‘Please leave us alone’: In Nuuk, generations of trust in the U.S. give way to fear
For generations, many in Greenland saw the United States as a protector — the superpower that helped shield the Arctic island during World War II and maintained a reassuring presence ever since. In Nuuk today, that faith has curdled into fear as talk of an American move to seize the territory reverberates across the capital’s snowy streets.
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Tillie Martinussen still remembers her grandmother returning with Wrigley’s gum passed out by U.S. soldiers stationed at Greenland’s bases. “That was exotic, and America was a hero to us,” said Martinussen, a former member of Greenland’s parliament.
Now, she says, the U.S. is the source of her dread. “For the first time since Donald Trump has been in office, we’re worried,” she said, adding that the anxiety is so intense she is weighing an escape plan.
“We were discussing whether we should take my stepson and the old lady that I know, and the few family members that we have here, and move them to Denmark just in case,” she said. “I’m considering if I should leave,” Martinussen added, her voice catching. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m almost crying. I don’t want to leave. I have to think of my family, right? But I don’t want to leave my people.”
Anxious diplomacy
When word emerged that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio would meet Danish and Greenlandic representatives this week, Martinussen felt a flicker of hope that diplomacy might prevail. Media reports suggesting President Trump asked the U.S. military to draw up invasion plans quickly doused that optimism. “We’re thinking, is the whole Marco Rubio thing a (ruse)? And they’re going to invade us in the coming week?” she said.
A special relationship forged in war
The bond between Greenland and the United States was born in crisis. After Denmark fell to Nazi occupation in 1940, U.S. forces established bases on the island to protect North Atlantic routes and project power in the Arctic. “We didn’t really see any conflict, because we were so remote and we were protected by Denmark and America, which is why it’s so absurd that we’re in this situation now,” Martinussen said.
That wartime presence remade Greenland in subtle and sweeping ways. “While the rest of the world was burning, the Greenlandic people were being exposed to a new freedom,” said Ujammiugaq Engell, director of the Nuuk Local Museum. The Americans shipped Sears catalogues to isolated households, built cinemas and introduced new music, films, fashion and food — currents of influence long restricted by Danish colonial authorities.
“For the first time ever, they had access to all outside influences,” Engell said. “The Americans weren’t at all concerned with preserving the Greenlandic culture. They just wanted to buy and sell whatever they could.”
A culture of peace
That history makes the present moment feel even more disorienting in a society that prides itself on quiet restraint. Inuit tradition values harmony and problem-solving over confrontation, a mindset generations old. The drum dance, Martinussen said, captures that ethos: when disputes arose, adversaries would air grievances through verse and humor, trying to outwit each other in front of the community rather than fight. In an unforgiving environment, every life and role mattered — hunters needed seamstresses who stitched warm clothing; the village needed hunters to stave off famine.
“It’s a long time since we did it that way, but it’s still so ingrained in our soul,” Martinussen said. Today’s Greenland remains a place where understatement reads as civility, not weakness — “you might think that (the people) were simple,” she said, if you didn’t understand the culture. Boasting about strength “with guns and military,” she added, is simply not the Greenlandic way.
That difference is structural as well as cultural. Greenland has no military of its own and relies on Denmark for defense.
Politics under pressure
Martinussen, who served in parliament from 2018 to 2021 as the lone representative of the Cooperation Party she co-founded, worries that the island’s political class is not prepared for a crisis of this magnitude. For years, she said, Greenlandic leaders could scold Copenhagen while feeling sheltered by Washington — a habit ill-suited to a changing world.
“I think Greenlandic politicians tend to be a little bit naive,” she said. “I don’t think that our political leaders quite understand just how big and bad the world actually is.” That overconfidence, she believes, is surfacing in the response: Greenland’s foreign minister floated negotiating directly with the United States — bypassing Denmark, which is constitutionally responsible for Greenland’s foreign policy. Tensions flared in an angry video call this week between Danish and Greenlandic parliamentarians, during which Greenlandic lawmakers accused Denmark of “neo-colonial” behavior.
The stakes, in Martinussen’s view, could be life-altering. She believes Trump is “crazy enough” to deploy special forces to the island without congressional approval, catching Greenland unaware. For a community without an army, even rumors of such an operation land like a tremor.
A plea from Nuuk
As meetings loom and rumors proliferate, the city’s unease has a personal edge. Families quietly discuss contingency plans; friends compare options in Denmark; elders weigh memories of wartime aid against today’s rhetoric. For Martinussen, the calculations cut against her deepest instincts. She is torn between protecting loved ones and standing fast in the place that shaped her.
For now, she directs her appeal outward. “I hope the rest of the world, including maybe Ireland, will try and tell the American people that nobody wants it in Greenland,” she said. “Please leave us alone. We’re a peaceful people.”
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
