Who Owns Greenland?

It sounds outlandish that President-Elect Donald Trump has said he wants to buy Greenland but this isn't the first or even second time the United States has tried to acquire this arctic territory. Dan is joined by Professor Robert Rix from the University of Copenhagen to trace the long history of settlement in Greenland - from the Indigenous Inuit to the Norse colonisers and the American soldiers stationed there in the Second World War. Trump might want to buy Greenland, but it isn't necessarily Denmark's to sell... You can discover more about the history of Greenland in Robert's book 'The Vanished Settlers of Greenland: In Search of a Legend and Its Legacy'. Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Mariana Des Forges. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

  Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far, we've covered the English Reformation, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com/subscribe or sign up in your podcast player. Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. A Republican president has his eyes on Greenland. It was believed that with Alaska secured, if Greenland was brought in, well, then Canada

• 0:43Dan Snow?

  would be surrounded and bow to the inevitable and join the United States. Greenland is a tempting target. And yes, folks, I'm talking about 1868. The USA has long had its eyes on Greenland. The US tried again in 1910. In 1930, the Danish Prime Minister had to announce publicly that Greenland is not for sale. Didn't stop the Americans, though. In 1946, they made an offer to buy it again. Greenland is important. It matters for its geography. It's a gigantic island with a very teeny tiny population. It's part of the North American continent, but it reaches far into the Arctic Circle.

• 1:28Dan Snow?

  Now, thanks to global warming, those waters around the coast of Greenland are increasingly ice-free. Resource extraction, shipping are becoming easier and easier. And as we know, the gaze of many northern hemisphere nations have been drawn to the Arctic, a new zone of opportunity and conflict. As you're hearing this podcast, many of these modern currents are not new. There are some important echoes here. I was lucky enough to talk to Professor Robert William Ricks. He's at the University of Copenhagen and he's just written the brilliant The Vanished Settlers of Greenland: In Search of a Legend and Its Legacy. He tells me how one of the smallest nations in Europe, Denmark, ended up ruling one of the world's largest islands on a completely different continent.

• 2:13Dan Snow?

  We go all the way back to its original settlement by Inuit peoples. We talk about its discovery by the Norse. In the 900s, there was a particularly troublesome family. Thorvald Asvaldsen was exiled from Norway to Iceland after he killed someone. His son, Erik, named Erik the Red after his fiery red hair, was then exiled from Iceland. And you sort of run out of road that boy, doesn't appear to be much further west you can go. But Erik, believe that there was. Erik did go west and he arrived in Greenland, which really wasn't that green. In fact, he admitted that he just gave it that name to attract settlers. And he did manage to convince enough people to head back to Greenland with him and start a colonial project.

• 2:56Dan Snow?

  And it was his son, Leif Eriksson, who was sailing to Greenland from Iceland on one occasion. He was blown off course. He arrived at what we now think is eastern Canada, Labrador or Newfoundland, quote unquote, discovering the North American mainland. The community on Greenland lasted longer than the communities that were established in in modern day Canada. For hundreds of years, Norse settlers lived and farmed and traded, based really in the the fjords of southwest Greenland. Now, I've been lucky enough to explore them. We were looking for new Norse sites using satellite technology and we camped next to a hot springs, one of the greatest trips I've ever been on. We camped next to hot springs that night.

• 3:35Dan Snow?

  We just sat in warm water, chatting, drinking beer, was gazing up at nonstop northern lights. That was a good trip. And Erik the Red's settlement of Greenland was the start of the connection with Norway, which, as you'll hear, morphed into a link with Denmark, which is why today, President-elect Trump is addressing his remarks about Greenland to Denmark and why the Danes have responded by intake of breath, changing their royal family's coat of arms to more prominently feature Greenland. They've got a polar bear now on the coat of arms more prominently, which is Danish for bring it on. Now, this is not a podcast that I was particularly expecting to record in 2025,

• 4:20Dan Snow?

  but actually, once you listen to it, you'll realise that that wrangles over Greenland are absolutely nothing new. But I also learned that perhaps Donald Trump is addressing his remarks to the wrong audience. Who really owns Greenland? Who are the deciders? Listen to find out.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  T minus ten.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

• 4:55Dan Snow?

