Greenland's future: On Long Island, some uncomfortable with Trump's urge to take it over

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump told leaders at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that "all the U.S. is asking for is a place called Greenland," while at home, some Long Islanders squirmed.

"I just hope it’s all bluster," said Eddie Lang, president of the Danish Brotherhood in America’s Lodge 325, whose roughly 20 Scandinavian American members meet monthly in Malverne. "I think it’s slightly more than testing the water, but I can’t see how he could actually be serious."

Harry Wallace, elected chief of Long Island’s Unkechaug Indian Nation said: "The people have to decide how they wish to govern themselves. Anything short of that is colonization, empire-building."

Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, has been part of that country since the early 18th century. Nearly 90% of its 56,000 residents are Inuit. For Long Island’s Danish and Native Americans, the volume and tone of discourse coming out of the White House about Greenland have been unsettling and a tad surreal.

Trump on Wednesday repeated his assertion that acquisition of Greenland by the United States was imperative for national and international security, though Denmark is a member of NATO, the main U.S. military alliance. In a Jan. 14 Quinnipiac University poll, 86% of American voters said they would oppose the United States trying to take Greenland by military force, while 55% said they would oppose trying to buy Greenland.

Greenland hosts Pituffik Space Base, which since the 1950s has enabled space superiority and provided a critical early warning radar system. Danish soldiers fought and died alongside Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States and Denmark have had diplomatic relations since 1801.

Trump on Wednesday told reporters the administration had reached an "infinite deal" with NATO on Arctic security and was dropping a threat to impose tariffs on several European countries previously deemed insufficiently supportive of his proposal to acquire Greenland.

In his speech earlier in the day, Trump said that Greenland — strategically located between the United States, Russia and China — would be the site of "the greatest Golden Dome ever built," referring to the integrated air and missile defense system initiative he proposed shortly after his 2025 inauguration.

Trump said actual ownership of Greenland was key for legal and psychological reasons. "Who the hell wants to defend a license agreement, or a lease?" he told the assembled world leaders. 

Moreover, Denmark had already shown itself incapable of securing Greenland, he said. "We saw this in World War II when Denmark fell to Germany after just six hours of fighting and was totally unable to defend either itself or Greenland."

For Lang, at 73 among the youngest of Lodge 325’s members, much of what the president seemed to be proposing was "incredible," in the sense that it was hard for him to believe. A retired painting contractor from Freeport, he is the son of Danish citizens. He grew up speaking Danish after his mother fled to Denmark from Nazi Germany during World War II and married his father, a Danish citizen.

The family immigrated to the United States and he graduated from Freeport High School. "I have a lot of pride in my heritage, especially in how Denmark reached out during World War II and welcomed the Jews. They’ve been a very close ally for many years. ... I don’t think that might makes right. I believe in civility."

Former lodge president Birgit Jacobsen, a portraitist whose work hangs in the Museum of Danish America, immigrated to the United States from Denmark in 1949, settling in the Scandinavian enclave of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, before moving to Lynbrook and Malverne. "To me, Greenland was always part of Denmark." As for securing Greenland, she said, "Denmark is capable of doing all that, as we’ve been doing all along."

Sandi Brewster-walker, a Native American historian and leader, said Wednesday that two dates came to mind as she watched Trump’s speech on television: 1639 and 1917. The first, she said, "was when the colonists arrived" in eastern Long Island. The second was when the United States bought the Virgin Islands, from Denmark, for $25 million in gold coin. With the United States near war with the German Empire, then-Secretary of State Robert Lansing had warned the Danish ambassador that "if Denmark was unwilling to sell, the United States might occupy the islands to prevent their seizure by Germany," according to U.S. State Department archives. Virgin Islanders did not get a vote in the transfer, though they were later granted U.S. citizenship.

"It’s that old colonial view of, if you want it, just come in and claim it," Brewster-walker said.

Correction: Colonists arrived on eastern Long Island in 1639. An earlier version of this story misstated the location.