It was like the circus had come to town. Only instead of elephants and acrobats, we had Donald Trump Jr. sitting alone at Nuuk’s swanky Hans Egede Hotel, a place where the heart of a whale costs more than most people’s rent. He was looking for extras, a local entourage. His cortege was eager to film “good people of Greenland.”
Naturally, he didn’t invite the elites of Niels Hammekensvej — the kind of people who debate sealskin fashion while sipping aquavit and perfecting their nonchalant poses. No, these fine people were suspicious of MAGA hats. So Trump Jr. did what anyone in his position would do: He went rogue, wrangling his entourage from outside the Brugseni supermarket. This is where you find Nuuk’s real salt of the earth — people camping out under dim streetlights, the kind of crowd my sister-in-law Esther used to charm when selling her intricate seal mittens, kamiks, and sculptures made from walrus skulls.
Greenland is beautiful!!! 🇬🇱 pic.twitter.com/PKoeeCafPz
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 7, 2025
So, they dined on whale and who-knows-what, everyone smiling.
People were happy, and the food was free. A far cry from invasion threats — just some pricey whale meat and a little awkward charm. Call it soft power. And weirdly, it worked. Almost.
But not everything was a hit. Out of 300 “Make Greenland Great Again” hats, only seven were taken. And one of those was snatched up by Julius, the self-declared King of Greenland, who went viral for his “I am the King of Greenland Idiot” video. It was quickly dubbed The Meeting of Royals, with Trump Jr. and Julius posing awkwardly.
Cameras captured everything, from Trump Jr.’s signature smirk to the bewildered expressions of Danish officials. Trump Force One sat proudly at the airport, a stronger statement than any awkward dinner could make. It was Trump saying, “I’m here. Deal with it.” Caught completely off guard, Denmark didn’t know whether to send a welcoming committee or special forces.
Trump’s fascination is nothing new
Donald Trump Jr. says he came to Nuuk as a tourist. But Trump Jr.’s fascination with Greenland isn’t new. In 2015, he reached out to my husband, Ole Jorgen Hammeken — a polar explorer and Inuit elder — to plan an “extreme dogsled bow hunting expedition” in the North.
They met at Hemmingway Art Gallery in New York, introduced by its owner, Brian Gaisford, an Explorers Club member, and Trump Jr.’s neighbor in upstate New York.
Trump Jr. wanted to hunt muskox, but not in Kangerlussuaq, where the kill is basically guaranteed. Trump Jr. wanted fair game, preferably on the edge of the Earth itself. Ole Jorgen suggested exactly that. He invited him to go to Nunarsuup Isua, which translates to “The End of the Earth,” known on maps by the colonial name of Cape Morris Jesup in Peary Land.
There, they planned to hunt muskox and climb Hammeken Point, the world’s northernmost mountain. It was a fever dream of a meeting. But then Trump Sr. ran for president, and all plans were shelved.
Nine years later, this past summer, while boating in Avanersuaq, Ole Jorgen found Trump Jr.’s business card in his sealskin jacket. It was torn and weathered, having survived countless storms and blizzards. All the storms that Trump Jr. has missed. A sign from the universe? Perhaps. Instead of venturing to Hammeken Point in Peary Land, Trump Jr. showed up in Nuuk.
The weathered Trump business card. Photo: Galya Morrell
A simmering anger
The fallout? Greenlanders reacted to Trump Jr.’s visit as they often do: stoically. Politicians raged, artists grumbled, and activists suggested locking him up in Greenland’s famously beautiful jail where Captain Paul Watson recently spent time. Regular folks shrugged. “This will pass,” they said, the same way they talk about climate change or anything else life throws at them.
An Inughuit family. Photo: Galya Morrell
But Trump’s visit tapped into something deeper — a simmering anger with Denmark. Last year, a scandal shocked the nation: it was revealed that Danish doctors had secretly fitted thousands of young Kalaallit girls with IUDs in the 1960s and 1970s. No consent, no parental notification. Many of these girls, now women, including women in our own family, were unable to have children. The outrage was palpable.
Some are now calling for Greenland to shed its colonial name and embrace its true identity: Kalaallit Nunaat, the Land of the Kalaallit. Elisabeth Momme, a cultural leader and former director of the Ice Fiord Center in Ilulissat, summed it up: “If Burma can become Myanmar and Ceylon can become Sri Lanka, why can’t we be Kalaallit Nunaat instead of Grønland/Greenland?”
Elisabeth Momme. Photo: Galya Morrell
A complex history
Greenland’s history with America is complicated. Over a century ago, two explorers, Robert Peary and Matthew Henson, had relationships with young Inughuit women while trying to get to the North Pole. Peary’s choice, Aleqasina, was 13 at the time.
Peary and Henson left behind American-Inughuit children who grew up in poverty, wearing, at times, dogskin clothes — a sign of absolute destitution. The explorers never looked back.
Later, Peary’s and Henson’s descendants, and the rest of the Inughuit, were forcefully relocated. When the construction of the American air base at Thule began, authorities moved the Inughuit overnight from their beautiful home in Uummanaq to lifeless Qaanaaq.
Hivshu Ua, or Robert Peary Jr., Robert Peary’s great-grandson, is a keeper of Inughuit tradition. He reminded me that there is no word for “war” in the Inughuit language: “The colonizers’ word for war translates as ‘the crazy man’s work.’ ”
He also believes Greenland must negotiate to survive. “Nunarput (Our Land) has no chance of surviving if it does not negotiate. The invasion already happened. We just have to make the best of it,” he explained.
When I asked him what can be achieved through negotiation, he said, “Demand that Inughuit style of life is secure for 30 years. Then we can use these three decades on transformation and adaptation.”
Aviaq Henson is the great-granddaughter of Matthew Henson and his young Inughuit love, Akatingwah. Like Hivshu, she has traveled the world. She has lived between two worlds, the worlds of a dogsled and of modernity. Henson succeeded in finding a compromise. She can talk for hours about her people, the Inughuit, and their worldview, and she repeats again and again: There is no space for war in their sacred land.
Henson, right, at the Explorers Club in New York. Photo: Galya Morrell
“Most people in Greenland disagree with Trump. We still believe we can become an Independent Greenland, just like Iceland,” Henson told me.
A PR moment
Trump Jr.’s visit, for all its absurdity, may have been Greenland’s biggest PR moment.
“This was a wake-up call for Denmark. For a hundred years, no one cared,” Ole Jorgen said. “In the Danish mentality, we were still a colony. Some Danes were thinking, shall we keep them or just get rid of them? Kick them out? But now they are all on board. Everything changed in a day. Now, Denmark has to pay attention. So, thank you, Trump.”
My friend in Siorapaluk, the Inughuit’s greatest polar bear hunter, Peter Avike, says that if the situation ever gets dire, they have harpoons — many of them crafted entirely from narwhal tusk. But perhaps there’s another way.
Peter Avike. Photo: Galya Morrell
During a conversation with Hivshu, I suggested he travel to Washington, D.C., meet Trump Sr., and arm himself not with a harpoon but with his kilaut — a skin drum made from a polar bear stomach. The kilaut represents consciousness; it’s a tool for communication and conflict resolution.
Hivshu and his ‘kilaut’ drum. Photo: Galya Morrell
I proposed he challenge Trump to a drum-dancing duel, a quintessentially Greenlandic way to settle disputes. In this tradition, adversaries perform, and the one laughed at more by the crowd loses. Imagine Trump Jr. versus a seasoned drum singer. A fair game, no whale meat required.
And that, perhaps, is Greenland’s lesson to the world: In a land of ice and survival, the best weapon is laughter.
