US Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, are traveling to Greenland this week, after the second lady’s original itinerary in the Arctic island was amended.
Her initial agenda, which included watching a dog-sled race, sparked backlash because of the US government’s designs on Greenland.
President Donald Trump has said the US needs to acquire Greenland — the largest island in the world and an autonomous Danish territory — for security reasons, recently saying, “I think, we’ll go as far as we have to go” to control it.
Now, the Vances are only expected to visit the US military base on Greenland, a change the Danish government called “very positive.”
The Vances “are proud to visit the Pituffik Space Base,” JD Vance’s press secretary, Taylor Van Kirk, said in a statement to Business Insider.
“As the Vice President has said, previous US leaders have neglected Arctic security, while Greenland’s Danish rulers have neglected their security obligations to the island,” Van Kirk added. “The security of Greenland is critical in ensuring the security of the rest of the world, and the Vice President looks forward to learning more about the island.”
Greenland is known for its long, freezing winters, stunning glaciers, and fishing industry, but in many ways, it remains a frozen mystery to much of the world.
Part of that mystique is because it’s been difficult for some tourists to travel to, except by cruise ship or lengthy plane rides. A new international airport is making the country more accessible, including to US residents.
Marianne A. Stenbaek, a professor of cultural studies at McGill University who studies Greenlandic art and literature, described Greenland as a “modern society with a traditional touch.” That’s because Denmark colonized it hundreds of years ago, but aspects of its Inuit traditions remain.
From its arts to its cuisine, Greenland has a culture all its own.
Greenland is located between Canada and Iceland, with much of the country above the Arctic Circle.
The country is a little bigger than Mexico. It’s also much colder. About 80% of Greenland’s 836,330 square miles are buried in snow and ice. An enormous national park, the world’s largest, covers much of the northeast.
The island has long made it of interest to many other countries for military purposes and as a source of natural resources, from rare minerals to natural gas and oil.
But to Greenlanders, it’s simply home.
Greenland’s first humans arrived over 4,000 years ago.
Pre-Inuit groups, including members of the Saqqaq culture, came to the island around 2,500 BCE via Canada. They settled in northern, western, and southeastern Greenland. Today’s Greenland Inuit population is descended from the Thule people, who moved into the country’s north from Alaska through Canada around 1,000 years ago.
Between 985 and roughly 1450 CE, Vikings lived and then died out in Western Greenland. Erik the Red was the one who called the icy island Greenland. In Greenlandic, its name is Kalaallit Nunaat.
Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede established a settlement in what’s now Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, in 1721. Over the centuries, Denmark’s culture profoundly changed the country.
Greenland remained a Danish colony until 1953 and became an autonomous territory in 1979. It has its own parliament, known as the Inatsisartut.
While the country self-governs its domestic matters, Denmark retains jurisdiction over defense and foreign affairs.
More people live in Ames, Iowa, than in all of Greenland.
Around 56,000 people make Greenland their home.
Just under 90% are Inuit, though most also have some European ancestry, according to genetic testing published by the American Society of Human Genetics in 2015. Danish people make up the rest of the population. Most live in coastal cities or communities.
Residents speak Greenlandic and Danish.
Kalaallisut, also known as Greenlandic, is an Inuit language and is the official language of the country. It’s widely spoken, though some groups in the east speak Tunumiit, according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.
Most residents also speak Danish, which is taught as a second language in schools.
Fishing is the country’s biggest industry.
The population has long depended on fishing for their livelihoods. However, it’s not enough to support the entire country. Denmark heavily supplements its budget with about $511 million annually, according to The BBC.
“The economy has been difficult,” Stenbaek said. Tourism and the country’s natural resources may be its future.
Cruise ships stop by in the summer, but airports are opening around the country, too.
Whether they’re hoping to spot narwhals or want to glimpse glaciers, nature-loving tourists are drawn to Greenland.
For a long time, it was difficult to get to the island by plane. Nuuk only opened its international airport in November 2024. Before that, only a few airports had runways long enough to land large jets.
Ilulissat, which has an ice fjord on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, and Qaqortoq are also getting international airports, Reuters reported. Later this year, Americans will be able to hop on a direct flight from New York to Nuuk for the first time.
