By Antonia Langford

 

NUUK/COPENHAGEN, 17 January. - (ANA) - Thousands of people took to the streets in Greenland and Denmark on Saturday to protest against Donald Trump’s ambition to seize control of the Arctic territory.

 

Protesters at Hands off Greenland rallies brandished the island’s red and white Erfalasorput flag and chanted “Kalaallit Nunaat!”, the island’s name in Greenlandic, a day after the US president had threatened tariffs on countries opposing his planned takeover.

 

Others held up signs and banners reading “US has enough ICE”, “Greenland is not for sale” and “Yankee go home”.

 

Organisers said demonstrators in Nuuk were showing their resistance to the “illegal” plans, while Uagut, an association of Greenlanders in Denmark, said its own rally was sending “a clear and unified message of respect for Greenland’s democracy”.

 

Julie Rademacher, the Uagut chairman and one of the main organisers, said: “We want to send a clear message – Greenland doesn’t want to become American.”

 

In January last year, a poll commissioned by the Danish newspaper Berlingske found that 85 per cent of Greenlanders opposed joining the US, with just six per cent in favour.

 

Denmark raised the Greenland flag outside its parliament in Copenhagen on Friday.

 

The gatherings at Copenhagen city hall and the US consulate in Nuuk coincided with a visit by a bipartisan delegation of 10 US senators pushing back against the US president’s threats.

 

They did so to show solidarity with “friends and allies” and to demonstrate that “the statements being made by the president do not reflect what the American people feel”, according to Dick Durbin, a Democratic senator.

 

On Friday, the delegation met Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, and Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s premier, in Copenhagen in an effort to “lower the temperature” of talks and discuss ways to develop the island’s resources.

 

Mr Trump has argued that Denmark, a Nato ally, has not done enough to ensure the island’s security from China and Russia and has insisted that it should come under US control.

 

“I may put a tariff on countries if we don’t go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security,” the US president said on Friday.

 

Earlier this week, several European Nato countries including Britain, Germany, Sweden and France, announced that they would deploy a small number of military staff to Greenland to help Denmark prepare military exercises in the Arctic.

 

Denmark has said that it would urge a greater and “more permanent” Nato presence to safeguard the island.

 

However, Washington shrugged off the deployment, with Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesman, saying on Thursday that Europeans boots on the ground would not affect “the president’s decision-making process or impact his goal of the acquisition of Greenland at all”.

 

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, told Fox News on Friday that Greenland was “essential” for US national security and added that Washington considered it “a raw deal” that it was paying for Greenland’s defence even as it remained under Denmark’s control.

 

“Denmark is a tiny country, with a tiny economy, and a tiny military… to control a territory, you have to be able to defend a territory, improve a territory, inhabit a territory. Denmark has failed at every single one of these tasks,” he said.

 

Ms Frederiksen has said that the US had “no right” to annex Greenland and described its protection in the face of threats as “a common concern for the entire Nato alliance”. -(ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/17 January 2026 - - -