10 Things You Might Not Know About Greenland

Greenland has been in the news because President Trump has expressed a desire to buy the country. But just how much do you know about this frozen land? With a coastline of 24,430 miles (39,316 km) punctuated by deep fjords, it’s the world’s largest island. It is described as “an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark.” Greenland’s geography is extraordinary, with some 80% of its land mass covered by a massive ice cap as thick as 10,000 feet (16,093 km).

Its history of human occupation stretches back 4,500 years. As we’ll see, America has thought of buying it since as long ago as 1867.

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10 First Settlement

The first humans we know about who settled in Greenland arrived there around 4,500 years ago. Inuit people made their way to Greenland by island hopping across the Arctic seas off mainland Canada. In fact, there were a series of migrations over a period of around 2,500 years, with each wave of newcomers representing different Inuit cultures. The most recent arrivals were people of the Thule culture who arrived in about AD 1100.

However, the first non-Inuit to make it to Greenland was the Norwegian Viking Erik “the Red” Thorvaldsson, who landed around AD 985 and is credited with coming up with the name Grϋnland—Greenland in English—for this huge ice-bound landmass. Thorvaldsson got his nickname because of his red locks and beard, although his quick temper may also have played a part. Erik originally left Norway for Iceland, accompanying his father, who had been sent into exile for killing a man.^[1]

9 Erik in Trouble

Like father like son, it seems. In about 982, Erik was exiled from Iceland for killing one of his neighbors. But Erik’s bad behavior didn’t end there since he next settled on a pair of islands off the Icelandic coast and argued with his neighbors again. At least two people lost their lives in a violent brawl, and Erik was tried and found guilty of murder. He was subsequently exiled from his latest home, and that’s when he made his way to Greenland.

Erik spent the next three years on Greenland, founding a settlement called Eriksey, before returning to Iceland in 985. Back in Iceland, Erik now organized an expedition to settle the island permanently. Some say he called his new land Greenland to persuade potential settlers that it was a land of plenty. An early example, perhaps, of advertising hyperbole. And it worked since around 400 people joined Erik in settling Greenland.^[2]

8 Living on Greenland

These Viking settlers on Greenland lived by farming and hunting walruses while creating villages with stone buildings. Over time, the population living on the island reached a peak of as many as 6,000, and some 500 farmsteads were inhabited, some with their own churches. The climate may have been warmer back then, allowing these people to thrive in an apparently inhospitable land. Greenland’s settlers flourished, even embracing Christianity in the 12th century.

The Norwegian settlers also began to associate with the Inuit Thule people who had arrived on Greenland in about 1100, as we mentioned earlier. But after thriving for centuries, the Viking Greenlander culture began to decline. By the 15th century, not a single one of the Vikings was left on the island. The reasons for this remain murky; some theorize that a downturn in temperatures known as the Little Ice Age may have made life insupportable. Other posited reasons include drought, disease, and conflict with the Inuit.^[3]

7 Colonization

So, after 400 years, the Vikings were gone, but that didn’t mean nobody was left on Greenland—the Inuit Thule people were still there. The Inuit occasionally had dealings with whalers from Britain and the Netherlands, but these mariners made no effort to settle Greenland. Things changed in 1721 when the missionary Hans Egede, with the blessing of what was then the United Kingdom of Denmark-Norway, arrived in Greenland.

Egede, who became known as “The Apostle of Greenland,” had a burning ambition to bring Christianity to the Inuit of Greenland, and he spent 13 years raising finance and organizing his mission. Much of his support came from wealthy merchants, and Egede also established a commercial company based on his religious project. Egede embarked for Greenland on his colonizing mission with a flotilla of three ships carrying his wife, five children, and 40 would-be settlers. Despite losing one ship in thick ice, the party reached the inhospitable island of Kangeq just off Greenland’s west coast.^[4]

6 Nuuk Is Born

After spending their first brutal winter on the unpromising island, many of Egede’s followers took the opportunity to return to Scandinavia aboard a ship that arrived. But Egede and his estimable wife, Gertrud Rask, stuck to their task and worked to bring the Christian message to the Inuit while trying to establish a whaling station. The whaling station was a bust, so the mission was a commercial failure. Still, Egede had some success in persuading a few Inuit to baptize their infants. However, the broader aim of converting the Inuit wholesale was unsuccessful.

