A Greenland Plot More Cynical Than Fiction

Two weeks before Donald Trump became the 47th president of the United States, his son Don Jr. paid a visit to Greenland, handing out free food and MAGA caps, and posing for photos. “Incredible people,” he said, of the random Greenlanders whom he met on the street. The trip seemed no more than a stunt, much like Trump’s first-term talk of buying the territory, which for centuries has been under the sovereignty of Denmark, a NATO partner and longtime ally of the United States. But within hours of Don Jr.’s departure, the president-elect held a press conference in which he said he was not ruling out the use of economic or military force to gain control of Greenland.

If I had pitched this scenario as the opening for a new season of Borgen, my TV drama series about Danish politics, which originally aired over four seasons in Denmark from 2010 until 2022 (and became available in the U.S. via Netflix in 2020), I probably would have been laughed out of the writers’ room. A small country of some 6 million inhabitants perched on a peninsula north of Germany, Denmark is a quiet, civilized constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system that tends to result in uncontroversial coalition governments. Our prime minister since 2019, Mette Frederiksen, is the leader of Denmark’s Social Democrats and the current government in coalition with the Moderates and the Liberal Party.

The hero of Borgen was also a woman: My prime minister was named Birgitte Nyborg, and she was played by Sidse Babett Knudsen—an actor perhaps more familiar to American viewers as Theresa Cullen on HBO’s Westworld. Borgen is set in the heart of government in Copenhagen, and the tension in the show often comes when people are forced to choose between political power and their personal beliefs and ideals. Nyborg faces many obstacles, at work and at home, but she is trying to govern Denmark in a consensual yet courageous way, against the odds.

That may be something more possible in a parliamentary system such as Denmark’s, which requires coalition building to form a government, but it was also something that seemed more possible in the earlier, more optimistic era when I was writing it: As political drama, Borgen was unashamedly idealistic. If you want an apt comparison to a U.S. show, think Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing.

The principal characters in Borgen believe in the values of respectful dialogue, democracy, and international law. Back in government, Trump seems bent on creating a new political reality, where objective truth no longer exists and can be replaced with pure fiction. Everything is reduced to the lingo of a real-estate deal, and there appear to be no limits to what kind of accusations and threats you can hurl around—even in the face of a loyal ally and NATO partner.

The last season of Borgen, which aired in Denmark and the U.S. in 2022, did in fact center on Greenland. The territory, considered the largest island in the world, has enjoyed home rule for close to five decades. Thanks to long-running and painstaking negotiations, the island’s 57,000 residents are now on a path toward independence. For now, Denmark remains in charge of its military security and foreign policy, in consultation with the Greenlandic government.

How much of this nuance Trump grasps is unclear. When he first floated the idea of buying Greenland, in 2019, he called the matter a “real-estate deal.” At the time, Frederiksen, who was already serving as prime minister, dismissed his suggestion as absurd; Trump took offense, calling her statement “nasty.” They later patched things up: Trump praised Frederiksen as “a wonderful woman,” and both sides left things as they were.

[Read: The intellectual rationalization for annexing Greenland]

President Trump has now returned to the fray, with a vengeance. Five days before his inauguration, a 45-minute phone call took place between Trump and Frederiksen. The exchange sounded brutal: Trump reiterated his demand to take ownership of Greenland; our prime minister repeated that it’s not for sale and is an autonomous territory under the Danish Kingdom. She also reminded the president that Denmark of course recognizes the strategic importance of Greenland to the Unites States—and has given the U.S. military access to Greenland for more than 80 years.

If I were writing that scene for Borgen, my prime minister would be desperately trying to control her temper while her chief of staff and aides would be listening in, trying to guide the conversation with silent gestures and notes. But I might have difficulty imagining a president so uninterested in the facts, let alone the history.

Greenland was colonized by the Danish priest Hans Egede in 1721. Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland was briefly contested in an international court by Norway in the 1930s, but Norway lost the case and withdrew its claims. When Denmark was occupied by the Nazis in 1940, Henrik Kauffmann, the visionary Danish ambassador to the U.S., signed, on behalf of Denmark’s king, an agreement with Washington allowing the U.S. to supply Greenland and establish bases there. The result was the air base at Kangerlussuaq, where U.S. bombers could refuel on their way to Europe.

In 1949, Denmark became a founding member of NATO, and the kingdom has been a loyal ally of the U.S. ever since. In 1952, the U.S. built the huge Thule Air Base in northern Greenland, which, at its height, housed more than 10,000 personnel. The Indigenous Inuit population in the area was forced to leave the vicinity, one of many colonial injustices. During the Cold War, Copenhagen maintained a pragmatic silence as nuclear-armed U.S. Air Force B-52s violated an official policy banning atomic weapons on Danish soil. In 1968, a B-52 crashed at Thule, and four atomic bombs rolled out of the wreckage. Not even that international embarrassment could make Denmark waver in its partnership with the United States. For eight decades, the two countries have been joined in close friendship, with a reciprocal recognition of territories, rights, and obligations.

Thanks in part to the stability provided by this arrangement, the Arctic has been a peaceful region. Denmark has been able to uphold Greenland’s security with a small number of naval ships and planes and—as you may recall if you watched the last season of Borgen—the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol. This border-guard force, a military tradition dating back decades, consists of a dozen sleds, each with a dog team directed by a special-forces soldier, that patrol the coastline of northern and northeastern Greenland.

[Read: Trump triggers a crisis in Denmark—and Europe]

Trump’s reelection has disturbed the mutual understanding between Copenhagen and Washington. In the days leading up to Trump’s second inauguration, Danish media reported that diplomats were working behind the scenes to keep Greenland out of the new president’s speech. That lobbying effort apparently succeeded. (Panama was not so lucky. Speaking of America’s “manifest destiny,” Trump brought up that country’s canal. “We’re taking it back,” he said.)

The uneasy truce over Greenland did not last long. Within days, Trump was talking to reporters aboard Air Force One about taking control of the island. “I think we’re going to have it,” he said. “And I think the people want to be with us.” As a writer, I have to admire the economy of Trump’s phrasing: In fewer than 20 words, he can upset decades of delicate, emotionally fraught colonial relations between Denmark and Greenland.

Currently, Greenland runs its own domestic affairs via its Parliament and an executive body known as the Naalakkersuisut, but is heavily subsidized by the Danish state. Pro-independence Greenlandic politicians are inviting the U.S. president to push ahead with his demands, believing that this will aid their cause. They may be disappointed: Trump has not embraced their call for independence. Frederiksen may take some heart from a recent poll showing that 85 percent of their countrymen do not want Greenland to be incorporated into the United States.

What will the president’s next move be? We are not in the world of Borgen. The drama we’re viewing today seems animated less by idealism than by divisiveness, cynicism, and loudmouthed ignorance. Trump is a businessman who sees Greenland as a potential transaction. (When asked about Gaza last month, Trump replied that it had “a phenomenal location” and “the best weather,” as if he had Palm Beach in mind, not a Middle East war zone; indeed, he’s now proposed taking it over and turning it into a beach resort.) War was once said to be too important to be left to the generals; now politics is too important to be left to the politicians. Enter the tycoons.

The last act of the Greenland plot has yet to unfold. Trump is in his final term and may be thinking about his legacy. He may want to be remembered as the president who took back the Panama Canal and, through the acquisition of Greenland, expanded U.S. territory by a quarter. The Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz once said, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” I hope Greenlanders will not end up feeling the same way. But as a writer of political fiction, I may have to start dreaming up stranger, darker plots if I want to keep pace with Trump’s new world order.