NUUK, Greenland — At the top of a tall white pole that dwarfs a tiny red cottage on the edge of Greenland’s snow-capped western coastline, a brand-new flag flies in the Arctic air.
On Friday, Canada’s consulate opened in the unassuming building, a permanent diplomatic outpost sharing modest digs with Iceland — previously one of the only countries with a formal presence in the territory.
Opening a Canadian consulate in Nuuk, the capital of the autonomous territory of Greenland in the Kingdom of Denmark, has been in the works for over a year. But the timing, coinciding with both another round of menacing from U.S. President Donald Trump and bracing talk at Davos by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney of the need to forge new alliances, is not lost on anyone here.
Peter Mortensen, a family therapist and psychologist from Denmark on a business trip to Nuuk, was strolling the seaside shoreline below looking for portraits through the lens of his Sony SLR when he paused to reflect on the significance of the added diplomatic presence of Canada, as well as France, which also opened its consulate on the same day in this town.
“I talk to more people up here who say that our original belief that we can trust the United States and that they will always be there, they’re a strong force in the world — that has been shattered really seriously,” Mortensen, 68, told POLITICO Magazine.
Into that vacuum arrives Canada. Their new strategy of working harder to be a player on the world stage, building alliances and offering security guarantees that they once left to the United States, is taking shape in Nuuk. Canada’s outreach to their Arctic neighbor could well be the beginning of the country’s attempt to build their own international bona fides and wriggle out of Trump’s shadow.
That raises the question of what this Danish native on the streets of Nuuk thinks Trump might make of the opening of the consulate, even though the American president appears to have dialed down his Greenland rhetoric for the time being.
“Donald Trump is so unpredictable that whatever he takes as a personal insult he can make into a geopolitical crisis,” Mortensen said.
There are thousands of towns and cities across the U.S. and Canada that have a population larger than the 20,000 people who live in Nuuk. But the small town, full of colorful houses spread across rocky outcroppings, has become the white-hot center of the 21st century’s great power competition — a place where foreign policy doctrines conceived in faraway capitals become manifest, the leading edge of the next developing Cold War.
Less than three weeks ago, in another snowy enclave, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out the clearest articulation of his global agenda.
“Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality,” he said in his still somewhat halting French, before moving back to English.
Over the course of less than 20 minutes, Carney went on to define how he sees Canada’s and Europe’s place in that “harsh reality” that represents the end of the rules-based international order and that no longer presupposes the protection of the United States or any other great power or institution.
“We are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength,” he continued. “On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future.”
His speech was the start of what is already being called the Carney Doctrine: Creative, coalitional strength abroad that can add up to a seat at the table with the likes of the United States, Russia and China. And in Greenland on Friday, Canada quite literally planted a flag, inserting themselves into a geopolitical fight in the Arctic.
This coming weekend, Canada is poised to take a second step in that direction when Carney signs a defense co-operation agreement with Denmark at the Munich Security Conference. That agreement that will include co-operation in Greenland, the Arctic and “NATO’s eastern flank,” a senior Canadian government official said Tuesday on the condition of anonymity as per the ground rules of a pre-trip briefing.
The Arctic has been a priority for Carney from the start, naming it a leading foreign-policy priority when he succeeded Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and prime minister in March 2025. Carney travelled to Iqaluit, in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, Greenland’s western neighbor across the Davis Strait, after whistlestops in Britain and France on the same March 2025 junket.
“Canada is strong when we recognize Indigenous peoples as the original stewards of this land,” Carney said in March 2025.
Four months earlier, Canada released its plan to open a consulate in Greenland, as well as another in Anchorage, Alaska as part of a new Arctic-focused foreign policy — something Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand took special care to emphasize while in Nuuk last week.
“I am underscoring that opening this consulate has been part of our intentions in our Arctic foreign policy for some time,” she said. But Anand acknowledged that in this moment, the move is also meant to demonstrate that Canada can play a role in defending Greenland’s values and sovereignty. “It also is a show of support for Greenlanders during a time in their long history, where they are feeling a sense of anxiety and concern.”