Egede’s faltering mission was reinforced in 1728 when Major Clauss Paarss arrived with the title of Governor of Greenland and a party of soldiers and convicts. Paarss quickly moved the colonizing operation from Kangeq, which Egede had over-optimistically called the Island of Hope, to the mainland. There, he built a fort that originated the modern city of Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. Disaster hit the colony and the Inuit when smallpox found its way to the island from Norway, causing many deaths, including Egede’s wife. A thoroughly demoralized Egede soon left Greenland forever.^[5]

5 Robert Peary

U.S. Navy man Robert Peary spent much of his career on leave of absence so that he could pursue his true passion, Arctic exploration. This was sparked by an article he read about a Swede who’d failed in an attempt to cross the Greenland ice cap. Peary borrowed $500 from his mother to fund his bid to succeed where the Swede had failed by crossing the ice sheet with dog sleds. But on this occasion, Peary also failed, stymied by impassable ice and dwindling supplies.

Undeterred, Peary set off on his self-appointed mission again in 1891 when he embarked on an 18-month trip of exploration across Greenland. This time, he was accompanied by his wife Josephine, who published a vivid account of the expedition.

Even in the late 19th century, Greenland’s precise geography was something of a mystery. In fact, many maps showed that it actually extended all the way to the North Pole. In the second year of his expedition, Peary and his party made it to the northernmost point of Greenland, proving once and for all that the landmass was an island.^[6]

4 World War II

Greenland’s status as a Danish colony was cemented in 1776 when the Danes declared a complete trade monopoly with the island. Foreigners were forbidden from landing there, a state of affairs that lasted until 1950. But there was a brutal interruption to Danish rule in 1940 when the Germans invaded Denmark. Even so, the Nazis didn’t win control of Greenland because the U.S. and the British stepped in.

Because of Greenland’s strategic importance, the Allies were especially keen that the Germans shouldn’t get their hands on it. Much of this came from the territory’s key position as a base for weather stations, which could predict conditions that would unfold across Europe at any given time. This was vital information for military planning and something the Allies wanted to keep to themselves.

Although America was not yet in the war, President Roosevelt ordered the U.S. Navy and the Coast Guard to patrol the waters around Greenland and the British joined this mission. Greenlanders also worked to prevent German occupation of Greenland, reporting incursions to the Americans who flew bombing missions to repel the Nazis.^[7]

3 After the War

In April 1941, the U.S. signed a treaty with the Danish ambassador that gave the Americans permission to site military facilities on Greenland. Once the war came to an end, the Danish expected U.S. forces to leave, but now, with an eye on a hostile Russia, the Americans had different ideas. In 1946, the State Department’s John Hickerson asserted that Greenland was “indispensable to the safety of the United States.” And American officials actually made a secret offer to the Danish government, details of which only emerged in 1991.

The U.S. proposed to buy Greenland from the Danes for $100 million in gold bullion. Another idea apparently considered at the time was a land swap, with Denmark being offered oil-rich territory in Point Barrow, Alaska, in return for Greenland. That idea never got off the ground, nor did the purchase plan. At the time, Danish Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen said, “While we owe much to America, I do not feel that we owe them the whole island of Greenland.”^[8]

2 Nuclear Weapons

Although America didn’t get ownership of Greenland, they did not come away empty-handed from their post-war negotiations with Denmark. A new treaty was signed in 1951, which gave America the right to continue operating its military bases on the island and develop them further.

America’s military presence was not without controversy and even drama. The U.S. based nuclear weapons on Greenland at its Thule Airbase and also flew B-52 bombers armed with nuclear weapons across Greenland’s airspace constantly as part of Strategic Air Command’s Airborne Alert Program. These facts were kept from the Danish people. But all hell broke loose in January 1968 when a B-52 carrying four live hydrogen bombs crashed in a fjord on the northwest of Greenland near the Thule base.

The cat was now out of the bag, and Denmark learned for the first time of the nuclear weapons on and above Greenland. The Americans were obliged to conduct a painstaking clean-up operation and to end flights over Greenland by nuclear-armed planes.^[9]

1 Buying Greenland

President Trump’s desire to buy Greenland from Denmark, first mooted in 2019 and repeated in 2025, is far from unprecedented. As we’ve seen, President Harry S. Truman made a bid for the island nearly 80 years ago. But that wasn’t the first time the U.S. tried to purchase Greenland. In 1868, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward published a plan to buy Greenland. Seward had already masterminded the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million in 1867, so he had some experience when it came to purchasing entire territories. However, faced with opposition from the American public, Seward’s plan came to nothing.

Then, in 1910, the U.S. Ambassador to Denmark, Maurice Egan, proposed a complex deal that would have seen America give land in the Philippines to Denmark in exchange for Greenland and the Danish West Indies. Unsurprisingly, this rather bizarre proposal disappeared without a trace.

But what do the people of present-day Greenland think of the idea that they might become American? Múte Egede, Prime Minister of the Danish autonomous territory, said, “Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland. Our future and fight for independence is our business.”^[10]