In the summer of 2025, officials at Kangerlussuaq Airport on the west coast of Greenland were given some unsettling news by the Danish military.
“We got a message saying we have set up an evacuation plan in case the country is invaded and we have to leave or evacuate the airport,” said a source.
“We were told they would have to blow up a lot of things, including the runway itself,” the source added.
This startling contingency plan was confirmed in March by Denmark’s public broadcaster DR, just weeks after the Trump Administration and its European allies were locked in an unprecedented showdown over the US President’s escalating threats to take Greenland militarily.
“When Danish soldiers were flown to Greenland in January of this year,” DR reported, “they brought explosives with them so that they could destroy, among other things, the runways in Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq.
“This would prevent US military aircraft from landing soldiers on the island if President Donald Trump ultimately chose to take Greenland by force,” they added.
The cargo included blood from Danish blood banks so that the wounded could receive treatment in the event of a conflict breaking out.
DR acknowledged that its richly sourced report contained no explicit intelligence about an American attack, but the Danish authorities were clearly taking President Trump’s warnings seriously.
On Sunday, Nuuk Airport played host to one foreign delegation whose presence did not require any explosives – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, her senior staff and members of the Brussels media (including RTÉ News).
President von der Leyen was greeted on the tarmac by Greenlandic prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen, who had earlier just landed.
Officials were adamant that the visit, and a new EU-Greenland Joint Partnership to be signed the following day, with a promise of more cash, were simply a follow-up to Ms von der Leyen’s 2024 visit, when an EU delegation office was opened in Nuuk.
However, few observers are downplaying the strategic importance to Europe of the world’s largest island, wedged between the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. The European Commission will launch its Arctic Strategy in October.
“Greenland needs the European Union and the European Union needs Greenland,” Mr Nielsen later told a news conference.
We set off up Nuup Kangerlua fjord under the gaze of Hans Egede, the 18th century Norwegian Lutheran missionary who established the capital Nuuk as part of his bid to restore Nordic links to the island after contact with the old Norse settlements had been lost for some 300 years (his statue is a favoured landmark overlooking the harbour).
Passing Nuuk Airport to our right, currently being extended to anticipate a tourism surge, all traces of civilisation dissipate as the saddle-topped Sermitsiaq Mountain towers above the crystalline waters of the fjord.
As our motor launch powers north, icebergs calved from two glaciers draining Greenland’s ice-sheet glide gently past.
While climate change will bring untold damage, the thinning sea-ice has opened up a boom in trips to Qoornoq, 45 minutes away. “Winters are milder, summers are wetter,” said our boatman.
The tiny island, clinging to the north end of the larger Karasuk island, is emblematic of the moment in which Greenland finds itself.
A fishing settlement which for decades had its own cod processing plant and narrow-gauge railway, it was abandoned in 1972 under the Danish government’s policy of consolidating the population in Nuuk (Greenland was granted Home Rule in 1979 and became autonomous in 2009, taking control of its foreign policy).
Descendants of the original inhabitants have begun to return, passing the summer in brightly-painted houses, some with solar panels, but none with running water.
Qoornoq is known for traces of pre-Inuit Saqqaq and Norse activity, but climate change is taking its toll on archaeological treasure as sea levels rise.
“Long-term, climate change is not a good thing,” said Christian Keldsen, CEO of the Greenland Business Association (GBA).
“Short-term, it’s going to present some opportunities. It means something for the way of life of hunters who may have access to new hunting grounds.
“But you’ll have species moving in different directions. That could be good, that could be bad. Some of our prawns have decided to become Canadian. They cross the middle line: they’re the same prawns but now they’re Canadian, they’re not ours anymore,” he added.
“We’ve had the cod come back because of the change in the water temperature,” he said.
Elsewhere, the retreating ice will provide easier access to critical rare earth minerals (Greenland holds 25 of the 34 needed in a range of electronic goods), while melting glaciers are yielding so-called “rock flour”, a substance – produced by subglacial grinding – which can absorb carbon dioxide and can be spread on fields as a carbon-capturing fertiliser.
Some of the powder has already been spread on barley fields in Denmark by the brewing giant Carlsberg.
According to the Guardian, Greenland’s ice sheet annually produces one billion tonnes of rock flour flowing as a nutrient-rich mud from under the glaciers.
Indeed, rather than wilt under Mr Trump’s predatory designs and the European Union’s new largesse, the famously resilient Greenlanders are rather enjoying the geopolitical spotlight.
“We’ve got nice water, we’ve got nature,” said Mr Keldsen.
“We’ve got the rocks in the underground. We’ve got the fish in the sea. But that’s all just going to be fish, rocks, and nature until somebody sees a value in this and is actually willing to pay,” he added.
Generating wealth from an icebound rocky wilderness is still a tall order.
Some 58% of the Greenlandic treasury is made up of Denmark’s annual block grant of €575 million and the additional EU funding.
This week, Europe’s contribution was boosted by €200 million, announced by President von der Leyen, for this year and next, representing in total around 7% to 8% of the island’s GDP.
This is on top of the €225 million allocated through the seven year EU budget, and the Commission President has promised to double that to €530 million for the 2028-34 budget cycle.
Greenland was a member of the EU by virtue of it being part of the Kingdom of Denmark but it voted in a referendum to leave the bloc in 1985 due to its unhappiness with the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
Since then, EU support has focused on education and fisheries, as well as on climate change, but the new funding will expand to other areas.
“This partnership package focuses mainly on three strategic priorities,” said President von der Leyen at a joint news conference on Monday.
“We call them the big Cs: connectivity, clean energy, and critical raw materials,” she added.
That means funding to boost satellite and cable connectivity with a view to improving internet access in the north and east of the island, supporting hydro-power, and helping Greenland access critical raw materials.
