NUUK, Greenland — Just 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in Nuuk, the world’s northernmost capital, locals were preparing to receive U.S. Vice President JD Vance with what they were calling the “Arctic cold shoulder,” a nod to the diplomatic fallout sparked by President Donald Trump’s repeated suggestions that the U.S. should take over Greenland.
“We have always looked at America like the nice big brother to help you out and now it’s like the big brother in bullying you,” Anders Laursen, 41, the owner of a local water taxi company, told NBC News on Thursday.
“Growing up you see Hollywood movies, all the heroes and then you feel backstabbed and you feel like an ally that’s just gone the other way round and you’re like, ‘This can’t be happening, this is not the America we knew,’” added Laursen.
Both the length of the trip and itinerary have changed since Sunday’s announcement that second lady Usha Vance was going to visit Greenland along with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and national security adviser Michael Waltz — who has been under fire in recent days for adding Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg into a Signal group chat that detailed U.S. airstrike plans on Yemen.
Initially billed as a cultural trip, Usha Vance had planned to visit Nuuk and attend events, such as a popular annual dog sled race on the sparsely populated island that is home to just 56,000 people.
That changed after her husband said Tuesday that he would join her, an announcement that was met with widespread anger in both Greenland and Denmark, which controlled the island for 300 years until it became a formal territory in 1953. Although Greenland gained home rule in 1979, Copenhagen still controls its foreign and defense policy and contributes just under $1 billion to its economy.
The trip was subsequently shortened to just one day and limited to the U.S. Pituffik Space Base, hundreds of miles from Nuuk and other cities, meaning they will be well out of the way of the locals.
Irene Thor Jeremiassen, a 35-year-old Inuit law student, said she preferred the new itinerary. “I didn’t want to meet him,” she said of JD Vance.
Tungutaq Larsen, 67, attended a demonstration against Trump, whose plans, he said, were “not acceptable here in Greenland.”
“Why do you want to buy a human?” he added. “We are not for sale.”
He said JD Vance would be welcome if he treated Greenlanders like humans, but “if you see us like things without feelings, then you are not welcome here in Greenland.”
The anger nonetheless remains at President Donald Trump, who, since his first term, has repeatedly stated an interest in acquiring the island, two-thirds of which sits above the rapidly melting Arctic Circle, where deposits of rare-earth minerals and potential offshore oil and natural gas remain largely untapped, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Trump repeated his threat to take over Greenland, which is technically part of North America, on Wednesday.
“We need Greenland for international safety and security. We need it. We have to have it,” the president told podcaster Vince Coglianese. “I hate to put it that way, but we’re going to have to have it.”
The comments were condemned by several Danish lawmakers and Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen, who called them an escalation.
“These very powerful statements about a close ally do not suit the U.S. president,” he told reporters in Copenhagen on Thursday, according to Reuters. “I need to clearly speak out against what I see as an escalation from the American side,” he said. “The tightened rhetoric is in every way far-fetched.”
While opinion polls show that almost all Greenlanders oppose becoming part of the United States, there have been some upsides to the heightened American interest, according to Qupanuk Olsen, a member of the island’s parliament.
“It has been like a huge wake-up call for everyone in Greenland,” said Olsen, whose centrist Naleraq Party has called for a referendum on independence from Denmark and favors closer ties with the United States, including a potential free association agreement.
She added that another country showing interest had made people think that they were most likely worth much more than they thought.
However, she said some people feared Greenland would simply be colonized by another country.
