Were Denmark to sell Greenland it would have to give Britain first refusal under the terms of an agreement made more than a century ago, the last Danish minister for the Arctic island has said.
Donald Trump’s stated ambition to acquire Greenland has sparked an increasingly bitter war of words. Tom Høyem, 83, Copenhagen’s representative on the island from 1982 to 1987 and an expert on its tangled history, said on Saturday that an undertaking from 1917, when America first made a tentative attempt to acquire the island, was still valid.
Woodrow Wilson, the US president, subsequently agreed that Greenland was Danish and always would be, Høyem said.
“If Trump tried to buy Greenland, he would have to ask London first,” he said. “The United Kingdom demanded in 1917 that if Greenland were to be sold then the UK should have the first right to buy it.”
This was because Canada, which at the time was a British dominion, lies a few miles from Greenland across the Nares strait and, since 2022, shares a land border on the tiny Hans Island.
Recently Trump held a “fiery call” with Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, about Greenland in which he was aggressive and confrontational, the Financial Times reported. Frederiksen’s office said it did “not recognize the interpretation of the conversation”.
Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister, spoke to Marco Rubio, the American secretary of state, on Friday, but Høyem said the two had agreed to postpone discussions.
The 1917 deal was part of arrangements for Wilson’s purchase of what are now the US Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25 million. Wilson was urged by a prominent businessman to also buy Greenland but was initially dismissive.
“Wilson said: ‘No, it’s not worth anything at all. It’s just ice. I don’t want it,’” said Høyem, who has written a book about the island.
The president was persuaded to change his mind, however, and went on to demand that the Danes throw in Greenland as part of the deal for what were then known as the Danish West Indies. Copenhagen refused and said it would only go ahead with the sale if America signed a letter saying that Greenland “is and will forever be Danish”. Wilson agreed.
“I have seen the original document myself in a museum,” Høyem said. “This means the United States has legally accepted Greenland is and will always be Danish. But Trump, it seems, has never heard that.”
It did not prevent President Eisenhower from considering another attempt to buy Greenland after the Second World War. Like Trump today, he considered it within America’s legitimate sphere of influence and vital to its security interests.
The US built military installations on the island in 1941 under an agreement with Denmark that was formalized by a treaty in 1951. The US retains the strategically important Pituffik Space Base in northwest Greenland.
“If Trump tried to buy Greenland, he would have to ask London first.”
The British government is unlikely to take advantage of the 1917 agreement.
Greenland, home to 57,000 people, has been ruled by Denmark for centuries but in recent decades has acquired increasing powers over its own affairs, opening its own parliament in 1979.
In 1985, the island became the first territory to leave the European Economic Community (EEC) over opposition to Brussels rules on commercial fishing and a ban on seal skin products. Høyem led negotiations on behalf of the islanders. “The deal was much better than Brexit and much clearer,” he said.
On Høyem’s insistence, his job was abolished two years later as part of the process of giving Greenlanders further control over their own affairs.
With the international spotlight on Greenland, Múte B. Egede, the island’s prime minister, used his new year address to call for complete independence from Denmark: he declared it was “now time to take the next step for our country” to remove the “shackles of the colonial era and move on”.
Egede indicated that a referendum could be held as early as April, coinciding with legislative elections. Like Frederiksen, he has insisted that “Greenland is not for sale”.
Høyem is convinced that Greenlanders should stick with Denmark, which supports the island’s economy with about $520 million a year in subsidies. This is despite its vast mineral wealth, which remains largely untapped.
If they did go their own way, he said, Copenhagen would respect their wishes. “If the Greenlandic population had a referendum and after that their politicians said to Denmark they would like to be independent, then Denmark would say, but you will have to negotiate the details.”
Høyem believes it highly unlikely the islanders would willingly join America, but he has welcomed the US president’s intervention.
“Mr Trump is, of course, right,” he said. “The Arctic area is very, very, very important and has become more and more important now when the ice is melting and Chinese ships and Russian ships are traveling around in this area.
“There is no chance that Greenland could defend itself and there is no chance that Denmark could defend Greenland alone.”
“The Arctic area is very, very, very important and has become more and more important now when the ice is melting.”
Any referendum would probably be influenced by a longstanding controversy over a birth control program run by Denmark in the 1960s and 1970s in which Inuit women and girls as young as 13 were fitted with birth control devices, in some cases without their consent or even their knowledge.
Danish media reports have prompted harrowing accounts from women who claimed to have suffered physically and psychologically as a result. Some were left unable to conceive.
Egede has accused the Danes of “genocide”. A commission of inquiry is due to report in May. Separately, 143 Greenlandic women have sued Denmark over their treatment.
Høyem, who is due to give testimony to the inquiry on Monday, has rejected Egede’s accusation as “absurd and ridiculous”.
Some 4,500 women — half of all fertile females on the island — were given IUDs. Høyem says that in the overwhelming majority of cases the policy was justified to deal with an explosion in the number of births, many of which were unwanted and to underage mothers.
He concedes there were “tragic, individual cases” in which informed consent was not obtained but has denied that he, as a minister, was aware of them.
Peter Conradi is the Europe editor at The Sunday Times of London
