Facts about Greenland

[tugsailor]

All that is true.

California also has strategic value. If we were ever invaded by China, the easiest way to defeat them would be to surrender California. China wouldn’t be able to manage California.

[Hogsnort]

Can America?

[Sand_Pebble]

@Hogsnort

Can America…

Nope…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/312660/us-state-and-local-government-debt-outstanding-by-state/

[freighterman1]

All that chart shows is that the states with the biggest economies have the biggest debt.

Just like USA has more debt than Belgium, because the USA is the larger economy.

I have debt which I consider trivial compared to my earnings, which a poor person would consider unsupportable.

[Seadog6726]

Hahahaha! Oh shit! That’s funny!

[Seadog6726]

Makes me wonder if anyone here other than me has ever been there? Thule and Sodestrom USAFB in 1977.

[ombugge]

Not an official statement, just one person’s opinion voiced on a forum:

If Denmark refuses to sell Greenland to Trump, what options short of war and...

Has he got a point?

[tengineer1]

I don’t think Musk is interested in Greenland any more. He’s shifted his attention to Ukraine’s rare earths instead of Greenland’s. If he gets that along with all the information in the US government’s critical systems, including everyone’s personal financial and health information his muskateers are hoovering up he will move on. Leave the carcass to be taken over by his oligarch friends and himself. Page right out of Putin’s playbook who Musk admits he has been communicating with for years.

[Hogsnort]

Called at Paamiut and Qaqortoq and passage through Prins Christian Sund. Spectacular.

[ombugge]

Maybe he is a playing this game?:

Source: Redirecting...

[ombugge]

Norway tried to claim part of East Greenland (called Eirik Raude Land) in the 1930s:

Myggbukta

This almost ended up in an armed conflict with Denmark, but the case was brought before the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1933
where Norway lost:

Legal Status of Eastern Greenland, Judgment, 5 Apr 1933

An anecdote:
Sometime in the early 1960s a Norwegian seal catcher was charted by the Danish Authorities to supply settlements in the North East of Greenland.
They reached an Inuit settlement further north than any Norwegian sealing vessel had been before. When they returned to their home village Brandal the Owner was curios about the conditions they had met there.

The Skipper, who was known for his quick wit, answered (freely translated form memory); “Well I can tell you that the moral up there were at a low and comfortable level”.

[ombugge]

The big question ISSS?

Why does Trump want Greenland and what do its people think?

[ombugge]

Maybe asking nicely is a better way to get to the valuable minerals and metals that is known to exist in Greenland?

Greenland grants mining permit for major metal extraction project in Northeast...

[quote]

[ombugge]

The beginning of a US “invasion”?:

United Airlines says Greenland could become a top-trending tourist destination...

Much less controversial than the Vance visit a few months ago.

[ombugge]

No comments required:

[ombugge]

Facts about Greenland as presented the Arctic Security Conference:

Greenland in the spotlight, but the answer is NATO, not new borders -...

Denmark, for its part, has moved to show it is stepping up at home and with allies. Copenhagen is leading Arctic Light 2025, the largest military exercise in Greenland’s modern history and has just pledged 1.6 billion Danish crowns to infrastructure and health on the island—twin signals aimed at security and daily life.
“We invest in our allies and partners. We work with them to ensure not only our own security, but the security of our friends and allies,” Sfraga said.

Threaded through the panel was a single message for Washington: if Greenland is on the U.S.’ radar, keep it inside NATO’s planning and the U.S.–Danish–Greenland framework that already exists — practical, scalable and designed to keep trouble from arriving in the first place.

[ombugge]

The dispute between Canada and Denmark about sovereignty over Hans Island was settled in a very civilized manner:

Canada and Denmark had a longstanding dispute of the ownership of one island, Hans Island, which is between Elsmere Island, which is part of Canada, and Greenland. It is now settled, with a line drawn right down the middle, so each country owns half.
During the years of the dispute, the navy of each country would periodically visit it to maintain their country’s claim to it. When the Canadians visited, they left a full bottle of the best Canadian Whiskey on the Island for the Danes. When the Danes visited, they took the bottle of Canadian Whiskey, and left a bottle of the best Danish distilled liquor.

