On a recent evening, I heard a sentence I could not have believed a year ago that I would ever hear:
“I refrained from liking a critical post about Trump. Just imagine if we want to go to the US again soon?”
The words were my partner’s, and he sounded embarrassed. But rumors are circulating in Copenhagen about people whose phones have been checked at passport control, or who’ve been denied entry if they’ve spoken out against the American president. We talked about how wild it was that we were even having this conversation—that expressing one’s opinion, about the US of all places, could be a problem.
But enough was enough, we agreed. If anything is to change, we have to make ourselves heard—even if it’s only with a tiny little like. So when Vogue asked whether I would write about how we Danes feel about Trump’s idea of taking over Greenland—which has been part of the Kingdom of Denmark since the 19th century, and functioned autonomously since the 1950s—I could not possibly say anything other than yes.
I grew up with a heroic idea of the United States. Partly because you were heroes—you helped save us from Nazi Germany—and partly because Hollywood assured me that if everything went wrong, Tom Cruise would jump out of a plane to battle the bad guys.
Deep down, I have always believed that. With only six million people, we don’t really stand a chance if someone wants to harm us—at least not without alliances. We have the EU, NATO, and a relationship with the US so close that our prime minister in the 2000s went jogging with President Bush in Washington (a far bigger story in our media than in yours). Danish soldiers have also fought alongside American ones, including in Afghanistan.
I also grew up with the sense that you did everything—from wearing Uggs to practicing Reformer Pilates—at least two years before we did. When I was editor in chief of a fashion magazine in the 2010s, I convinced management that the magazine could effectively not be published unless I attended New York Fashion Week every season. It was just as inspiring to sit at Pastis in the Meatpacking District and watch well-dressed New Yorkers as it was to attend a Marc Jacobs show. This was before Noma, Ganni Girls, Scandi chic, and Copenhagen being named the world’s coolest city.
Our media and our dinner tables are swarming with attempts to understand Trump. “If you listen to a podcast about something Trump said about Greenland that was recorded on Thursday, it may be outdated by Friday,” the father of one of my son’s classmates said when we met for a dinner club last week. Is he exaggerating what he wants to do now in order to get his way on something else later? Should one take him seriously, but not literally? Is it all just a diversion from what’s happening in the US?
I ask a friend who works in communications whether she has ever believed that Trump would take over Greenland by military force. “No,” she says. “It’s not just land the US would be taking over, but people. Would they then become American citizens against their will? I don’t see that happening.”
But one thing we are both sure of is that Trump and his administration say many things that are factually incorrect—and that this makes us uneasy. “It reminds me of a manipulative friend I had in school, who lied about everything so convincingly that I almost started wondering whether I was the one who was crazy,” my friend says.
When Copenhagen Fashion Week held its opening reception on Monday afternoon, there were just as many cheek kisses and Champagne glasses as always. Editors, designers, and PR people mostly talked about the cold and which dinners they would be attending during the week. But when I asked whether Trump’s statements about Greenland troubled them, they nodded.
“It affects me personally on two levels,” said the co-owner of a fashion agency and PR firm. “It’s really difficult to make budgets for our brands. We have trouble predicting whether we’ll end up in such an uncertain situation that Danish consumption declines, and we don’t know whether new tariffs will be introduced for brands that sell in the US. The other level is when I’m sitting in the evening, breastfeeding my three-month-old daughter. That’s often when I have to read the news. Denmark is the kind of country where we let our baby sleep outside on the street in a pram while we’re sitting in a café, and I wonder if it will feel just as safe here when my daughter one day has a child.”
A magazine editor wondered about those in Trump’s inner circle—what they might be whispering in his ear, what commercial interests they may have, and why no one is telling him to stop.
“Our own political system is structured around many smaller parties that must find compromises across the board, so one person would never be able to amass that much power,” the editor noted.
I have also begun to hear more people say that maybe this was what it took to get Europe to stand together, and to make us Danes take a real interest in Greenland. That rings true for me. Apart from a couple of doctors who moved there because the pay was good, I didn’t know anyone who had—until now. The closest I myself have come to the island was as a child, when I put together a jigsaw puzzle of our royal family standing in the snow in Nuuk, wearing Greenlandic national dress.
Denmark behaved like the colonial power it was as recently as the 1970s, when several thousand Greenlandic women were fitted with IUDs without their knowledge. They are now receiving compensation. And when there was a demonstration for solidarity with Greenland a couple of Sundays ago, Greenlanders and Danes took to the streets together, holding the Greenlandic flag. But back in the 1700s, Denmark was the one wielding its might in Greenland.
Of course, Greenland has come to rely on Denmark’s support; a society of 56,000 people can hardly manage on its own in the modern world. But as our foreign minister said on Fox News: “You can trade with people, but you can’t trade people.” It’s a good rule of thumb.