The population in Nuuk is filled in no small part with Danes or those with mixed Danish-Indigenous ancestry. And Denmark itself has a complex relationship with the large Arctic island; in the fall of 2025, Denmark apologized for forced sterilization of native Greenlanders in the mid-20th century, part of a long history of discrimination.
But amidst sovereignty concerns due to consistent saber-rattling from the United States throughout Trump’s second term, Canada is taking this fraught moment as a chance to make its own mark on the world stage, build cross-continental alliances due to a shared history of Indigenous people in Greenland and a shared worry about American overreach in the Arctic with Denmark.
“In the past it has looked like Canada has let the U.S. lead with regards to Greenland,” said Rebecca Pincus, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an expert on Arctic issues. “And I think that the [opening of the consulate] is a really compelling sign that Canada may be carving out a bit more of an independent approach to Greenland.”
In Nuuk, Greenlandic officials are celebrating Canada’s consulate as a sign of a friendship that can strengthen the territory’s ability to fend off attacks from the outside. Greenland Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Motzfeldt said the new Canadian consulate was an example of the “growing bond between Greenland and Canada” as she addressed a reception that included Anand, Canada’s first ever Indigenous Governor General Mary Simon, over 100 Inuit from Canada and diplomats from Denmark and France.
“In particular, I want to thank Canada for being a steadfast friend and supporter of Greenland, especially during challenging times. Your unwavering support is deeply appreciated,” said Motzfeldt.
Jakob Faerch, a Copenhagen-based consultant working in Nuuk, said the new Canadian consulate opening, including the presence of Simon, who is King Charles III’s representative in Canada, builds on the momentum of December’s visit by French President Emmanuel Macron.
“The positive comments coming from Canada … that actually is also bringing some momentum for positive change,” Faerch said.
The Europeans working and living in Greenland — and many locals as well — are looking to Canada as a potential avenue to help fend off pressure from the United States. Trump has maintained an interest in Greenland since his first term; in 2019, he proposed to buy the island from Denmark, which led to a brief dispute with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and a canceled state visit from the U.S. to Denmark.
In the last year, though, he has begun to ramp up pressure. In large part, this is due to the Arctic’s increasing importance in international politics. Owning or controlling Greenland would help to give the United States more control over the Northwest Passage and other trans-Arctic trade routes, the ability to build more military bases on the island and control of potential rare earth minerals that the territory has to offer. The warming of the region has also resulted in routes that previously could not be safely traversed by ships opening up. During a time when Russia and China are also showing renewed interest in the Arctic, the Trump administration has proposed various deals for the territory.
“The new great game of the 21st Century is going to be the Arctic,” said former Trump adviser Steve Bannon last year. “It’s already a great power struggle between the Chinese Communist Party and the Russians up there … the greatest vulnerability [the U.S. has] now is the Arctic.”
Nick Solheim, a co-founder of the conservative think tank American Moment and a Greenland expert with deep connections in the White House, can trace his interest in the region back to an Irish pub in Reykjavik, Iceland in 2016 called The Drunk Rabbit. There, while Solheim was camping and leading tours in the region, he met some members of the Icelandic Parliament and the diplomatic corps and was “hooked” on Arctic politics.
He’s since been to Greenland multiple times, including to far-out fishing villages with only around 100 inhabitants — and advocates for the United States to run Greenland as a Compact of Free Association to combat China, similar to America’s relationship with Palau or Micronesia. America gives them economic assistance, they allow for exclusive military access and for U.S. citizens to live and work without visas.
“We have a geopolitical adversary [in China] that is highly interested in having investment in infrastructure right off the shores of the U.S., and that is a red line for us,” Solheim said.
In the midst of a tumultuous time between the erstwhile allies, Canadian influence in the region might seem like a similar problem for Solheim. But in fact, he mostly welcomes their involvement.
