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Aqqaluk Lynge, Greenland’s champion of independence, has undergone a radical conversion.
Half a century ago, the Inuit activist and poet co-founded one of the island’s biggest pro-independence parties, urging fellow Greenlanders to break away from Denmark, which he denounced as an exploitative colonial overlord.
“They must be removed. We will no longer pay the price,” he wrote in a 1975 verse. “Suffering cannot be relieved by consolation. Oppression is something to fight against.”
Now, however, Greenland faces what he sees as a far graver threat: US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly demanded control of the giant Arctic island, citing national security. As a result, Lynge told Reuters, he now believes his homeland must forever remain part of the realm of Denmark, which he views as its protector from American aggression.
“We feel betrayed by the United States,” the 78-year-old said in an interview at his home outside the capital Nuuk, where from his window you can spy chunks of ice floating in a nearby fjord. “We are in a very difficult situation, where the only ones that can save us today are Denmark and Europe.”
Lynge is not alone. The US president’s comments have triggered a mighty backlash that has helped alter Greenland’s political trajectory – much like in Canada, where patriotic anger at Trump’s rhetoric about making Canada the “51st state” of America swept Mark Carney’s Liberals back to power last year, after they looked destined for defeat.
For decades, vocally pro-independence parties dominated politics in Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory of about 56,000 people. Now, following an election held in March 2025 in the shadow of Trump’s threats, the government is led by a party that has ruled out any discussion of independence in the foreseeable future, while supporting a gradual approach to eventual secession. Even members of the government who previously advocated independence have swung against it in recent months.
“Our dream is to have self-determination, but right now we need to protect our future,” Mute Egede, Greenland’s foreign minister, told Reuters. “If the US takes us, the dream of self-determination will not exist anymore.”
It’s a seismic shift in Greenland. Politics here has long been shadowed by anger over past injustices perpetrated by Denmark, which colonized the island centuries ago and still controls its foreign policy and defense. In the 1960s and 1970s, for example, Denmark began inserting birth control devices in thousands of Inuit women and girls, many without their consent, to limit birth rates among the local population.
Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s acting prime minister, told Reuters that “Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland” and only they should decide their future. She added that her government had offered apologies for colonial injustices including the contraception cases.
“We must have the courage to face the wrongdoings of our shared past,” Frederiksen said in a statement. “That is the only way to maintain a close and respectful relationship between our two countries going forward. Greenland and Denmark are standing closely together.”
A White House official said Washington was holding talks with Greenland and Denmark to address national security concerns, and was optimistic discussions were on a good trajectory. The US State Department added: “We are confident we can find a solution that protects US national security, acknowledges Denmark and Greenland’s concerns, and dramatically improves future opportunities for the people of Greenland.”
Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister, did not respond to a request for comment.
To understand the changes sweeping the Arctic territory, Reuters spoke to dozens of Greenlandic politicians, officials and residents. Several pointed to Lynge and his shifting views as an encapsulation of their homeland’s morphing politics.
Lynge’s journey towards becoming a pro-independence firebrand began in the 1950s, when he was sent by his parents to study in Denmark. A seminal moment, he recalled, came in 1968 when a US bomber carrying nuclear weapons crashed in northern Greenland. Copenhagen denied authorizing such overflights of the island, which would violate Denmark’s nuclear-free policy. Lynge didn’t believe the government at the time and denounced what he told Reuters was Danish “hypocrisy”.
A Danish government-commissioned report later found that Copenhagen had in fact signalled approval of the overflights to Washington, whose Cold War mission was to constantly maintain a nuclear deterrent against the Soviet Union.
After returning to Greenland from his studies in 1976, Lynge co-founded Inuit Ataqatigiit, which dominated the island’s politics for decades along with fellow pro-independence party Siumut. Both parties called for ambitious moves towards independence from Denmark while allowing time for Greenland to build itself up economically. Since achieving home rule in 1979, the government in Nuuk has steadily acquired increasing responsibility for public services on the island.
In the previous national election in 2021, Inuit Ataqatigiit and Siumut, plus a smaller radically pro-independence party called Naleraq, together won almost 80% of the vote. Demokraatit, a pro-business party that advocates a more incremental approach to independence and prioritizes close ties with Denmark, languished with about 9% support.
Enter Trump.
In January 2025, upon his return to the White House, the US president doubled down on his advances towards Greenland, threatening tariffs on Denmark if it refused to sell the island and refusing to rule out using military force to seize it. In a speech in March last year, just days before Greenland’s latest election, Trump said of the territory: “I think we’re going to get it, one way or the other, we’re gonna get it.”
The US rhetoric upended the March vote. Capitalizing on growing fears about American intentions – as well as frustration over domestic issues like fishing reforms – the Denmark-friendly Demokraatit tripled its share of the vote to 30% and became the island’s largest party.
The reversal was a surprise even to Demokraatit’s founder Per Berthelsen, who recalled turning to his wife as the results rolled in. Excited and genuinely shocked, he said: “I think this is going to be a historical election.”
Nielsen, Demokraatit’s leader, formed a coalition with Siumut and Inuit Ataqatigiit, the longstanding pro-independence parties which collectively won just 36% of the vote, and a smaller pro-Denmark party.
The following month, Nielsen flew to Copenhagen for a show of solidarity with Danish leader Frederiksen. During a joint press conference, he explained his intentions: “We are in a foreign policy situation which means we have to move closer together.”
Some Greenlanders Prepare for War
Lynge’s evolving perspective is reflective of changing views among many Greenlanders. Among them are business figures like Bent Olsvig Jensen, who had been a strong supporter of increased US investment in the island before Trump’s threats made him more hesitant.
Jensen, a mining executive who was born in Denmark but has lived in Greenland for decades, said he didn’t entirely believe the US would launch a military attack. But he nonetheless decided to speak to his 21-year-old son about the possibility – and was shaken when his son told him he wanted to buy ammunition in preparation for a potential invasion.
Recalling the conversation while speaking to Reuters in a local hotel, Jensen began to cry. He said he had been deployed with the Danish military in Bosnia in the 1990s, so knew what war can do to a country and its people: “That is the last thing you would want.”
And yet, he said, he was proud of his son’s defiance against a global superpower.
Two other Greenlandic business figures who requested anonymity said they too had gathered guns and ammunition to use in any potential US attack. They added that many people they knew were doing the same.
The proportion of Greenlanders suffering from mental distress jumped from 7% to 31% over the last year, according to a study published last month by a public health institute in Greenland. The authors of the study, based on responses from 308 people, wrote that the crisis caused by Trump’s threats to seize Greenland was “significantly affecting” islanders “mental health and well-being.”
Alarm as US Military Snatches Maduro
Egede, Greenland’s foreign minister, rejected any suggestion the new government was airbrushing Denmark’s colonial record as it responded to American threats.
“We haven’t forgotten it,” said Egede, who served as the previous prime minister. “But in this situation we are right now in, we need to keep our right for self-determination, and this means that we need to cooperate very closely with all the Kingdom of Denmark.”
Egede, a stalwart of Inuit Ataqatigiit, the party founded by Lynge, has also undergone an evolution, though not as extreme as Lynge’s: He still wants independence, eventually.
The government’s new approach to Denmark is an affirmation of Lynge’s advocacy, says his daughter Pipaluk Lynge, an Inuit Ataqatigiit member of the governing coalition who chairs parliament’s foreign affairs and security committee.
Even she admitted to some surprise at her father’s reversal on the issue of independence. “He’s not ashamed to admit that the visions he had as a young man are now unrealistic,” Pipaluk told Reuters in an interview in Greenland’s parliament building.
She traced her father’s turnaround to Trump’s first term in the White House. The president first floated the idea of the US buying Greenland in 2019 and cancelled a state visit to Denmark after Danish premier Frederiksen dismissed the idea as “absurd.”
Lynge saw Trump’s comments as more than bluster, putting him at odds with many Greenlanders who believed he was overreacting and fearmongering, his daughter said.
When Trump returned to power with even stronger talk about Greenland in his second term, though, more and more people became receptive to Lynge’s concerns, Pipaluk said. For many, lingering doubts that the US president could follow through on his threats vanished in January this year, she added, when the US military seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in an audacious early-morning raid. She recalled waking up to the news and realizing the world needed to take Trump’s words seriously.
Now everything is different, she said.
“I think everyone knows, whether you’re a foreign minister or a local bus driver, that the world has changed,” said Pipaluk. “When the world changes, your strategy and your thinking should change also.”
Days after the Maduro operation, Greenland premier Nielsen made his strongest statement in support of Denmark to date. “We face a geopolitical crisis, and if we have to choose between the US and Denmark here and now, then we choose Denmark,” Nielsen told reporters. “We stand united in the Kingdom of Denmark.”
Lynge was euphoric. “I’m so happy that the government, the coalition government, finally declared: We are part of the Danish realm,” he said. “Now we understand that the only freedom that we’ve had for the last 300 years has been together with Denmark.”
Trump has since done little to assuage islanders’ fears.
Soon after the Maduro raid, the White House said it was considering using military force to acquire Greenland, prompting Denmark and NATO members like Britain and France to send small contingents of troops to the island.