  Robert, thank you so much for coming on this bizarre podcast.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me, Dan. It's an honour to be here.

• 5:02Dan Snow?

  Let's go all the way back. Let's go all the way back. When did humans first set foot on Greenland? Any humans, no matter where they're from?

• 5:09Speaker 04

  First time human foot was set on Greenland is some 4,500 years ago. So these would be paleo-Arctic people who entered from what is now Canada into Greenland. So they were there on and off, and there was a number of people that we know about, the Dorset, the Tule people, and some of them would be ancestors of what's now the Inuit, Indigenous population there.

• 5:38Dan Snow?

  Are they always on the move? Are they putting down roots? In what sort of ways are they living?

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, these were nomads. So they would travel, they would have hunting grounds, and they would move from place to place. So depending on whether it was summer or winter, they would go to different places in Greenland. They would be some places for an extended period of time, but then move on depending on where they could hunt. So that would be the case.

• 6:03Dan Snow?

  Robert, we should talk about that climate. It's pretty important in the Greenland story. It's a place where historically, humans have been only just able to survive, a place right on the margin. So I imagine that every change in our climate, every degree, every fraction of a degree warmer or cooler, it really makes its mark on attempts to survive, to thrive in Greenland.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I mean, this is very much an integral part of Greenland history. Basically, the only inhabitable parts of Greenland are the coastal areas. So these are ecological pockets, and you can do a little bit of farming there, as the Norse people would do, and you could live there sort of rather comfortably. But climate, as you say, was extremely important. Because when we get to the Middle Ages and the first sort of Norse settlements in Greenland, they would come there because they could farm the land, they could have, and this was during the medieval warm period. So a warm period between nine fifty and twelve fifty approximately. So this would be a welcome climate at the time.

• 7:09Speaker 04

  And part of the reason why the Norse people left Greenland was also because it got increasingly colder in the thirteenth century.

• 7:16Dan Snow?

  Right, well, let's let's get into that now. Let's get into the arrival of the first Europeans. What's your best guess about why and how people from Europe end up in Greenland?

• 7:26Speaker 04

  Well, at least according to the sagas, I mean, they are true. We know that the first person to really take an interest in Greenland was a very colourful character called Eric the Red. He was an Islander and he was accused of murder, he got into other squabbles. And at one point he was banished from Iceland. And he sought out this place in Greenland, a place to settle as he was banished for three years. And he thought this would be a place where I could establish a new colony. So part of the propaganda exercise, he sold this as the Greenland. And the sagas are quite clear about this, that this was to attract other settlers to come to Greenland.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  So this is in nine hundred and eighty six, this is the year in the sagas given for Eric the Red settling on Greenland. And this led to quite expansive settlement, Norse settlement from Iceland in Greenland.

• 8:22Dan Snow?

  These are not sort of officially sanctioned, this is not officially government-led colonisation. These are free booters heading across the ocean by themselves, are they?

• 8:30Speaker 04

  Absolutely, absolutely. So there's no official colony of that sort. So this only sort of comes later because the Norwegian king takes an interest in Greenland.

• 8:43Speaker 04

  And at some point, and we know this to be 1261, King Hawken Hawkinson establishes Greenland as some kind of protectorate. It's little unclear from the sources what this meant. But if we take the parallel of Iceland, we know that this was really guaranteeing shipping routes, which would obviously be important for trade. There may also have been some kind of protection. We know that, at least for Iceland, there was a number of English pirates who came there to fish in order to loot the coasts of Iceland. And presumably something similar could have happened in Greenland. At least there are stories told about this. And in some of the records, we know

• 9:24Speaker 04

  that pirates did came to Greenland's coast and looted, and presumably also kidnapped people.

• 9:30Dan Snow?

  You're not going to believe this, but here in Britain, we're raised on stories of Scandinavian pirates. We call them Vikings. Are you trying to tell me the Norwegians are raised on stories of English pirates ravaging the coastline, taking slaves and taking booty away?

• 9:43Speaker 04

  Well, at least we know in the early 15th century, there is a record of one of the leaders in Iceland was kidnapped and he was in an English prison. And he writes a letter to the English king at this time, arguing that really the English pirates had wreaked havoc in Iceland. And we also know that at least eight Icelandic children were traded as slaves in Norfolk in 1429. So maybe not raised on these stories, but we can find documentation that English pirates did come to Greenland. So yes, kind of reverse Vikings.

• 10:18Dan Snow?

  So we got, as a result of Eric the Red, we have people originally who took their lineage back to Norway. They're now in this place Greenland. It's not sort of government sanctioned initially. It's around the year 1000, so around 1000 years ago, extraordinary. And how are they surviving? Are they bringing European methods of ways of life with them?

• 10:40Speaker 04

  They are fishing, they are hunting. Certainly, there might have been a little bit of Eurocentrism there as well. And that might have been something that accelerated their exit from Greenland as well, when it became a little colder, because farming was also part of their trade. And that may have been a little more difficult as the climate got increasingly colder. So yes, they had sort of Eurocentric ways, we also know a little bit about from archaeological digs, they fashioned, they sported at the time, which was a European fashion, so they still kept in contact with mainland Europe throughout the colony's existence.

• 11:21Dan Snow?

  Eventually, the Norwegians establish a kind of crown protectorate over the area.

• 11:28Speaker 04

  Yes, they do, and this becomes part of the story of the Danish possession of Greenland. Because what happens in 1397, which is known as the Kelmer Union, is that the Queen Margaret I of Denmark establishes some kind of countermove to the Hanseatic League. So these commercial and defensive network of merchant guilds and market towns in central and northern Europe. In order to counter that, she establishes a Nordic community. So basically, the kingdoms of Sweden, Denmark and Norway are united, and then under the Danish succession.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  So at that time, the overseas colonies, the Norwegian overseas colonies, are transferred to Denmark. And that becomes really the origin story of why Denmark is now in possession, or why it's a part of Denmark today, because of that. The unification of Norway and Denmark, I mean, continues obviously after the Kelmer Union becomes defunct. And until 1814, Norway and Denmark are seen as a united, they are a united kingdom, under the Danish crown. And when Denmark has to cede Norway to Sweden in 1814, following a defeat in the Napoleonic

• 12:50Speaker 04

  Wars, it's quite clear in the Kill Treaty at the time that the overseas colonies, Norway, Iceland included, will still belong to Denmark.

• 13:00Dan Snow?

  Let's just finish off the story of those settlers, for whom I'm sure Norway and Denmark were both a long way away. Does the colony sort of ever, does it become lost? Is this a bit of a sort of faintly romantic or mythological idea about the end of this colony? What happens to those settlers in Greenland?

• 13:18Speaker 04

  The communication with the settlers in Greenland discontinues after 1410. The last record we have of the Greenland colony is a ship leaving in 1410 after a wedding in the eastern settlement.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  And after that, there are no records of any communication with Greenland. We simply don't know what is happening there. And it leads to all kinds of speculations. One speculation is that they've all been killed because at this time, maybe it's important to emphasise that when Eric the Red came to that southern part of Greenland, it was empty land. So it didn't take the land from anyone. But over the centuries, the ancestors of the Inuit moved down from Canada to reach at least first the hunting grounds in the north, and then later to the settlements in the south. And we do have records of skirmishes between

• 14:11Speaker 04

  the two peoples. So there could have been some violence involved, which have made life even more difficult in Greenland, in the Greenland colonies. Pirates, the climate, overfishing is also a possibility. After 1410, there would have been a colony there, but it probably would have discontinued around 1450, maybe a little later. We don't know how it came to an end. These are the bombastic visions, dystopian visions of all the Norse Greenlanders dying from the cold or from starvation. Probably that didn't happen that way. This was a time when the plague was in Europe, and lands would have become available

• 14:54Speaker 04

  in Norway and in Iceland. So presumably, some of these Norse Greenlanders just thought, well, that was a better option for me back in Iceland. And they might have hitched a ride with their boats and went back to Iceland.