On the latter score, the island is ranked eighth globally with deposits measured at 1.5 million tonnes, meaning it could provide Europe with an attractive alternative to China, which enjoys a near monopoly (President Trump was forced to drop his tariffs on China last October after China restricted rare earth exports).
Despite President Trump’s warning about China’s presence in Greenland, its foothold is minimal, thanks to joint Danish-US efforts to block China from developing a rare earth mineral site at Tanbreez.
China has also been frozen out of contracts for the three new airports the island is developing.
“We are looking to Africa where the Chinese would build, and finance infrastructure,” said Mr Keldsen.
“But when you default on your loans, they take over the infrastructure, and all of a sudden, you have a foreign nation sitting in your backyard,” he added.
However, China’s monopoly on the world’s critical minerals, in terms of deposits and processing, has made Greenland attractive, but convincing Europeans to get their rare earths from Greenland will require massive investment.
Under the Joint Partnership, the EU will jointly fund the Malmbjerg Project, an open cast mine in east-central Greenland for the extraction of the highly heat-resistent mineral molybdenum (it adds strength to metals) which the Commission believes could generate €90 million annually.
The funding will also support the GreenRoc Amitsoq project in southern Greenland, one of the highest-grade graphite mines in the world.
The Commission insists that the processing of minerals will happen in Greenland in order to ensure an economic dividend.
While local officials said extracting minerals is doable, getting them to market is the problem, given the Olympian challenge of developing infrastructure.
“Greenland has had mines for more than 100 years,” said Mr Keldsen, “so it’s not that we can’t do it. But it comes back to who needs what and what they are willing to pay. We need to be putting mechanisms in place for de-risking for the European market.”
There are 72 coastal settlements dotted around the vast island (down from 120 in the past) and each one desperately needs improved infrastructure.
Above the Arctic circle on the west coast there is the Lumina mine, extracting anorthosite which is used for a range of materials including e-glass, but is only exportable seven months a year.
“There’s a small helicopter operating back and forth all day from Kangerlussuaq Airport,” said one industry source. “Accessibility is really limited by the terrain and the weather.”
Weaning the workforce off Danish and European subsidies remains difficult. There are 320 companies across ten different industries employing 8,400 people, one third of the work force. However, 94% of Greenland’s exports are fish-based.
Paradoxically, the authorities see the island’s geostrategic vulnerability as a godsend.
No doubt as a result of the Trump Administration’s predatory intentions, and the US President’s frequent trashing of Denmark’s investment in Greenland’s security, the Danish military appears to be increasing its footprint.
“The Danish government has set aside, on paper, 42 billion krone, or €5.62 billion for investments in a defence agreement [with Greenland],” said Mr Keldsen.
“Obviously, we’d like to get in on that action. If we were to deliver to the military, that would mean somebody buying something from us, so that will build our economy in a much more sustainable way,” he added.
Greenland has had long experience in providing services to the US military.
Following World War II, and later thanks to a 1951 defence agreement with Denmark, the United States operated three military bases on the island – at Thule, Narsarsuaq and Sondestrom.
Today, only Thule Airbase remains in US hands (renamed Pittufik Space Base), but the United States is undoubtedly keen on boosting its presence.
However, the experience of Inuit communities and military bases is not a happy one.
“Many Greenlanders are reminded of Danish colonial rule and the 1953 forced relocation of Inuit families from Thule to make room for the US air base,” writes Malu Rosing, an advisor on Arctic affairs, for the International Work Group in Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA).
“Such episodes are part of collective memory and symbolise loss of control, disrespect, and external domination,” she said.
This is a highly sensitive topic for Greenlanders. Mr Nielsen is ethnic Kaalallit, part of the Inuit community which make up 90% of Greenland’s population.
In August, Mr Nielsen’s government issued a report into the scandal of the forced contraception of thousands of Greenlandic women and girls by the Danish health authorities in the 1960s and 1970s.
A joint apology with Ms Frederiksen was issued last year.
The Danish prime minister chose her words carefully at Monday’s news conference in Nuuk, when asked if the EU’s investment was another attempt at keeping Greenland out of President Trump’s embrace.
“The Kingdom of Denmark is a sovereign state,” she told reporters.
“We are a member of the European Union, and we are a member of NATO. We have been under pressure, and it has been very clear, and we are very thankful for the great support we have received from our European partners.
“We would like to work closely together with the US on security and defence, but we of course would also like to work even closer together with our European allies,” she added.
The Greenland crisis was defused at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January when President Trump agreed to trilateral talks involving US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and his Danish and Greenlandic counterparts.
Senior EU sources have said those negotiations have been quietly, but intensively, going on in the background, and that the Trump administration has not disavowed its intentions to somehow take control of Greenland (the Danish foreign minister arrived for another round of talks in Nuuk as we were leaving).
Greenlanders are, meanwhile, focused more on investment potential than any sense that a US military threat will rematerialise.
The government is pushing tourism and data centres as money spinners, flagging a potential energy surplus in the future and plenty of cold air, and pointing to an economy that is based on the rule of law.
“We are building our infrastructure because data centres will require fibre-optic cables,” said Mr Keldsen. “We’re getting more stable lines into Europe, into North America, Canada.”
Yet, with a population of just 56,000, Greenland must import skilled labour, including teachers (school drop-out rates are still high).
Building the bridges and dams that will provide access and hydropower faces enormous challenges given the density of rock and jagged mountains.
Yet, the island’s forbidding and ethereal remoteness remains the singular appeal to those drawn by its beauty.
“I’m living at a place where there is not a living soul, 200km to the north, west, or to the south,” one expatriate technical worker tells me.
“If you drive for just two minutes, you feel completely alone. It’s really special. There are not a lot of places in the world that offer that,” they added.