Orla Joelsen wants to Make Greenland Great Again but is pretty sure ditching Denmark and allowing the Arctic territory to be annexed by a superpower is not the best way to go about it.

President-elect Donald Trump is not the first American leader to promote the idea of buying the U.S.’s strategically located northern neighbor, which is rich in minerals and oil, for security reasons. President Harry Truman offered $100 million − about $1.3 billion today − in gold bullion for the world’s largest island in the post-World War II era.
But Trump’s amplification this month of an idea he first floated in his first term, backed by his refusal to rule out using U.S. military power to achieve it, has left Greenlanders not only wondering if it’s a joke. It’s also left them worried, intrigued, excited, bewildered and everything in between.

“It’s shocked us,” Joelsen, a native Greenlander who works as a prison official in the island’s capital Nuuk, said by telephone. “We need to talk about the independence of Greenland from Denmark. But not like this.” Joelsen’s prisons job falls under the authority of Denmark’s justice department. He said he was speaking in a private capacity.

Funny and absurd. Then there was a big airplane with Trump’s name on it.

Christian Ulloriaq Jeppesen is a radio producer from Nuuk who lives in Denmark. He said when Trump initially proposed purchasing Greenland in 2019 it was something he, his friends and family found funny − even absurd.

“Then suddenly there was a big airplane with Trump’s name on it in Nuuk and people were walking around with MAGA hats on it and the whole thing got real,” he said by phone from Copenhagen. Trump’s eldest son landed in Nuuk on Tuesday and spent the day handing out red caps, filming a documentary and speaking to residents.