• 15:08Dan Snow?

  Fascinating. So the European, people of European descent disappear from the Greenland story in around 1450?

• 15:17Speaker 04

  Around about that time, yes.

• 15:18Dan Snow?

  Which is so tantalising, because it's just a one or two, it's a generation before the Europeans will go back to the Americas, this time pursuing a very different route, a long way to the south, but extraordinary. So it's almost this brief gap where the Americas are European free. When do Europeans return to Greenland?

• 15:38Speaker 04

  So there's several attempts to reach Greenland, but because of internal and domestic problems in Scandinavia, it doesn't actually really happen until the early 1600s. So

• 15:51Speaker 04

  King Christian the Fourth launches three expeditions to Greenland. And this is basically to reclaim Greenland for Denmark. And it's still with this imagination that there are these rich colonies full of gold, full of resources. And resources must really be the headline here because as we move on, this will also be a theme or through line in much of what Greenland, the Greenland significance for Europeans is resources. But this time, Christian the Fourth is interested in finding the eastern settlements because of resources, because of trade.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  But that is to say, presumably fishing would still have taken place in the intervening years. At least we know when Denmark establishes a colony in seventeen twenty one, there are several boats already trading with the indigenous Greenlanders. So when the Danes come there, they realize that especially boats from the Netherlands have systematized trade along the coast. And that becomes a real problem and also a spur for the Danes to re-enter Greenland because they need to get a check on this, this trade, thinking that this is our land and we need to profit from it. So, so in seventeen twenty one is the re-colonization of Greenland.

• 17:13Dan Snow?

  These ships are coming back with their holds full of, of raw materials, are they?

• 17:17Speaker 04

  Not at this time, no. I mean, it's, it's quite a disappointment, this fantasy alive, that just beyond the horizon, there's gold, there's something to be found, there's this kind of the forests of Greenland described in the old texts will still be there, we just need to reach that eastern settlement.

• 17:33Dan Snow?

  Is there also a sense, like in the scramble for Africa later on, is there, is there a scramble for the Americas going on? Is there, is there a need, a need by in-European capitals to just start planting, planting flags? Even if initially, there isn't a strong economic argument for doing so.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  Absolutely. So go back to Christian the Fourth and his his seventeenth, early seventeenth century expeditions. I mean, this was really brought on by the fact that Martin Froebijs, the English explorer, had reached what is now Canada and brought back what initially was thought to be very precious metal, but turned out just to be completely valueless, or that had no, had no gold content in it. So it's, it is a competition at this time, it continues to be so. And certainly the Netherlands, also Britain, would survive for possession of Greenland, especially Greenland waters and whaling, it becomes increasingly important. And we must think of the Greenland waters as some kind of

• 18:34Speaker 04

  almost the parallel of the modern day oil fields. Because whale blubber is such a, a commodity that it is something that you really, you do anything to gain sort of access to these waters because whale blubber is used for, for lamps, for oiling machinery. So it becomes an industry at this time to, to find whale blubber. And this is also what you trade with the, with the indigenous Greenlanders, but whaling becomes so important at this time. So yes, there is this European competition and everything the Danes do is to curtail any kind of other European involvement in, in Greenland and Greenland waters.

• 19:20Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History, talking about Greenland. More coming up.

• 19:27Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery, a detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what all baffled historians about us, mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 20:11Speaker 05

  As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal, and Society twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

• 20:54Speaker 05

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• 21:07Dan Snow?

  Norway is joining Sweden, but Denmark keeps Greenland.

• 21:12Speaker 04

  That's right, that's right.

• 21:13Dan Snow?

  In the 19th century, the Americans appear to have made an attempt to secure Greenland. Who'd have thought it? Tell me about that attempt.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  So we are in 1867, and there are numerous very interesting parallels at this time, because the US Secretary of State, William H. Stewart, who had just negotiated the purchase of Alaska for the US. He also has his eyes on three Danish islands, the West Indies, so that's St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix. And that's been Danish colonies and been part of the triangular trade, trading sugar and slaves, but were no longer profitable at this point. So... There's this idea that the US could purchase these three islands from Denmark. And it is an exation frenzy.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  Both Greenland and Iceland entered the discussion as a kind of way to guilt the expansionist lily. And a report is produced at this time for the US government and also published. And this is gushing over resources. So there's fishing, there's coal, and there's a mineral called cryolite, which we can come back to, which becomes very important. But there's another thing that's sort of an echo of history here because we just look at the recent pronouncements by Donald Trump that it's not only Greenland he wants to buy, he also wants to make Canada part of the, as a 51st state of the US.

• 22:45Speaker 04

  And this is also a point here in the report because the report says that if Greenland could be bought for the US, it would induce what's called a peaceful and cheerful handing over of Canada, what's now Canada, to the US. Because it would be sandwiched between Alaska, Greenland and the US. So this would surely make Canada a state of the US. So that is this kind of, I would probably misattribute it to Mark Twain, where you say that history is rather fond of rhyming. But we certainly see a kind of, as Donald Trump in the same breath mentions Canada and Greenland, this is something that's been mentioned before.

• 23:27Dan Snow?

  Does that come to anything?

• 23:28Speaker 04

  It doesn't come to anything because the purchase of the three West Indies or the West Indian Islands falls through. And at that point, it's seen as that Greenland would probably not happen either. So an offer is never really made.

• 23:44Dan Snow?

  Through the rest of the 19th and early 20th century, what's the Greenland, what's the Greenland story?

• 23:51Speaker 04

  Well, there's a growing interest, American interest, throughout the century, the 20th century, early 20th century, an interest in Greenland. And to begin with, again, the theme is resources, but increasingly it becomes security. And that's also how Trump sort of couches this today, that it's for security reasons. So we know that in 1910, at least, security takes center stage. There's at this time, a fear among the Americans that the Prussian expansion may lead to a takeover of Denmark, and that would also mean the takeover of the three West Indian Islands. And since this is very close to the Panama

• 24:31Speaker 04

  Canal, it's thought that it would be a good idea to buy the West Indies. Now, the calculus is that the Danes should be sweetened into selling the West Indies, so it doesn't fall into the hands of Germany. So there's this scheme, which is quite intricate, which is that Denmark should give over Greenland to the US. In return, Denmark should receive a southern group of the Philippines, or islands in the Philippines. Denmark should then surrender these islands to Germany, because Germany had an interest in becoming a leading power in that part of Asia. In return, Germany should give back Denmark, the northern part of Sleswig, which it had lost. So this is the idea. And after that, if the Americans

• 25:15Speaker 04

  could set this in motion, they thought that that would sweeten the Danes to then sell the the West Indian Islands, again, because that would mean that they could keep control of the Panama Canal. And they aren't sold at this time in 1910, but they are sold in 1917. And this is again, a fear during the First World War, that this could be used for German submarines, so submarine station could be constructed there. So yes, in January 1917, the Danish government sells this island to the United States for 25 million kroner. And there's an interesting thing here, because one of the conditions for selling the West Indies is that the US should acknowledge Denmark's right to Greenland. And US fought

• 25:58Speaker 04

  short of ever doing that. But this was really part of the original demands, but it's never affected, it's never manifest in what happened at the time.

• 26:08Dan Snow?

  So that's so fascinating. So what we now know is that the US Virgin Islands were, in fact, Danish territory that was sold in 1917.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  They were sold in nineteen seventeen and Greenland, I think, is still very much on the agenda. We had a few records of this and we know that rumours were still bandied about that US would potentially buy Greenland at some point. So nineteen thirty, the Danish Prime Minister Torken Stowning comes out actually saying very publicly Greenland is not for sale. So we have been down this road before. So it's a kind of continuing interest from America in buying Greenland for security reasons.

• 26:48Dan Snow?

  So you mentioned security, obviously very important, but also particularly the twentieth century, industrial exploitation of raw materials, looking for new centres of resource, increasingly being seen as an economic asset as well?

• 27:02Speaker 04

  Certainly in the twentieth century, and I'll just briefly mention cryolite, which is this rare mineral, which has been mined in Greenland and commercially mined until nineteen eighty seven. Cryolite is used in the production of aluminium. And this becomes very important in the twentieth century and certainly during the Second World War because it's used for manufacturing of fighter planes, for instance. So there's a huge trade with the US. And after Denmark is invaded by Germany in nineteen forty, it becomes very important to protect that production of cryolite. And so what happens here is

• 27:42Speaker 04

  a super interesting story. There's the Danish ambassador to the US, a guy called Henrik Kaufmann. He basically goes rogue because he strikes this deal with the US that the US could come in and protect the Danish colonies. This is obviously not what the Danish government wants at this time. They've been occupied by Germany. So they can't agree to this. So they basically accuse Kaufmann of high treason. But he does establish this agreement with the US that and US servicemen, they do travel to Greenland and protect especially the cryolite mine, but also some of the stations there, the airports. The fix there is that

• 28:26Speaker 04

  They basically resigned from service and they then sign up as volunteers to create this fiction that the US is not in fact invading Greenland. Um. But they do protect the uh the mine there, the cryo, the production of cryolites, uh which should not fall into the hands of the German, obviously. They also um use the air bases there, so Greenland will be a hub for refueling from at least ten thousand planes during the World War Two landed in Greenland. There's also a place from where you could protect the ships going to Europe. So it becomes a very important um place, Greenland. And one other little twist maybe is what's called the weather war.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  Uh. Basically, on the east coast, um there were stations, weather stations, because being able to forecast the weather was extremely important for knowing when to launch a mission. Um. It's also used for D-Day, obviously, just a few days where the climate was clement enough to to to launch that mission. But throughout the um years of the war, uh there were um Germans established weather stations, um uh so the clandestine weather stations. Then the Danes uh or US established other weather stations so they could could forecast the weather. There's some skirmishes there, they would shoot at each other, um and that's known as the the weather war. So for many reasons, tactical reasons, uh Greenland was extremely important during the Second World War.

• 29:51Speaker 04

  And basically, given over as a as a US protectorate uh during the time when the Danish government was hamstrung.

• 29:58Dan Snow?

  So that's a hectic few years. So the Americans who are effectively running Greenland hand it back to Denmark at the end of the war and the Danes like, thank you very much, now please leave. And the Americans are like, well, we don't know, we're not gonna leave. And until Denmark enters NATO, that's that was a that's a curious position.

• 30:16Speaker 04

  It is a curious position and um there's this problem with the the US presence and the US at this time already uh realizes that that Greenland is extremely important.

• 30:28Dan Snow?

  And do they offer to buy it again at the end of the war? Do they chuck in a chuck in a quick bid then, just in case?

• 30:33Speaker 04

  In nineteen forty-six, uh the Secretary of State James F Burns offers them like a hundred million dollars. This is under the Truman administration. They flirted with the idea of swapping Greenland for some of the oil rich land in Alaska. That never came through and this has been kept as a secret, as it were, until recently.

• 30:55Dan Snow?

