Why Denmark’s fears about Greenland may be shared by many EU member states in their Caribbean islands

Katie Miller, wife of the White House insider Steve Miller, has posted a map of Greenland in the colours of the American flag emblazoned with the word ‘Soon’

Patrick Comerford

JD Vance is meeting the Prime Ministers of Denmark and Greenland next week to push Trump’s bullying demands to hand over the island. In advance of those talks, Greenland’s prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen says the island’s 57,000 residents will not be bullied by the US into selling its sovereignty to the US.

It is 80 years since Denmark said no to the Truman administration’s offer of $100 million in gold for Greenland. The answer remains unchanged.

Donald Trump in his bluster and threats, says he wants to annex Greenland, by purchase or, if necessary, by force if necessary. ‘We need Greenland,’ one senior US official. ‘It’s so strategic.’

A third option mentioned by the White House is a new form of association between the two, although the scope of this is not clear.

Under a 75-year-old agreement, the US already has the only military base in Greenland and the island government has been open to it expanding its presence and to encouraging US investment in extracting rare minerals.

Under the terms of this agreement, the US is supposed to consult Denmark and Greenland before making ‘any significant changes’ in its military operations on the island and the US explicitly recognises it as ‘an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark’.

But the US military presence in Greenland in the past has regularly involved egregious breaches of those legal agreements. In the 1960s, the US tried to build a subterranean network of secret nuclear missile launch sites in the Greenlandic ice cap, without ever seeking consent from the Danish Government.

Project Iceworm was run from Camp Century from 1960 to 1966 before it was deemed unworkable and abandoned. The missiles were never fielded, the reactor was removed and Camp Century was abandoned. However, hazardous waste remains buried under the ice and has become an environmental concern.

The Danish government did not know about the programme at the time and only heard about it three decades later in 1997, when Danes was perusing declassified US documents and searching for records of the crash of a nuclear-equipped B-52 bomber near the Thule air base in 1968.

On the other hand, Denmark and Greenland have always shown an ability to reach amicable settlements to territorial disputes with Greenland’s nearest geographical neighbour, Canada. A border dispute began in 1973 over the ownership of Hans Island, a small island in Nares Strait directly between Greenland and the Canadian territory of Nunavut. The dispute was amicable and was resolved in 2022, when Denmark and Canada agreed to divide the island in half, meaning Greenland’s one and only land border is not with Denmark or the US, but with Canada.

Canadians may well fear that if the US forcibly acquires Greenland, Canada will be surrounded on three sides by the US, with Alaska to the west.

The flag of Greenland … the well-founded fears of Canada and Denmark may also be shared by many EU member states

Indeed, the well-founded fears of Canada and Denmark may also be shared by many EU member states whose sovereign territories may become the target of US covetous eyes. Any US aggression in Greenland may give permission to Putin to think he can be aggressive, and with impunity, towards other member EU member states, particularly Finland, the three Baltic states that were once part of the Soviet Union, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and perhaps Poland and Romania too. The US claims to Greenland, and recent unilateral actions in the Caribbean – abducting Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and imposing a blockade on and attacking ships and boats – show the Trump regime regards the North Atlantic and the Caribbean as its backyard, and has no fears about how once friendly NATO and EU member states respond.

If Trump can claim Greenland, which is Danish, what’s to stop him from claiming Guadeloupe and Guiana which are French, or any of the other islands that are French Dutch, Spanish, Danish and Portuguese sovereign territories and that are parts of the European Union in a variety of ways.

Although Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, it is not officially a part of the European Union, yet it relates to the EU through the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) and receives support from the European Development Fund, Multiannual Financial Framework, European Investment Bank and other EU programmes.

It is often forgotten that the EU includes sovereign territory of a number of member states not just in Europe, but on all continents. French sovereign territory, for example, includes the five overseas departments and regions of France: French Guiana in South America, a part of the Guianas; Guadeloupe in the Caribbean Sea, a part of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles; Martinique in the Lesser Antilles; Mayotte in the Mozambique Channel and the Comoro Islands; and Réunion in the Indian Ocean.

Collectively, the special territories of the EU have a population of 6.1 million people and a land area of about 2,733,792 sq km, and Greenland makes up around 80 percent of that area. The smallest by land area is the island of Saba in the Caribbean (13 sq km). The largest region by population, the Canary Islands, accounts for more than a third of the total population of the special territories. The French Southern and Antarctic Lands is the only special territory without a permanent population.

The European Economic Area (EEA) has 32 special territories of EU member states and EFTA member states that for historical, geographical, or political reasons have a special status with the EU and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

The special territories of EU member states fall into three separate categorises:

• 9 Outermost Regions (OMR) that form part of the EU, though they benefit from derogations from some EU laws due to their geographical remoteness from mainland Europe;
• 13 Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) that do not form part of the EU, but co-operate with the EU through the Overseas Countries and Territories Association;
• 10 special cases that form part of the EU.

The Outermost Regions were recognised in the Maastricht Treaty (1992), and confirmed by the Treaty of Lisbon (2007) form part of a member state of the EU. EU law applies in these outermost regions, but because of their significant distance from mainland Europe they have derogations from some EU policies. They are part of the EU customs area, although some fall outside the Schengen Area and the EU VAT Area.

The status of an uninhabited French territory, the abandoned island of Clipperton – in the North Pacific and 1,280 km off the coast of Mexico – remains unclear and it is not explicitly mentioned in primary EU law. It is an interesting place in this discussion because it was briefly occupied by the US in 1944-1945.

Today, the nine Outermost Regions of the EU are parts of the national territories of France, Portugal and Spain:

• France (6) : French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Martin, Mayotte, Reunion;
• Portugal (2): Azores, Madeira;
• Spain (1): the Canary Islands.

We all know of Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland. But he has also owned a holiday home in one of these EU Caribbean islands since 2013. Le Château des Palmiers in a beachfront estate on Plum Bay in the French part of the island of St Martin, which is shared by France and the Netherlands. The estate once had a price tag of £21.5 million; after a tropical storm he dropped the asking price to £13 million but he still has not been able to sell it.

The 13 Overseas Countries and Territories of the EU are parts of Denmark, France and the Netherlands:

• Denmark (1): Greenland;
• France (6): French Polynesia, the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, New Caledonia, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Wallis-et-Futuna;
• the Netherlands (6): Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten.

As a group, the Dutch islands are still known as the Dutch Caribbean. Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao form the ABC islands, 80 km off the coast of Venezuela, and in Dutch law Aruba and Curaçao are defined as countries; Saba, Sint Eustatius and Sint Maarten are known as the SSS islands. These islands are so close to Venezuela, the Netherlands can identify with Danish fears about Trumps threats to Denmark’s sovereignty in Greenland.

In addition, there are 10 special cases involving territories that are part of Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain but with unusual political borders and geographical locations:

• Cyprus (1): the UN Buffer Zone;
• Denmark (1): Faroe Islands;
• Finland (1): