History of Greenland: An Overview
Greenland made the news due to the surprising statement by newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump, who expressed interest in buying the icy island from Denmark. What are America’s interests in this God-forgotten place? And what is the history of human settlement on this, to put it mildly, far-from-ideal island for habitation? Join us in the Land Beyond the Northern Wind.
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The vast Greenland island lies in the Arctic Ocean, northwest of the Faroe Islands and Iceland, and northeast of the coasts of Canada. Geographically, it is closer to North America than to Europe. Greenland spans 2,166,000 square kilometers, and its capital and largest settlement, Nuuk, is located at 64 degrees and 10 minutes north latitude and 51 degrees, 44 minutes west longitude. The total population is under 60,000 people, with nearly 90% of the residents being Inuit, Aleuts, and Eskimos. 7.5% are Danes, and the remaining 3% are mainly Norwegians, Icelanders, and Canadians. The population is scattered along the coastline, mostly on the western shore, facing Canada.
Greenland is the largest island in the world. It stretches between 59 and 83 degrees north latitude and 11 and 74 degrees west longitude. The island has a close maritime border with Canada and shares waters with Iceland. Over 80% of the country’s territory is covered by ice, with only the coastal areas free from the ice sheet. The highest elevation is Mount GunbjornFeld at 3,700 meters. The exotic aspect is that the peak’s name literally means “Gunbjorn’s Field,” as the rock barely protrudes above a vast ice field, covered in snow, and does not appear particularly impressive despite its significant height. Beneath the ice sheet, the island is carved by deep canyons. Since 1900, Greenland has gradually lost part of its ice mass. Since 1980, it has been observed that the melting of the ice towards the sea is not compensated by enough snowfall, so if the current trend continues, it is expected that a larger portion of the island will be uncovered and greening will occur.
The waters around Greenland are rich in fish and marine mammals. The coastline is covered with low shrubs, grasses, summer flowers, and lichens, which serve as pasture for livestock such as goats and domesticated reindeer, as well as for a fauna of birds and wild land mammals like the Arctic hare, lemmings, and musk oxen. Among predators, the polar bear takes the top spot, and it is also featured on the country’s coat of arms. Additionally, Arctic wolves and Arctic foxes can be found.
Greenland is rich in natural resources, which, along with its strategic location, make it at least theoretically attractive to northern governments despite its harsh climate. Gold, zinc, graphite, copper, diamonds, titanium-vanadium, uranium, and tungsten are some of the established resources in this country. However, the deposits discovered so far are mostly traceable only in the ice-free coastal areas. Greenland also has oil, but its extraction is prohibited in order to preserve the pristine nature. Despite enjoying significant autonomy since the 1960s, the economy of its 58,000 inhabitants depends on subsidies from the Danish government. The King and the authorities in Copenhagen are willing to partially support the Greenlanders but are not willing to pollute the island or jeopardize the valuable population of marine life around it.
The harsh climatic conditions also determine the realities of human presence, which lacks the historical dynamics of more hospitable regions. Nature is the main character and the driving force behind the events of this extraordinary place.
Throughout most of the traceable prehistory and early history, Greenland was primarily inhabited by the Inuit – a population related to the Native Americans of North America and, until recently, popularly known in Europe as “Eskimos.” In fact, the term “Eskimo” refers to just one of several historically known Inuit cultures. The Inuit are part of the circumpolar population – a small human population of related ethnic groups, descendants of ancient hunter-gatherers pushed out from more hospitable regions, sharing the harsh conditions of the northernmost parts of Asia, North America, and our Greenland.
The First Inuit
The first people to appear on the shores of Greenland came from North America around 2500 BC. This first Greenlandic population was small and descended from the descendants of Siberian hunters who had migrated to North America several millennia earlier. The first Greenlanders are conditionally referred to as the “Sakak culture” and survived until around 800 BC, when their last representatives either left the island or died due to unfavorable conditions. Given the exceptional fish catch in the surrounding waters, the second option is relatively unlikely. It was not hunger, but cold, that could drive people away from here.