  Okay, so we've got Greenland then is becomes a really essential part of the West NATO NORAD's and anti ballistic missile posture. There's important bases there, there's monitoring stations there. I mean, it's fully integrated into North American defence at that point.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  It is indeed. And what you have in Greenland at the moment is what's the Peter Thicke Space Base, which was formerly and perhaps better known as the Thule Air Base on the North West Coast, built in 1951. And that still serves, as you say, as a an early warning stationed for ballistic missiles. It also tracks satellites, hence the the names at Space Base. And it also aims to track, and this becomes increasingly significant as the ice is melting in in the Arctic, to monitor Chinese and Russian ships off the coast. So so yes, this base is very much part of the part of American security.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  I think after Trump held this this conference, Denmark has now stepped up its security investment in the Arctic. So they're now going to increase the Arctic security because if Trump has a point, I mean, this part of the world becomes significant. And and I think had he couched this in slightly different terms, I mean, he said that this is what America needs. America needs to buy Greenland because we need to take care of American security interests. Had he said that that this would be for the interest of the Wests or for liberal democracies, this would have been perfectly aligned with the Danish and Greenlandic interests.

• 32:29Dan Snow?

  Meanwhile, what's going on with the the relationship between Greenland and Denmark?

• 32:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, if we go back and to look at the the constitutional arrangements in nine, Greenland is a colony of Denmark until 1953, when Greenland is incorporated into the Danish States. So this is something that is maintained to this day. There's what's called the unity of the realm of the Danish realm really consists of three entities. So there's Denmark proper, the mainland Denmark, there's Greenland and there's the Faroe Islands. And in nineteen fifty three, basically Greenland becomes a province, but the unity of the realm in nineteen seventy nine, Greenland is granted its home rule.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  And that's expanded in two thousand nine to become self-rule. That means that Denmark or the Danish government has very little, if any, say in domestic issues in Greenland. So this is where Trump goes wrong, because he says that Denmark should sell Greenland and that's simply not for Denmark to sell. And Greenland is completely devolved. Greenland Parliament has thirty one members. So selling Greenland would first sort of entail a discussion between Greenland and Denmark about whether there should be independence. Then independence should be ratified by some kind of referendum and then the Greenlanders should decide to sell themselves to America.

• 33:56Speaker 04

  So it's simply not for, it's a constitutional setup here is not for Denmark to sell Greenland. It's simply as impossible as it would be for Westminster to sell Scotland without any involvement of Holyrood.

• 34:10Dan Snow?

  Well, that's an interesting point. I guess it's the place to leave it, that the Danish position is that the people of Greenland are effectively sovereign. If they choose to pursue independence, for example, there's nothing constitutional to prevent Denmark from having that conversation.

• 34:24Speaker 04

  Absolutely. As of two thousand nine, Greenland is given away to achieve independence. Denmark also signed the Indigenous and Tribal People's Convention in nineteen ninety six, which acknowledges the Inuit as a people and therefore also the inherent right to self-determination. So it's basically in the agreement that if the Greenlanders want independence, they can have it. And I think this is the trajectory. I mean, this is what the Greenland people want. At least four out of five parties, political parties in Greenland, want independence. The problem is it will be a bit of a rocky road, simply because of the economy. So unless Greenland pivots the economy.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  Perhaps with American investments in mining, it will be very difficult. The Greenland economy is propped up by Danish, what's called a block grant, to the tune of 5.7 billion Danish kroner, which is equivalent of 684 million pounds. So it's quite significant for a population of 56, 57,000 people. So it will be difficult to achieve independence straight away. But I think that is the long-term prospect for many Greenlanders.

• 35:41Dan Snow?

  Thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast and talking all about that. That's absolutely phenomenal. Tell everyone what your book is called, for which you've already been on the Gun Medieval podcast.

• 35:51Speaker 04

  That's right, that's right. The book is called The Danish Setters of Greenland: In Search of a Legend and Its Legacy.

• 35:57Dan Snow?

  Well, thank you very much, Robert Ricks, for coming on the podcast.

• 36:11Speaker 06

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• 36:43Dan Snow?

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• 37:17Dan Snow?

  The.