So You Want to Own Greenland?: Lessons from the Vikings to Trump

A polar geopolitics expert, author Elizabeth Buchanan, has written a compact account of Greenland’s history. The largest island in the world, Greenland, stands 80% above the Arctic Circle and is mostly covered with an ice sheet. Once a Danish Possession, Greenland is now an autonomous territory with Denmark responsible for the foreign, defense, and security policies, as well as social services and economic support.

Closer to New York than Copenhagen, the island is geographically isolated, standing centrally in the Arctic Ocean. The position has long attracted strategic importance to the United States, Russia, and now China.

So You Want to Own Greenland describes the first colonization by Erik the Red and the Vikings, then focuses primarily on the 20th and 2lst centuries. In World War 2, American soldiers assisted the Greenlandic 15-man army, operating on dogsleds, to scuttle a Nazi attempt to establish covert surveillance positions.

During the Kennedy administration, Greenland developed an underground nuclear-powered base to conceal 600 ballistic missiles. Buchanan’s account of Project Iceworm reads with the detail and verve of a thriller.

The country’s population of 57,000 is divided in a wish for total independence. Climate change is already affecting the island’s ecology, showing the ocean’s increasing temperature and salinity.