Almost parallel to the Sakak culture, the Paleo-Eskimo “Independence” culture developed in Greenland, named after the “Independence” fjord, where remains of its existence were discovered. The differences in the daily life and material traces of the two ancient settlements are not significant. We do not know whether these first island inhabitants came into contact or conflict with each other. The settlements around Independence were not as permanent as those of the Sakak: the fjord was sometimes abandoned, so archaeologists speak of the “Independence I” and “Independence II” periods. The residents of the fjord may have been most closely related to the people of the “Dorset culture,” who inhabited the northernmost parts of Canada between 2400 BC and 1500 AD. In any case, the Eskimos or Inuit from these long, but historically undocumented millennia remained few in number and technologically limited due to the extreme living conditions. They certainly knew fire, fishing boats, and weapons such as harpoons and knives, often made from sharpened bones of large marine mammals. From walrus and whale bones, these ancient inhabitants of Greenland and Canada also crafted beautiful animal figurines and one elegant, yet practical item – a face mask, or something akin to dark glasses, which limited the field of vision, thus protecting the hunter’s eyes from the blinding glare of the snow.
Greenland has its periods of complete abandonment. The people of the Independence fjord disappeared in the first century AD. New, later Dorset people appeared centuries later, around 700 AD, and remained there until 1300, coinciding with the first white European settlers arriving from Iceland.
Medieval Scandinavians: Farmers, Sailors, and Vikings
Who discovered the Americas? A common misconception is that it was Spanish Admiral Christopher Columbus in 1492-93. The admiral served Spain but was an Italian from Genoa. He reached the island of San Salvador and rightly suspected that there was a continent further west, but he never made it to its shores. On top of that, Columbus wrongly believed that the world was much smaller than it is and that the continent was Asia. In 1495, Columbus’s contemporary Amerigo Vespucci finally reached the continent, which turned out to be previously unknown. But centuries before, the Scandinavian Vikings had already reached another part of North American territory.
The “Book of the Icelanders,” “The Book of the Conquest of the Land,” “The Saga of the Greenlanders,” and “The Saga of Erik the Red” are just some of the most famous ancient Scandinavian texts telling the story of Icelandic sailors and settlers along the icy island’s shores. The fame of the first Norwegian and Icelandic travelers in the northern seas spread as far as Germany and perhaps, over time, was reflected in late medieval Italian maps.
The first Icelandic ships reached Greenland around 986 AD, in the first decade of the long wars between Tsar Samuel and Basil II. Iceland itself, along with the Faroe Islands, was settled at the end of the 9th century by Norwegian nobles and farmers fleeing the violent attempts of the Ingling dynasty to unite Norway and impose Christianity. The lack of cultivable land, food, and timber, the ambitions of Viking “sea kings,” and the gradual spread of Christianity pushed the boldest sailors further north and west, far from the familiar world. For the Scandinavian seafarers with their narrow, open ships, sailing through the increasingly cold ocean, full of icebergs and whales, was not just an approach to the end of the world but to the very entrance to Hel – the chasm marking the end of the world and the beginning of the abyss leading to the icy hell of northern mythology. Despite the incredibly difficult conditions, some Norwegian and Icelandic captains continued to explore the sea routes. Their inspiration may have been fueled in part by the fantastic stories of Irish Christian monks about imaginary lands, islands offering trials, strange encounters, treasures, and adventures. Iceland itself may have been rediscovered by the Scandinavians due to such Irish monastic tales. While in the south, along the shores of the British Isles and Western Europe, the Normans became fearsome pirates and conquerors, in the desolate ocean to the west, they risked everything with unclear hopes of discovering new lands for settlement… or facing death that would become the subject of sagas celebrating them.
In Greenland, the Scandinavian sailors established three settlements – west, south, and north.
The first Scandinavian leader to reach Greenland was most likely Erik Thorvaldsson, or Erik the Red, from Rogaland in Norway. He lived at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries. His son, the famous Leif Erikson, would continue his father’s journey even further west, to a vast new land called Vinland – most likely the coastline of Newfoundland in Canada. Thorvald, Erik’s father, was forced to leave his lands in Norway and move to the then hospitable Iceland, from where Erik and Leif would later continue their journey north and west. Within Thorvald’s family, both Christians and Scandinavian pagans coexisted.
