NUUK, Greenland — Thousands of Greenlanders marched Saturday from downtown Nuuk to the U.S. Consulate, chanting “Greenland is not for sale” and waving their national flag in what witnesses described as the largest protest in the capital against U.S. President Donald Trump’s stated ambition to seize the Arctic island. As the march concluded, Trump announced from his Florida home that the United States would impose a 10% import tax, beginning in February, on goods from eight European countries over their opposition to American control of Greenland.
The demonstration drew Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and, by others’ accounts, nearly a quarter of Nuuk’s population. Solidarity rallies were held simultaneously in Copenhagen and in the capital of the Inuit-governed territory of Nunavut, in Canada’s far north.
Malik Dollerup-Scheibel, a 21-year-old Greenlander, learned of Trump’s tariff announcement from the Associated Press while still at the protest site.
“I thought this day couldn’t get any worse but it just did,” Dollerup-Scheibel said. “It just shows he has no remorse for any kind of human being now.”
Escalating pressure
The demonstrations followed weeks of escalating rhetoric from Trump, who has long said he believes the United States should own Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark, citing its strategic Arctic position and mineral wealth. Trump sharpened his calls for U.S. control in early January, days after a military operation to oust former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Greenlanders of all ages made their way through snow and ice toward the consulate, listening to traditional songs along the route. Marie Pedersen, a 47-year-old Greenlander, said she brought her children to the rally “to show them that they’re allowed to speak up.”
“We want to keep our own country and our own culture, and our family safe,” she said.
Pedersen’s 9-year-old daughter, Alaska, lettered her own “Greenland is not for sale” sign for the occasion. The girl said her teachers had addressed the dispute in school, including lessons on NATO.
“They tell us how to stand up if you’re being bullied by another country or something,” she said.
Tom Olsen, a Nuuk police officer working the march, said it was the largest protest he had seen in the city.
“I hope it can show him that we stand together in Europe,” Olsen said. “We are not going down without a fight.”
’A fight for freedom’
Tillie Martinussen, a former member of Greenland’s parliament, called on the Trump administration to “abandon this crazy idea.” She said the initial American approach had emphasized partnership, but the tenor had shifted.
“They started out as sort of touting themselves as our friends and allies, that they wanted to make Greenland better for us than the Danes would,” she said. “And now they’re just plain out threatening us.”
Martinussen said preserving NATO and Greenland’s autonomy mattered more than the economic burden of tariffs, even as she acknowledged that potential impact was real.
“This is a fight for freedom,” she said. “It’s for NATO, it’s for everything the Western Hemisphere has been fighting for since World War II.”
In Copenhagen, Danish demonstrators also gathered in solidarity. Elise Riechie, who carried both Danish and Greenlandic flags, said the stakes extended beyond the island itself.
“This is important for the whole world,” Riechie said. “There are many small countries. None of them are for sale.”
An appeal to Americans
Among the marchers in Nuuk was Louise Lennert Olsen, a 40-year-old Greenlandic nurse, who said she wanted to address not Trump himself but the American public.
“I would really like them to support our wish to be Greenland as we are now,” she said as she marched. “I hope they will stand against their own president. Because I can’t believe they just stand and watch and do nothing.”