AS our flight slowly descends over Greenland’s barren and frozen wastes, it seems at first glance perverse that Donald Trump so covets this desolate land.
With night-time temperatures nudging -20C in the north yesterday, the island feels more like the middle of nowhere than a geopolitical hotspot.
Yet, Trump — fresh from snatching Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro — hasn’t ruled out using US military might to seize the remote territory.
On our taxi ride into the capital, Nuuk, driver Niels Aqqaluk tells me locals have co-opted their own MAGA catchphrase.
“We say, ‘Make America Go Again,” he says.
“We don’t want to be Americans and one day I would like us to be an independent country.”
ICE CLASH
Danes call for Euro troops to deploy to Greenland after Trump mulls paying $100k
ON THE TRIGGER
Denmark will ‘shoot first ask questions later’ if US invades Greenland
A major obstacle to Trump’s ambition for a land grab of stark but beautiful Greenland is that it’s part of the Kingdom of Denmark — a staunch NATO ally.
Why, I ask Niels, does he think Trump wants his homeland?
The dad-of-three, 64, revealed: “It’s because of what’s in the ground here.
“It’s about oil and minerals. It’s about money.”
My initial impression from Air Greenland’s tiny window of a land gripped by vicious winter doesn’t tell the full story.
Climate change is causing Arctic ice sheets to melt, turning fossil fuel-rich Greenland — wedged between the US and Russia — into a strategic and natural resource powerhouse.
Trump insists he needs Greenland “from the standpoint of national security”.
He has claimed Greenland is “full of Chinese and Russian ships” and that Denmark is incapable of defending its territory.
‘Real-estate deal’
Mocking the Danes’ efforts to bolster its military presence around the island with £3.4 billion-worth of military hardware, Trump joked that it amounted to a “single dog sled”.
Arriving in Nuuk, where brightly coloured clapboard houses sit on a dramatic coastline, it doesn’t strike me as Donald Trump’s kind of town.
It’s a world away from his Mar-a-Lago sunshine retreat in Florida.
Cawing ravens flap eerily between rooftops in the tiny capital, which has a population of just over 20,000.
And there are no gaudy skyscrapers or McDonald’s joints — Trump’s favoured cuisine.
Instead, many prefer the national dish suaasat, a thick broth made from seal, whale, reindeer or seabirds.
Football is popular and locals also enjoy ice fishing and dog-sled racing.
We are people, we are not for sale.
Chief Peter Berthelsen
If Trump fancies a round of golf, Nuuk’s only fairways are snowed under and players instead use indoor simulators during the winter months.
Yet, the President has a long-held ambition to raise the Stars and Stripes over the city.
Back in 2019 he tweeted a mock-up of New York’s Trump Tower on the island, saying: “I promise not to do this to Greenland!”
In his first term Trump described his plan to annex the territory as “essentially a large real-estate deal”.
This week US officials have discussed giving each of Greenland’s 57,000 residents — around 90 per cent of whom are Inuits — up to £74,000 each to sweeten any deal.
A worker at Daddy’s bar, Natasha, 31, tells me “none” of her regulars want Greenland governed by the US, adding: “We’re not something you can just buy.”
Playing pool, chef Peter Berthelsen, 31, added: “We are people, we are not for sale. Offering us money is like human trafficking.”
While children’s carer Birgithe Thorleisen, 63, said she’s “worried”.
Her message to the President is “let us be free”, adding: “We want peace in Greenland.”
Yet, if the US decides to attack Greenland, Danish military regulations state its forces should shoot first and ask questions later.
On Nuuk’s snow-laden main drag Lisbeth Karline Poulsen reveals she’s frightened by Trump’s sabre-rattling.
The artist, 44, told me: “I had nightmares the whole night.”
After Trump said last year that seizing Greenland was an “absolute necessity”, Lisbeth said she’d felt “traumatised”, adding: “This year it feels closer.
“We just want to be Greenlandic, an independent country. We feel Inuit, not American.”
As for suggestions that Greenlanders would benefit from being governed by the world’s most powerful nation, she added: “It’s cold here but we do have everything.
“We don’t live in igloos and we have the internet. But we don’t necessarily have a Western lifestyle.”
Many here still hunt birds and seals for the larder.
And Lisbeth points out that if the Americans are worried about security, they already have a military base on the island.
When Denmark was invaded by the Nazis in World War Two, Greenland was occupied by the US before being returned to Danish hands in 1945.
In 1951, Denmark and the US signed a defence treaty allowing the Americans to open military bases there.
A current US military facility at Pituffik in Greenland’s north west houses a vital ballistic missile early warning system.
While every Greenlander I spoke to opposes a US takeover, there is one keen to fly the MAGA flag.
Bricklaying boss Jorgen Boassen, 51, was punched off his barstool in a Nuuk hotel after championing the Make Greenland American cause.
The former boxer, 51, is living in self-imposed exile in Denmark, insisting there is a “climate of fear” in Greenland.
“People back home are afraid to associate with me,” he revealed. “Those who want the Americans to take over dare not speak out.
“My bricklaying company has closed because people have blacklisted it and the same thing is happening to other businesses who show support for Trump.”
So why is Trump risking the wrath of allies in what has been dubbed a neo-colonial land grab?
As the warming climate melts Greenland’s ice, billions of barrels of oil and a vast supply of natural gas are becoming easier to extract.
And rich reserves of gold, copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel and uranium lie waiting to be exploited. The receding Arctic ice pack is also opening up new transport routes.
Calls for independence
Ships will be able to sail from east Asia to Western Europe through the Arctic, instead of journeying via the Suez Canal. It will cut the journey time by almost half.
It is also strategically important for Britain.
The Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap has been called the “only sensible route” the Russian northern fleet has to get into the Atlantic Ocean.
US designs on Greenland are nothing new.
First mooted in 1867, a firm offer of £75million in gold to buy the island was rebuffed in 1946.
MAGA fans claim Greenland is part of North America, as it shares a land border on tiny Hans Island with Canada.
And Nuuk is more than 300 miles closer to New York than it is to Copenhagen.
Denmark has form for flogging its territory to the Americans.
In 1917 the US bought the Danish West Indies for £19million, renaming them the US Virgin Islands.
Greenland, once a Danish colony which gained home rule in 1979, voted to leave the European Community in 1982 over fishing rights.
Trump may also be buoyed by increasing calls by Greenlanders for independence from Denmark.
Tensions have mounted in recent years, especially over a forced contraception scandal in the 60s and 70s when Inuit females as young as 12 were forced to have coils fitted.
A row about Greenlandic children being separated by the authorities from their parents led to protests.
Danish tourist Kjerstine Nordentoft, 28, told me that Trump’s annexation plans have put her nation’s failings in the spotlight.
“Denmark has made a lot of mistakes in its colonial history with Greenland,” she said.
“It is important to have these conversations.”
Sir Keir Starmer insists the island’s future is for Denmark and Greenland to decide.
In Nuuk’s icy main street, artist Lisbeth pleads for the PM and other NATO leaders to “be brave”.
They will need to be. For Trump seems hellbent on claiming this icebound Arctic land for America.