A covetousness that gets people talking
The reaction was immediate. Imagine the scene in Nuuk on January 17, 2026: nearly a third of the city’s population took to the streets. They carried signs reading « Greenland is not for sale! » to protest the American purchase plan. But Trump, true to form, persisted. He even sent a series of text messages—yes, text messages—to the Norwegian prime minister to challenge Danish legitimacy.
His argument? Rather simplistic. According to him, « Just because the Danes landed there with a boat 500 years ago doesn’t mean they own the territory. » He adds, with his usual confidence, that there are no written documents and that « we also had boats that landed there. » Except that history, the real history, happily contradicts this simplistic version. The Scandinavians were there long before the 1500s.
Vikings, murders, and a brilliant marketing ploy
To understand this, we need to go back a long way. Between the late 700s and the year 1000, the Vikings were restless. They left Scandinavia on their longships, spreading terror in France and England, and pushing their exploration as far east as Russia. In the west, they founded cities such as Dublin and York. Why did they leave? Simple: they lacked fertile land at home, explains Danny Lake-Giguère, a historian at the University of Montreal. And then, let’s face it, there was a taste for adventure and the lure of profit.
This is where the Scandinavian sagas come in, stories that blur the line between history and legend. It all began around 960 with a certain Thorval Ásvaldsson. The guy was banished from Norway for murder—what a vibe—and went into exile in Iceland. His son, Erik the Red, clearly inherited his father’s hot temper, as he too was banished, this time from Iceland, also for murder. Unable to stay, he set sail westward and came across a huge island. It was here that Erik pulled off a masterstroke of marketing, well ahead of his time. He named the place « Greenland, » even though 80% of the territory was covered in ice. He wanted to attract settlers, and it worked. They settled there in 983. This Scandinavian colony lasted a few centuries before mysteriously collapsing in the early 15th century. Erik’s son, Leif Erikson, even ventured as far as Vinland (Newfoundland). While the accounts are sometimes vague, archaeology does not lie: at L’Anse aux Meadows, Parks Canada administers the only site that unequivocally proves European presence before Christopher Columbus.
The return of the Danes and the Kalaallit people
As the Vikings slowly disappeared, another people took root. Today, 89% of Greenlanders are Kalaallit, an Inuit culture related to that of the Canadian Far North. They arrived in the north of the island between 1200 and 1300. Unlike the Europeans, they knew how to cope with the cold. As Professor Louis-Jacques Dorais explains, these whale hunters moved south as the climate cooled in the 14th and 15th centuries. There were contacts with the Vikings, sometimes fights, sometimes marriages, according to oral tradition.
Greenland then fell into oblivion on the European side until 1721. That was the year Hans Egede, a somewhat stubborn Danish Lutheran missionary, arrived. He had heard legends about lost Vikings and wanted to find them. He obtained funding from the Crown (Denmark and Norway had been united since 1397). Spoiler alert: he found no surviving Vikings. Never mind, he changed his plan and decided to evangelize the Inuit. That was the mentality of the time: Christianize and trade.
Denmark retained control of the island, even after its separation from Norway in 1814. Until the 1950s, Copenhagen imposed a strict trade monopoly. But things have changed. In 1979, and especially in 2009, the Greenlanders gained almost complete autonomy. They are recognized as a people with a right to self-determination. Denmark now only manages defense and foreign policy. It is therefore far from being a simple « possession » as it was understood in the Middle Ages.
More than just a big ice cube: a major strategic issue
To counter this, the Americans occupied the island and built bases, including Thule, which remains the northernmost US military installation. But there was another, lesser-known reason: cryolite. This rare mineral, found only in Greenland, was essential for manufacturing aluminum for military aircraft. Without cryolite, there would have been no modern aviation at the time. Contrary to what Donald Trump suggested when he clumsily paraphrased Voltaire, Greenland is much more than a huge, uninteresting chunk of ice. It is a historical, human, and strategic crossroads that cannot be settled with a simple bank transfer, whatever some people may think.
Source: ici.radio-canada.ca This content was created with the help of AI.