Danish and US power loom over Greenland’s Arctic ghost towns

An abandoned railroad cuts through deep snow and an icy wind rattles the empty window frames of a derelict fish processing plant in the deserted village of Qoornoq, perched on the edge of Greenland’s second-biggest fjord between chunks of glacial ice.

Once a busy Arctic fishing village, Qoornoq is one of dozens of traditional Inuit settlements across Greenland whose residents were forcibly relocated by their Danish colonial rulers to apartment blocks in larger towns, in what was billed in the 1950s-70s as a modernisation drive.

Now, for many Greenlanders, these wooden ghost towns stand as testaments to some of the more bitter experiences of colonisation and reminders of a prevailing goal: to someday secure independence.

“It is still a painful past for us, and perhaps one of the reasons why there’s such a strong antipathy towards Denmark,” said Vittus Qujaukitsoq, a former government minister whose father was forcibly displaced from a village in the far north of Greenland.

The relocation of Qujaukitsoq’s father and his family from their home village of Uummannaq in 1953 was also triggered by the establishment of a major US air base in the area at the time. His father spent years suing Denmark for the loss of his home.

Greenlanders still resent Denmark “because of the arrogance, because of the way people were treated”, Qujaukitsoq said. Now, he said, Greenland should shake off its colonial past and set out on its own.

It is a conversation brought to the fore by incoming US president Donald Trump’s interest in the Arctic territory and the fly-by visit this month by his eldest son. When the younger Trump spoke of Greenlanders experiencing “racism”, Qujaukitsoq said it resonated with him.

But though Greenlanders overwhelmingly support independence, they are not keen to simply replace Denmark with the US as a solution to the problems independence could raise for the island, which receives a large share of its budget in the form of a grant from Copenhagen and has no self-reliance in defence.

“That’s the duality of the question, always. If you’re not owned by Denmark, who are you owned by?” said Pele Broberg, head of the Naleraq party. “But that’s not how you should look at it.”

A small opposition party, Naleraq takes the strongest line on independence. Unlike Greenland’s main political parties, it believes the island is ready to cast off, and has pledged to start separation negotiations immediately if elected.

Naleraq’s plan for independence — which potentially includes slashing the government budget by half to make up for the lost Danish block grant — also sees a big role for the US.

“What I want the other parties to do in this election cycle is to go to the US and say: ‘Look, guys, we need a defence agreement that will be put in effect the second we become independent,’” Broberg said.

But the US’s lasting interest in the island — Trump is not the first US president to raise the idea of purchasing Greenland — has left a mark.

When tens of thousands of US troops arrived in the 1950s to north-eastern Greenland to build the Pituffik Space Base, it came as a shock for the remote, 300-strong village of Uummannaq. The villagers were subsequently forced to move 150km north to an even more unforgiving climate, where they had to start a new settlement from scratch.

The base, the US’s northernmost military facility — which is locked in by ice for three-quarters of the year — remains critical for missile warning systems and space surveillance, and exemplifies Greenland’s strategic importance for US security.

Hearing stories of his forebears’ experience growing up, Qujaukitsoq also campaigned in government to secure funding to reverse environmental damage caused by some 30 US military installations across Greenland during the second world war.

But it was Denmark that the politician felt should pay up, and his family holds Denmark, not the US, responsible for their forced move.

“That was the Danes that did that,” Broberg said. The founder of his party grew up in a village that was partially resettled, he added. “He remembers, when he was a child, people were separated, families, by these relocation programs. It was done for Denmark to save money.”

He said Greenlanders would be happy to see the US presence expand. “If they want to build 30 new bases on our east coast, be my guest.”

“It’s a reality that the US is protecting us, as they have done for the past 83 years,” said Qujaukitsoq, who has served both as Greenland’s finance minister and foreign minister. “So what’s the point of having this anti-US sentiment?”

Frustration with their experience of Danish rule is a big motivator for Greenlanders’ desire for independence, said Naaja Nathanielsen, minister for justice and gender, as well as for mineral resources, who said she also found a “grain of truth” in Trump Jr’s words about discrimination.

“It’s not ancient history,” said Nathanielsen, who hails from a larger political party and believes Greenland needs years more work before it can become independent. “Of course it produces a lot of anger.”

Greenlanders — many of whom live in small, remote communities in the country of just 57,000 people — all knew people affected by colonial policies or experienced them directly, said Nathanielsen, whose own father was taken from home as a child and sent to boarding school in Denmark.

Copenhagen, which has ruled Greenland since the 18th century — first as a colony and then granting it increasing degrees of autonomy in 1979 and 2009 — has apologised for certain cases, such as a 1950s “social experiment” in which two dozen Inuit children were brought to Denmark and cut off from their families in an attempt to reshape their identities.

Another Greenland resident spoke of her family’s shock to discover that the reason a relative was unable to get pregnant was that, as a young woman, she had been fitted with a contraceptive coil without her understanding or consent.

Some 150 Greenlandic women are now suing Denmark over the practice, which is believed to have been implemented by Danish doctors in the 1960s to limit Greenland’s population and to have affected some 4,500 women.

But many of these historic wrongs go unacknowledged, Nathanielsen said, with Denmark loath to see itself as a coloniser.

“It sort of messes with their self-image,” she said. “But if you don’t give people a stage and a platform to grieve, to be angry, and to hear acceptance from the one who caused all this anger, we’re not going to move past it.”

In Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, clusters of sombre concrete apartment blocks mark out the edges of the city, some perched on the bare, windswept rocks looking out over the Labrador Sea.

Many Inuit fishing families were relocated to such city blocks as part of the Danish modernisation drive, which sought to concentrate people in areas with jobs and factories, and to provide modern amenities.

After Greenland gained more self-rule in recent years, some of Qoornoq’s former residents and their descendants began returning to set up summer houses, breathing a little life into the abandoned village during the few warmer months of the year.

But many, like Qujaukitsoq’s family, never returned.

“It was the most painful experience they’ve had in their life, being denied the access for their own land and their hunting areas, which they lost,” he said.