The Anarchistic Icelandic Republic (930-1262)
Around the year 1000, Iceland was an extraordinary medieval society, very much resembling an ideal minarchist republic. The country was divided into thirteen districts, each ruled by thirteen wealthy landowners who not only owned large estates but also private temples dedicated to the Norse gods. Once a year, the Icelanders gathered at the Althing, a kind of fair, court, and parliament, where they discussed all their affairs. Iceland had no king or other ruler, but only a lawspeaker – an elected interpreter of customary law. The kings of Norway tried to impose their power over the island, but they would not succeed until 1262. In the year 1000, the Althing of Iceland voted to adopt Christianity as the new faith of the island, but pagans were allowed to discreetly worship the old gods in their homes. At this time, Iceland still had no cities or villages, no guard, fleet, or army. The population lived in separate farms and survived through fishing, livestock farming, and attempts to grow rye. Many of the more prominent Icelanders spent at least part of their lives at the courts of various Scandinavian or British rulers as poets, pirates, traders, and mercenaries. All decisions of the Althing were carried out voluntarily, through a consensus of goodwill. Every year, one of the more troublesome Icelanders would be sentenced by the Althing to a certain number of years in exile to limit violence. Icelandic exiles often became well-known abroad. Iceland was one of the pinnacles of early medieval Scandinavian culture. Its population of nearly 60,000 created a vast number of oral and written sagas – stories of varying degrees of authenticity, filled with incredibly detailed descriptions of the lives, family connections, and adventures of both fantastical and real individuals from this heroic period.
On the Edge of the New World
In fact, the Scandinavians may have reached the shores of Greenland as early as around 900 AD, but no one disembarked or settled there. So, as an exile from Iceland after some exchanges of arguments with neighbors with weapons in hand, Erik the Red set off to find a new land to settle. Instead of heading towards warmer seas and relatively civilized lands like Ireland or Denmark, Erik and his fellow exiles ventured into the unknown part of the ocean. Between 982 and 986, they discovered land. Erik began building his own farm or estate there. The southern and eastern parts of Greenland offered conditions almost as hospitable as those in Iceland, so the settlers were optimistic.
In the year after settling, Erik led several expeditions around and within Greenland, exploring the land. He then returned to Iceland to attract more rebellious individuals for settlement. Legend has it that he coined the name “Greenland,” meaning “Green Land,” in order to make it sound appealing. To succeed in reaching Iceland and returning alive, it seems that his legal period of exile had expired. Erik set off for Greenland a second time, leading 700 people on about twenty small ships. He reached it with nearly half of them. The sea took its toll. European presence on this inhospitable land near America was now a reality.
In the next decade, three more small fleets set out from Iceland to Greenland. The self-confident, authority-rejecting settlers found even Iceland’s anarchistic society too limiting. Three settlement zones were established – the southern and eastern, neighboring each other, as well as the more distant western one. Over 600 separate homes were founded, with the total Scandinavian population fluctuating between 2,000 and 10,000 people. If the second figure is closer to the truth, it likely means that Erik attracted people not only from Iceland but also from the Faroe Islands and even the Hebrides. The Scandinavians came into their first contact with the completely foreign Inuit and Eskimos, who hunted along the shores and in the frozen interior of the island. The Inuit oral folklore has also preserved tales of these encounters, adorned with miracles and fantastical details.
The Northern Cross
Among the earliest settlers in Greenland, there were Christians, as evidenced by preserved wooden crucifixes found in the remains of the first Greenlandic burials. Since Christians needed ordained priests, they sought contact with the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Iceland, Norway, and distant Germany. Formally speaking, the first parishioners of the small church in Brattahlid (Erik’s estate) were under the distant authority of the Archbishop of Bremen. In 1118, the Greenlandic Christians sent Einar Sokkason to ask the Norwegian King Sigurd the Crusader to appoint a bishop for Greenland.
The first bishop of Greenland was named Arnald. He was ordained in 1126 and sent to his solitary flock in the midst of the icy ocean aboard a royal ship carrying goods, letters, and people. The good bishop died in Greenland and was buried in the church at Garðar. The Catholic diocese in Greenland took control of many farms, and most of the inhabitants of the land became personal vassals of the bishops. Of course, this did not apply to the Inuit, who continued to follow their own beliefs in spirits.
Vinland and Markland: The American Expedition
Around the year 1000, Leif Erikson decided to venture toward the land from which the Inuit came. Initially, he convinced his elderly father Erik to accompany him, but the old man fell from his horse during the preparations for the journey and took this as a bad omen, so he stayed home. Later, Erik the Red would die in an epidemic. As the unbaptized Scandinavians believed, one could not escape their fate. In his last years, Erik made several trips between Iceland and Greenland, establishing regular contact between the two islands. He had become the ruler of the most distant European colony even before the beginning of the Crusades. His son would surpass him.
Possibly following the guidance of Inuit guides or the lone Icelandic adventurer Bjarni Herjólfsson, Leif Erikson and his crews reached the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River and the coasts of New Brunswick in present-day Canada. There, they founded several settlements and soon came into contact with local Indian tribes – not just Inuit, but probably also the ancestors of the Mi’kmaq, who can still be found in this Canadian province today. The Scandinavians called the local people “skrellings.” The only indisputable confirmation of the success of the Scandinavians in reaching the Americas is the current archaeological site of L’Anse aux Meadows in New Brunswick. There, Leif Erikson attempted to replicate his father’s success. Part of Baffin Island in Canada was given the Scandinavian name “Markland.”
In Norway, rune inscriptions have been found on gravestones, indicating that some adventurers not only managed to reach Vinland but also returned to Europe. For example, the Hønen stone from Norderhov, Norway, contains the words: “… from Vinland through the ice…”
Around 1010, Thorfinn Karlsefni, with a crew of 160 men, reached Vinland from Iceland. He sailed along part of the coastline of the mainland and went so far south along the American Atlantic coast that he reached a place where it did not snow during the winter – possibly the shores of Virginia or even North Carolina, where, centuries later, the English would establish their colonies. Leif, Thorfinn, Thorstein Erikson, and their associated women Gudrid and Freydis Eriksdottir attempted to settle in the newly discovered vast land, but were gradually pushed off its shores after a series of attacks by hostile local inhabitants – the “skrellings” or the ancestors of the Mi’kmaq Indians. The brief adventure along the Canadian shores marked the first historically documented Christian presence in America. The surviving Scandinavians’ impressions were of a vast territory with deep forests, fertile land, and abundant game and fish. As early as the late 11th century, scattered information about the farthest western voyages of the Greenlandic adventurers reached the chronicler Adam of Bremen, who included a description of the “northern islands” in his history.
The End of the Medieval Colony
In 1261-1262, due to severe famine, Greenland and Iceland simultaneously accepted the supreme authority of the Norwegian King Haakon IV in exchange for several shiploads of rye. This marked the inglorious end of the free Icelandic community. Haakon built something of a colonial empire in the northern seas, trying to keep control of the Hebrides, the Faroes, Orkney, Sutherland on the Scottish coast, and the Isle of Man. Greenland and Iceland were of little importance to the king, but the Icelanders, valued at his court, became an important part of his entourage. The small Scandinavian population in Greenland fell under commercial dependence on Norway. Hanseatic ships from Germany and the Netherlands were prohibited from traveling to the distant island. It seems that the primary contact with Europe occurred twice a year, with regular voyages by two royal Norwegian ships to Greenland.
In 1378, the bishop of Greenland died, and his successor refused to travel to the harsh island. He appointed a vicar and continued to demand the church tithe. In 1397, Danish Queen Margaret I inherited the thrones of Sweden and Norway. This led to the formation of the Kalmar Union, in which the three kingdoms retained their institutions and formal independence but shared a common monarch. The union lasted until the 1520s. During this period, the Norwegian colonies in the western seas were transferred to the Danish crown – thus marking the end of the last remnants of the once powerful Norwegian presence in the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Greenland became a Danish colony, and this proved disastrous for the medieval Scandinavian settlements on the island, as the Danish kings had no interest in maintaining this insignificant possession. The times when monasteries functioned in Greenland had long passed.
With the worsening climate from around 1350 onward, coupled with the unknown effects of the European Black Death (1346-1351) on the local population and the gradual neglect by the Danish authorities, the Greenlandic colonies began to lose population. Famine, conflicts with the Inuit, and simple emigration back to Europe led to the end of the medieval colony on the island. In 1406, the last royal ship arrived, and the last Christian wedding on the island took place. Around 1420, Danish cartographer Claudius Clavus visited the still not entirely abandoned Greenland with a private trade ship. By the year 1500, when Constantinople was already Ottoman and the Moors had been expelled from Spain, Greenland was no longer inhabited by any white people. The land once again belonged only to the small Inuit hunters and the increasingly abundant game. The shores of the abandoned island were sporadically observed by misguided or curious Danish crews in the 1530s. British vessels, seeking the Northwest Passage through the ice to Asia, reached Greenland in 1585 but found no white inhabitants.
Did Columbus and Vespucci know about Greenland and Vinland?