The dispute was cordial, and was settled in a fashion mutually agreeable.
Trump has no idea how important being nice to your neighbours are

Source: https://qr.ae/pCnsS0

PS> “The best Danish distilled liquor” means:

Aalborg Jubilæums Akvavit

[ombugge]

Greenland has a lot in common with it’s Atlantic sisters, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. All three has Norse roots and a history of being under Danish rule:

The Icelandic, Faroese and Greenlandic flags. (Alþingi)

Together the three countries are only home to roughly half a million people—about 390,000 in Iceland, 56,000 in Greenland and 54,000 in the Faroe Islands—but occupy a strategically important area with roughly 5.47 million km² combined jurisdiction, about two-thirds of the contiguous U.S.

Besides they are of great strategic importance, straddling the GIUK Gap:

That “attention” includes Trump-era talk of effectively annexing Greenland. Gnarr won’t inflate the drama, but he won’t ignore it either.
“Trump knows how to make noise. Say something on his platform and it becomes a headline here in Iceland,” he says. “But the key is this: the future of Greenland is in the hands of the Greenlandic people.” He even shrugs at the spectacle: “Handing out caps in Nuuk? That’s not the end of the world.”

The region around the three Council member states has, since WWII, been a key strategic area and the GIUK remains a vital artery between Europe and North America. Currently the U.S. isn’t the only superpower with vested interest in the region.
“Of the great powers buzzing around us, I think the United States is the least bad option. I’d rather see them here than, say, the Russians. Russia and China don’t play by the rules we consider normal — democracy, freedom of expression, and so on,” he says.

“We can keep expertise in the region by making it easy to build here,” he says. “Give people reasons to stay.”
Culture, finally, is what makes the practical work stick. He frames it as “soft tissue” that strengthens trust: once people feel welcome, everything from landing rights to research cooperation gets easier. He points to small, durable bridges—music exchanges, chess projects and Kalak, the Iceland–Greenland Friendship Association.

With the world heating up and superpowers on the move, it seems vital for small states to form ranks. For Gnarr, the West Nordic Council is where kinship becomes capacity, where three neighbours who know each other well can move in step.

Source: https://www.arctictoday.com/111455-2/*emphasized

[ombugge]

A Greenland mystery that is still unsolved; “what happened to the Norse settlers”?:

The Norse settlement in Greenland was founded in 986 by Icelandic settlers, and a society of at least 3,000 people thrived in two main communities—the Western Settlement and the Eastern Settlement. The first settler was Erik the Red, who after being exiled from Iceland for murder sailed to Greenland and settled in what became known as Eiriksfjord. He would later convince over 700 people to follow him to this new land, which for PR purposes he called Greenland.

Gunnarsson says; "I visited the Hvalsey church, which is the most remarkable medieval building on this side of the Atlantic and much more beautiful than anything you’ll find in Iceland.”
The ruins of the church, which inspired Gunnarsson, still stand near the town of Qaqortoq, and as testament to its legacy, the last written record we have of the Norse people of Greenland was a wedding of two Icelanders that was held there in 1408:

The Hvalsey Church (Number 57 at English Wikipedia, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The Norse presence in Greenland would soon take on a second life, however, not as a living community but as a political instrument.
“It is through the idea of the Norse Greenlanders that the Danish king makes a claim to Greenland,” Gunnarsson says.
The logic was simple: the Norse had sworn allegiance to the Norwegian crown in 1261 and when Norway later entered union with Denmark, the Danes inherited that claim. Even centuries after the settlement disappeared, this medieval connection became the legal foundation for Danish sovereignty over Greenland.
What happened?
Gunnarsson points to the settlement’s deep vulnerability to environmental change. During the late middle ages, following a series of large volcanic eruptions, a period called the Little Ice Age began, which brought harsher winters, pack ice blocking trade routes and shorter growing seasons.

As shipping routes faltered, the Black Death devastated Norway, cutting off Greenland’s main support line. Population decline, loss of young women, economic contraction and isolation followed. Still, none of these fully explain the final disappearance.
“There is nothing in the archaeology that shows a mass death,” Gunnarsson notes. “People don’t just lie down and starve to death.”

But how does a society just disappear without a trace? Gunnarsson believes the final families may have attempted to flee.

“I suggest that they tried to build a kind of ark and sail away to save themselves,” he says. “But they never made it and perished at sea. But this remains a mystery—a question that still haunts us.”

Currently, the book is only available in Icelandic, but according to Gunnarsson, an English translation of the book is forthcoming.
Source: https://www.arctictoday.com/the-mystery-of-the-greenlanders-who-vanished/

[Binbag_the_Saylore]

Sounds a bit like a St Kilda-style evacuation - when the community was no longer independently viable