Greenland is not for sale, a new mantra rises

On a boat, surrounded by snow-covered mountains and icebergs in shades of blue, Qooqu Berthelsen points to the breaking sea ice as a worrisome sign.

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Now, though, something is worrying him and many Greenlanders as much as the retreating ice that endangers their livelihood. "My concern," says the 23-year-old hunter, fisher and tour company owner, "is that Trump will come and take Greenland." He then repeats what has become a mantra for Greenlanders in the weeks since US President Donald Trump pushed their Arctic homeland into the spotlight by threatening to take it over. That has ignited unprecedented interest in full independence from Denmark - a key issue in a parliamentary election on March II.

"Greenlanders don't want to be Danish. Greenlanders don't want to be American," Berthelsen says. "Greenland," he says, "is not for sale." You'll hear this declared all over the land, from the prime minister and university students in Nuuk, the world's northernmost capital, to hunters and fishermen in sparsely populated villages across the planet's largest island.

Thisis, after all, Kalaallit Nunaat-Greenlandic for the "Land of the People" or the "Land of the Greenlanders."

Most of those 57,000 Greenlanders are Indigenous Inuit. They take pride in a culture and traditions that have helped them survive for centuries in exceptionally rugged conditions. In their close link to nature. In belonging to one of the most beautiful, remote, untouched places on Earth.

Many in this semi-autonomous territory are worried and offended by Trump's threats to seize control of their mineral-rich homeland, even by force, because he says the US needs it "for national security." "How can a few words ... change the whole world?" asked Aqqaluk Lynge, a former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council and founder of the Inuit Ataqatigiit party, which governs Greenland. "It can because he's playing with fire. We're seeing another United States here with whole new ideas and wishes."