Italian late medieval maps by Galvaneus Flamma from 1345 and Fra’ Mauro from 1450 show western islands far from Iceland. Galvaneus’s map names one of these islands “Markalada” – a name that resembles the Scandinavian name Markland, which authors of the sagas of Leif Erikson once used to describe part of Vinland or the territory beyond Greenland. Fra’ Mauro’s map directly mentions “Grolanda.” This means that the future discoverers of the New World, Columbus and Vespucci, likely had some knowledge of land across the Atlantic Ocean. It is highly probable that Italian cartographers sourced this information from the Latin chronicles of Adam of Bremen, who, around 1075, had described part of the history of the voyages of explorers like Erik the Red and his son Leif.
During the 14th and 15th centuries, largely unnoticed by the Scandinavians, the culture of Inuit hunters in Greenland began to change. The Thule culture, which increasingly focused on whaling, replaced the older hunter cultures. Meanwhile, cooling of the North Arctic Ocean and the southward movement of icebergs made it harder for the last generations of Greenlandic Scandinavians to maintain connections with Europe.
The Return of the Danes (ca. 1605)
Unlike Greenland, Iceland was never abandoned by the Scandinavians. In the 17th century, Denmark, which felt the legacy of its former greatness and the oldest preserved monarchy in Europe, became involved in the colonial expansion of European maritime powers. The Virgin Islands in the Caribbean became a Danish colony for a time, where sugarcane production was developed. Danish crews participated in the search for a northwest passage along Canada toward Asia. Danish kings recalled their nominal sovereignty over Greenland – especially after the strengthening of the union between Norway and Denmark and the formal transfer of Norwegian claims over the western islands to the Danish crown in 1537. Meanwhile, in Denmark and the other northern kingdoms, the Protestant Reformation had begun.
From 1605-1607, three successive Danish expeditions reached the long-forgotten island. They failed to establish a base on the shore and vainly searched for traces of the old colonists. Nevertheless, the Danish monarchy added a polar bear to its coat of arms in 1660 as a sign of renewed claims to Greenland. Whaling ships from Norway increasingly approached the island in search of prey.
In 1721, Pastor Hans Egede and his Bergen Greenland Company received approval from King Frederick IV to restore Danish authority over Greenland, if they could discover the local inhabitants and convert them to the Lutheran version of Christianity. In 1724, several Inuit were baptized. The new colony struggled with scurvy due to a lack of vitamins. A Dutch privateer attacked and burned a large Danish warehouse filled with whale oil, causing the Bergen Company to go bankrupt. Another attempt at colonization between 1728-1730 ended due to the fatal combination of scurvy and internal conflicts that escalated into a rebellion.
In 1733, a new Protestant mission by the Moravian Brethren, with the approval of the Danish crown, began converting the Inuit population to Christianity. However, Europeans brought with them smallpox, which wiped out a significant percentage of the island’s hunters. This did not stop the enthusiasm of Danish traders and authorities, and in the following years, the new settlement of Nuuk expanded, and several new bases were established. The Danes came determined to bring civilization to the icy lands. Warships protected the new settlements from the piracy attempts of British and Dutch privateers. The livelihood of the new colonists became largely dependent on whaling, as whale oil became a strategic commodity. The Danish government realized that the growing population of European settlers and surviving Inuit could not sustain themselves through agriculture, and most of the island’s useful minerals were practically inaccessible with the available technology. The first attempt to organize a regular whaling fleet was in 1782.
It is to Denmark’s credit that between 1782 and 1797, a specific decree prohibited attempts to urbanize the lives of the Inuit, who were allowed to continue living in their traditional ways as hunters and gatherers.
In 1814, Denmark and Norway were punished for their alliance with the defeated Napoleon. The union between the two Scandinavian kingdoms was broken, and Norway came under Swedish control. However, Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands remained firmly under Danish rule. While royal absolutism in Denmark itself weakened, control over the colonies remained entirely with the administration and trading companies under the supremacy of the monarchy.
Between 1857 and 1912, individual settlements in Greenland formed local councils that distributed the scarce budget funds. In 1912, the Danish Ministry of the Interior took control of the island from the king’s officials.
In 1917, during World War I, the United States first raised the issue of sovereignty over all of Greenland. Since the island is vast, the U.S. made partial claims based on visits by American citizens and Arctic explorers. The dispute was settled with the sale of the Danish Virgin Islands. Despite the Monroe Doctrine, according to which the U.S. should be the hegemon in the Western Hemisphere and not allow the presence of European powers, Denmark and Great Britain retained their connections with Greenland and Canada. In 1931, independent Norway, having regained its sovereignty, raised the question of sovereignty over Greenland but quickly reached an agreement with Denmark.
