Thousands of Greenlanders marched across snow and ice in Nuuk on Saturday to oppose U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to take control of Greenland, according to participants interviewed by The Associated Press.
The protesters held Greenland and national flags and chanted “Greenland is not for sale” as they made their way from the small downtown area of Nuuk to the U.S. consulate.
Just as the march reached the consulate, Trump announced from Florida that he would charge a 10% import tax starting in February on goods from eight European countries that oppose U.S. control of Greenland, the AP reported.
Malik Dollerup-Scheibel, a 21-year-old Greenlander, said he felt shaken by the announcement after AP informed him of it. “I thought this day couldn’t get any worse but it just did,” he said, adding, “It just shows he has no remorse for any kind of human being now.”
Trump has long argued that the U.S. should own Greenland, which is a self-governing territory. The AP said he intensified his calls a day after a military operation to oust former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.
In Nuuk, Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and Dollerup-Scheibel were among those described as drawing what the AP characterized as the island’s biggest protest, with turnout estimated at nearly a quarter of Nuuk’s population.
Outside Nuuk, solidarity demonstrations also took place across the Danish realm, including in Copenhagen and in Nunavut in Canada’s far north, according to the AP.
In Copenhagen, Danish protester Elise Riechie said, “This is important for the whole world,” and added, “There are many small countries. None of them are for sale.”
In Nuuk, Greenlanders of all ages listened to traditional songs as they walked to the consulate. Marie Pedersen, 47, said it was important to bring her children “to show them that they’re allowed to speak up,” and she said, “We want to keep our own country and our own culture, and our family safe.”
The AP reported that Pedersen’s 9-year-old daughter, Alaska, made her own “Greenland is not for sale” sign. Alaska said her teachers addressed the controversy and taught her about NATO at school, and she said, “They tell us how to stand up if you’re being bullied by another country or something.”
Tom Olsen, a police officer in Nuuk, told AP he had never seen anything bigger. “I hope it can show him that we stand together in Europe,” Olsen said. “We are not going down without a fight.”
Tillie Martinussen, a former member of Greenland’s parliament, said she hoped the Trump administration would “abandon this crazy idea,” adding that it had started by portraying the U.S. as “our friends and allies” before moving to “plain out threatening us.”
Martinussen said preserving NATO and Greenland’s autonomy mattered more than potential tariff impacts, though she said she was not dismissing any possible economic effect. “This is a fight for freedom,” she said, adding, “It’s for NATO, it’s for everything the Western Hemisphere has been fighting for since World War II.”
When AP asked Louise Lennert Olsen, a 40-year-old Greenlandic nurse, what she would tell Trump, she instead said she wanted to address Americans directly. “I would really like them to support our wish to be Greenland as we are now,” she said. She added, “I hope they will stand against their own president,” and said she could not believe “they just stand and watch and do nothing.”