Denmark was so concerned about an invasion, according to its national broadcaster, that its soldiers brought supplies of blood from Denmark, as well as explosives with which they could blow up runways to stymie American landings. Trump has since said he is negotiating with Denmark and NATO to gain “total access” to Greenland.
The Danish premier’s office declined to comment on the broadcaster’s report.
Denmark’s Colonia-era Sins
Not all Greenlanders have joined Lynge in embracing Denmark.
In another changing political current, Greenland’s election also saw the elevation of Naleraq, the island’s most radical pro-independence party. It won about 25% of the vote last year, up from 12% previously, by arguing that Greenland should take advantage of the crisis with Trump by negotiating with Denmark for immediate independence.
“Denmark is not a partner for us. It’s a hostage-taker,” Naleraq’s chair, Pele Broberg, told Reuters. He added that he was frustrated by talk of delay in moves toward independence from Denmark. “Now we got the chance to actually do something and they all run screaming to the hostage-takers to say, ‘Protect us from the rest of the world’.”
That frustration towards the kingdom is deeply rooted in Danish injustices carried out in the 1960s and 1970s, within living memory for some on the island. Among those abuses was the effort to limit birth rates in the territory, which involved Danish doctors inserting birth control devices in thousands of women and girls.
The full extent of that drive has only been revealed in recent years by media reports and government-commissioned inquiries by Greenlandic and Danish universities. In 2024, Greenland’s then-premier called the program a “genocide” based on the effect on the country’s population growth. Denmark’s government apologized the following year and offered compensation to the affected women.
Ineqi Kielsen, whose grandfather co-founded the pro-independence party Siumut and who is now the party’s vice-chair, grew up hearing harrowing stories of colonial sins. He said his parents told him his grandmother was forced to give birth by Danish doctors when seven months pregnant and that the boy was taken to another room, where he died.
Reuters couldn’t independently verify the account.
Every January, Kielsen said, his father would announce his dead brother’s birthday, telling their family: “Today, my little brother will be 30 years old, or 40 years old.”
Siumut’s leader didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.
Other scandals of that era, since acknowledged by Denmark, included the shuttering of dozens of small settlements and an effort to turn a group of Greenlandic children removed from their families into “Little Danes” by placing them with Danish foster families.
Most recently, Greenlandic activists have highlighted how decades-old Danish government tests aimed at evaluating parenting skills led to Copenhagen removing hundreds of Greenlandic children from their parents and placing them with Danish families.
A 2023 report by the UN special rapporteur on indigenous rights found that the tests, conducted in Danish, showed “serious cultural biases” that raised the likelihood of Greenlandic parents being wrongly assessed as having cognitive disabilities.
In 2025, in recognition of the controversy, Denmark’s government stopped using the test with Greenlandic families.
Frederiksen said Denmark and Greenland had agreed to begin a new investigation into their relationship since World War Two, adding that as prime minister she had been committed to reopening “some of the darkest chapters” in their shared history.
Aka Hansen, a Greenlandic independence activist who grew up in Denmark, said Danes still had little understanding of the island. As a child, she said, they would ask her whether she rode a polar bear to school or if the island had roads.
“Danish people are not taught anything about our culture, our society, our language, anything.”
The 39-year-old dismissed the views of Lynge, whose political “development has paused,” she said. “My parents’ generation were fighting for independence in the 70s, when they were young. And so, my generation inherited this fight that we are continuing today.”
‘Dreams about Forming a State Must Stop’
For many Greenlanders, however, that anger at Denmark has recently been tempered by fear of American aggression. Kielsen, the Siumut vice-chair, said he still supports ambitious self-determination. But faced with Trump’s threats, he said, most Greenlanders do not anymore.
“People are scared,” said Kielsen. “The Danish military trains on the roads here. They have their guns. It’s like we are in the warzone. So I think people are – these days, these difficult days make people think: let’s wait.”
Lynge, despite his delight at the political transformation Greenlanders have gone through, is concerned that it may not endure.
He still fears that independence from Denmark remains an attractive proposition to some Greenlanders, like Hansen. He is worried “young people again are talking about the colonial period” and that “victimisation has been the center of all their discussions, and that’s why they want to secede from Denmark.”
Of course, he had also been angry in the past. He took out a collection of his work and began to read one of his poems that he said was from around 1970, in which he describes Danes as “contemptible beasts.”
Lynge knitted his eyebrows together as he considered his prior convictions.
“I think it’s too much,” he said. “My feelings today are different.”
“All the dreams about forming a state must stop,” he said. “It’s very unfortunate that we live in this period of time,” he added, and “very difficult to understand that those dreams are just dreams and will never come true.”