The Second World War: American Protectorate and Meteorological Warfare
At the beginning of 1940, Nazi Germany occupied Denmark and Norway, threatening to expand its war against Great Britain in the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The British responded by immediately occupying Iceland to protect their base in Scapa Flow. In 1941, the United States made a legally questionable but skillful agreement with the Danish ambassador in Washington, Henrik de Kauffmann, formally on behalf of King Christian X, who was under Nazi surveillance in Copenhagen. Under this agreement, Greenland became an American protectorate, and since the U.S. was still at peace with the Reich at that time, the German authorities did not react… at least not officially.
In fact, the so-called “weather war” or “meteorological warfare” had already begun in 1939 in the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean. One of the most important military resources in these perilous waters was meteorological information, so control over any, even the most remote, geological or meteorological station and radio equipment could provide an advantage to German or British ships, silently hunting in the cold northern waters. Modified and armed fishing and commercial vessels began serving as floating meteorological stations in 1940. On deserted, contested, or rarely visited rocks and capes in the Svalbard Islands, as well as in Greenland, and even on distant points along North American shores, Germany tried to appropriate or build small outposts to ensure quality information about the changing weather. Britain, Canada, and the U.S. could not allow this, and with almost complete silence, this little-known part of World War II raged among the snows and icebergs. The Germans managed to reach Greenland and had a few skirmishes with the local coastal guard. Despite Denmark’s capitulation to Germany, the Greenlanders did not believe they were obliged to accept German marauders on their territory. With the open entry of the U.S. into the war at the end of 1941, the situation became clearer, and the German attempts to control meteorological information and small outposts in the icy seas were defeated. Of course, the issue of the constant, quiet, and fatal presence of German submarines remained, always where they were least expected. But by 1944, no base on Greenland’s land remained under German control. In 1945, with the end of World War II, Danish control over Greenland was restored.
Post-War Greenland
During the Cold War, the United States renewed its offer to buy Greenland and in 1951 reached a new agreement with Denmark, according to which the wartime American base Thule in Greenland became permanent. Over the decades, the Danish and American governments maintained a friendly understanding on all matters related to the base, to the point where this caused tension among the island’s population due to the demand for several Inuit families to sell their homes to expand the base. In addition, incidents of radioactive contamination and even a hydrogen bomb lost in 1968 due to a plane crash were systematically covered up by both the Danish and American authorities.
The Greenlandic population was systematically encouraged to settle in the capital Nuuk and other relatively urbanized areas on the island. The change in lifestyle was difficult for the Inuit population, and the number of mental illnesses, depression, and suicides increased. Since 1979, the local executive authority, or “Naalakkersuusut,” has been transformed into a fully functioning local autonomy. Greenland is officially a self-governing community under the Danish crown. Due to the lack of foreign policy initiative and minimal representation of Greenland’s population in the Danish parliament, Greenland, despite the wishes of the majority of its residents, became part of the overall European market. However, Danish governance remains economically advantageous for the Greenlandic population, as part of the local budget is subsidized by taxes from Denmark.
American Claims
The United States has been interested in Greenland since 1867, shortly after the end of its own Civil War. The topic has been raised several times in the Senate and Congress, with official inquiries about purchasing Greenland similar to Alaska being made in 1917 and 2019. Just before his inauguration in January 2025, the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump, shockingly stated that America would attempt to gain control over both Greenland and the Panama Canal to ensure greater security. Naturally, these verbal gestures did not increase Denmark and Greenland’s trust in the United States.
The Whiskey War
Not all wars in the history of Denmark and its vast island have been bloody. The charming Whisky War or Bottle War is a territorial dispute that occurred between Denmark and Greenland on one side, and Canada on the other. The contested territory was the small, uninhabited, and strategically insignificant Hans Island. Between 1973 and 2022, every time the Danish Coast Guard passed by the island, they would raise their flag and leave a bottle of vodka for their Canadian colleagues. The Canadian patrol would politely replace the Danish flag with the Canadian one and leave a bottle of Canadian whiskey as a gesture of goodwill to the “enemy.” In 2022, immediately following the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Denmark and Canada agreed on mutual sovereignty over the island to set an example of how such issues are resolved between civilized nations. Today, half of Hans Island belongs to Greenland, and the other half to the nearest Canadian territory, Nunavut.
With this detour to Canadian whiskey, we take a piece of ice from Greenland and encourage you to join the History and Mythology video channel and support us financially, just as the Danish government loyally supports its Greenlandic population!