To get ready for the surge of tourists, some residents are buying snowmobiles to rent out, The New York Times reported. New hotels are opening, too.
Rich in both rare earth minerals and wildlife, Greenland is divided on what to do.
Greenland has a history of mining cryolite, which is used in aluminum smelting. A recent documentary, “The White Gold of Greenland,” claimed that for over 100 years, Danish mining companies extracted billions worth of the mineral, and Greenland reaped very little of the benefit, Variety reported.
That’s not a history it would want to repeat if it taps its deposits of uranium, gold, natural gas, lithium, and other resources. While some see mining as an opportunity to enrich the country, others have concerns.
“Greenlanders are very hesitant about many aspects of mining because it impacts the nature so much,” Stenbaek said.
There are also worries about how it could affect the fishing industry, while residents in Narsaq are concerned about their health if a company moves forward with mining radioactive uranium at a nearby proposed site, The Guardian reported.
Colonialism turned some aspects of Greenland Scandinavian while also stamping out some of its Inuit culture.
Danish culture is visible in Greenland’s healthcare system, educational institutions, and government. “To that extent, it has had a huge impact,” Stenbaek said. At the same time, authorities contributed to the loss of many aspects of the Inuits’ way of life.
Between the 1950s and ’70s, the Danish government forced Inuit populations to relocate from smaller settlements and communities to cities, Reuters reported. During this time, doctors implanted IUDs in thousands of Inuit girls and women, sometimes without their consent, The BBC reported. Denmark is investigating the matter and has offered counseling to those affected, AP reported last year.
Members of the Inuit community were also pressured to give up their culture and language.
“We were told to act more Danish, to speak Danish, if we wanted to be something,” Nadja Arnaaraq Kreutzmann, a Nuuk resident, recently told Reuters.
Some Inuits are preserving and reclaiming their culture.
From sewing national costumes to making jewelry to carving animal tusks, Inuit people in Greenland are finding ways to continue traditional practices.
“I’m concerned if we do not give the old traditions to younger people, it’ll die out within 35 years,” Greenlander Vera Mølgaard told National Geographic.
Qupanuk Olsen, a new member of Greenland’s Parliament, has spent over five years gaining more than 300,000 Instagram followers by highlighting the country’s food and traditions.
Most Greenlanders are Lutheran, but Inuit religious practices remain.
Some estimates put Greenland’s Lutheran population at 90%, heavily influenced by Hans Egede, the missionary who came to the island in 1721. His statue stands in Nuuk, and some want it removed, saying it’s a symbol of the start of colonization, the AP reported.
Many Greenlanders incorporate traditional religious practices into their services, Stenbaek said. They also sing hymns in Greenlandic, she said.
About 15,000 people live in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital and biggest city.
The city’s architecture is Scandinavian, but its artwork incorporates Inuit tales, according to Lonely Planet. That duality is Nuuk in a nutshell.
“It’s very much, in many ways, like a modern Scandinavian city,” Stenbaek said. “And at the same time, the Greenlandic culture, the traditional culture, is still there.”
There are plenty of cafés, restaurants, and shopping for residents and tourists to visit.
A more traditional way of life survives in smaller communities.
Small settlements remain along the west and east coasts, Stenbaek said. Some have fewer than 100 people.
“They live very much like they would have lived 100 years ago,” Stenbaek said. That means relying on fishing and other traditional knowledge to survive.
When there are no roads, residents use boats, sleds, and helicopters to get around.
In the more remote areas of the country, it’s not always easy to get from place to place.
“If you have to go from settlement to settlement, it’s either by boat or dog sleigh or skiing,” Stenbaek said.
If the water is too icy for boats, Greenlanders might have to jump in a helicopter. There are dog sled races in Uummannaq, but it’s also a practical mode of transportation in the snowy weather. The same goes for snowmobiles.
Greenland has polar nights and the midnight sun.
Far north regions experience polar nights in the winter, when the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon. The opposite happens in the summer, when Greenland gets nonstop daylight for a couple of months.
Both are significant to Greenlanders.
Since the sun is not visible in the winter, when spring comes it brings life back,” photographer Inuuteq Storch told The Guardian in 2024. “That time of total darkness is very spiritual.”
Weather rules Greenlanders’ worlds.
Greenland is a maritime culture, according to Stenbaek. “Everything depends on ice and water,” she said.