“[The increased interest in Greenland] is a very obvious outcome from Carney’s Davos speech,” said Solheim. “However, provided that they are not trying to sabotage the U.S. relationship with Greenland, I actually welcome it. It is obvious to any student of history that the native Greenlanders have a much closer cultural relationship with the Indigenous people in Canada and the United States than they do with the people of Denmark.”
Solheim reserves his ire for the Danes, and calls their lack of willingness to engage in discussions about ownership of the territory a “weakness in statecraft.”
On the ground, the geopolitics are front of mind for the Indigenous Inuit people, too. And complicating Solheim’s thesis, Canadian Inuit leaders see their presence in Greenland as a potential buttress against the United States, as well as China and Russia.
Natan Obed, the president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami — the organization that represents the Inuit people of Canada — said as much in a speech in Nuuk on Friday night at the same reception that Motzfeldt, Greenland’s foreign minister, addressed.
On stage, Obed took an offhanded swipe at some of the philosophical underpinnings of Trump’s interest in the Arctic territory, specifically “this old idea of Manifest Destiny … or this idea that you have to use the land in a particular way that satisfies capitalist interests.”
And he backed that up by essentially paraphrasing Carney at Davos.
“We may not live in a time much longer where we can count on the United States or NATO or other mechanisms that we have worked on for 50-plus years, but we know that there are dozens, if not hundreds of countries over the world that would be in solidarity with us in this moment,” Obed said to a round of applause.
Take a walk through Nuuk’s shopping centers and coffee shops, especially with a notebook in hand, and you’ll see the same distinctive look — a forced smile that betrays more than a hint of pain and discomfort at being asked, again, by an outsider to talk about the impact of Trump’s Greenland rhetoric.
In Greenland’s capital, the last year has brought with it a series of anxiety-inducing pronouncements from foreign leaders that suddenly involve locals. But the grand geopolitics are more than just theories reflected in the dim light of locals’ phones; they have brought along odd changes to the physical landscape, new flags in the capital, new people on the ground, even new ways to profit off of the watchful eye of the great powers.
“Every American [with an interest] has stampeded to Nuuk,” said Pincus. “Everything I hear from my Greenlandic friends is, ‘We’re sick of you.’”
And it’s only getting easier to arrive; in 2025, United Airlines started offering nonstop, seasonal service between Newark Airport in New Jersey and Nuuk.
The diplomatic interest and news value has turned the small, icy town into an unlikely magnet for provocateurs. A Danish demonstrator recently slapped Canadian Trump impersonator Mark Critch for showing up outside the U.S. consulate. And German comedian Maxi Schafroth found himself in hot water when he tried to raise the American flag in Greenland’s capital.
The attention economy has come to the Arctic.
For local Ria Hornum, it’s not all bad. Hornum is the co-founder of Matas Nuuk, a boutique that looks a bit like an American Walgreens, with shelves of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, some clothing — and now, two versions of a distinctively Greenlandic, viral, anti-MAGA baseball cap.
Hornum, 64, said she’s sold 180 of the lids since Jan. 30. They retail at about $25 a pop. A lifelong resident of Nuuk, Hornum said she’s happy about the extra business, but the extra attention on her community is exacting a psychological toll.
“I think it’s quite good. You are so interested, then you can do something for us, to support us,” Hornum said. “[But] I am, of course, a little bit tired about it, too.”
The broad, complex geopolitics of the place have found their way into local hat sales.
Just like he did for the sale of Canadian flags early last year, Trump has a roundabout way of stimulating national pride, interest, and the merch that goes along with it. And in this small town, the extra attention isn’t going away, even if locals would trade the hats back for some peace and quiet.
“We need to be united, and stay together, shoulder to shoulder and be strong and hope we can get our everyday lives again soon, normal lives, normal life again. Because this country is so beautiful,” Hornum said.
“We are happy people here, and we want to continue like that and be ourselves.”
