In Greenland, a cold shoulder for Trump, but curiosity about U.S. ties

NUUK, Greenland — The people of Greenland, the Inuit, the people of the farthest north, are famously quiet. At church, you can barely hear them when they sing. In conversation, you have to lean in. This doesn’t mean they are passive. They eat polar bears.

Greenland is not for sale. That’s the dominant refrain from the people in the subzero capital of the world’s largest island.

But might Greenland be for rent? Or amenable to a Compact of Free Association? Just as the United States has in the Pacific with the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau?

Based on interviews here, President-elect Donald Trump would have his work cut out for him convincing people of the merits of his desire to “make Greenland great again” by acquiring it, somehow.

“I don’t trust the guy,” said Bilo Chemnitz, who drives a snowmobile at the local ski slope in the half-light of winter. “I want Greenland to stay like it is.”

After Mass at the red-painted Nuuk Cathedral, Ida Abelsen pointed her finger toward her mouth, in the universal gesture of “gag me,” saying, “I don’t like the way he talks about Greenland.”

Yet there are also some here who are Trump curious — who want to hear more about how their lives might improve with closer ties to the United States.

Those lives today are not bad: free health care, free education for all, and for the needy, subsidized housing. As a self-governing territory of distant Denmark, Greenland has limited self-rule but is also a welfare state. A third of the gross domestic product and half the state budget are supplied by Denmark, about $500 million a year.

That’s about what the U.S. government announced in military financing for the Philippines last year. So it’s not hard to envision upping the bid for influence in Greenland.

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