In some parts of the country, winters can last through April. The temperatures can be frigid, with some regions getting down to -30 degrees Fahrenheit.
Summers in northern towns are still chilly, averaging around 41 degrees Fahrenheit, per The Guardian. Temperatures are getting warmer, though.
Lots of Greenlanders read through those long, dark nights.
Greenland has a very literary culture, Stenbaek said. “It’s an old tradition that goes back 100 years,” she said. It’s long been a good way to pass a polar night. Local authors are published in both Greenlandic and Danish.
There are plenty of other types of Greenlandic art, too, including theater, sculpture, and music.
“Greenlanders are very artistic,” Stenbaek said.
Locals love to get outdoors, too.
Plenty of Greenlanders’ pastimes involve braving the cold.
“Many of them are connected directly to nature, like fishing, hunting, skiing,” Stenbaek said.
Greenland is rich in biodiversity.
The snowy landscape and arctic waters surrounding the island are habitats for musk ox, reindeer, seals, polar bears, whales, and dozens of bird species.
Berries, flowers, and cottongrass also grow in some parts of the country.
The Greenland dog is an ancient breed.
Sled dogs aren’t just companions. They’re often working animals, and have a long history of surviving alongside humans. Greenland’s first dogs arrived with the Thule people hundreds of years ago.
The husky-like dogs have thick coats, muscular bodies for pulling sleds, and a digestive system suited to high-fat diets, as reported by Newsweek.
Some dog sled races ban the use of other breeds, according to the Greenlandic Broadcasting Corporation.
Lamb, ox, and lots of seafood are all part of Arctic cuisine.
Long before there were grocery stores in Greenland, locals survived by hunting and fishing. Since the island doesn’t have a lot of plant life, they got their vitamin C from whale skin, The New York Times reported.
Even today, there isn’t much farming in Greenland, though people do raise sheep in the south.
While supermarkets sell imported food, like milk and vegetables, they’ll also stock local fare, including fish, seal, and whale. Some Greenlanders also supplement their shopping by hunting reindeer, ox, and other animals.
“In Greenland, we have the world’s wildest kitchen,” chef Inunnguaq Hegelund recently told NPR.
The warming world is already affecting Greenland.
As the planet heats up, Greenland has started to melt. Its glaciers are shrinking, and the permafrost is disappearing. In 2016, researchers found that the Greenland ice sheet was losing the equivalent of 110 million Olympic-sized swimming pools of water each year.
“It had an influence on roads and airports and houses when all of a sudden the earth starts to unfreeze,” Stenbaek said.
It’s started to change animals’ migration patterns, and polar bears have had to adapt to a new way of hunting without sea ice.
It’s a hotbed of scientific research.
The US National Science Foundation has been studying Greenland’s ice sheet for decades.
The country’s location also makes it the perfect location to obtain ice cores, test cold-weather engineering, monitor climate change, and study the elusive Greenland shark.
Most Greenlanders want to break away from Denmark.
Over the years, Greenland has become increasingly independent from Denmark. In 2008, it voted for a referendum granting them more autonomy. Many want to go even further and become completely independent from the Danish kingdom.
About 80% of Greenlanders support the move, according to recent polling. Yet one longtime backer of the movement has recently become a bit more hesitant.
Aqqaluk Lynge is the former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, a nongovernmental organization representing Inuit people in several countries. He recently told NPR that he now supports Greenland staying tied to Denmark because “if Greenland secedes from Denmark, it will be taken by United States.”
“This is surprising because Aqqaluk used to be head of much of the independence movement,” Stenbaek said.
Some want to stay independent from the US, too.
Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to buy Greenland. In a recent speech to the US Congress, he said that if Greenland chose to join, “we welcome you into the United States of America.”
It may be one of the reasons the Democratic party, which advocates for a slow approach to independence, won in recent elections, Stenbaek said. The majority of Greenlanders, 85%, according to a recent opinion poll, don’t want to become part of the US.
“Greenlanders want to remain Greenlandic,” Stenbaek said.
She said she thought it was important for Greenland to strengthen connections with other countries, Canada in particular. They have a lot in common in terms of environmental concerns and large Inuit populations, she said.
“Both are Arctic countries,” she said. “They would be quite strong.”
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