lead to lasting European settlement.

Present-day Europeans in the Arctic may take pride in their ancestors’ voyage to Greenland and North America. Yet, like the rest of the world, they now anxiously watch whether Trump’s ‘modern Vinland’ would forage into Greenland for new green pastures.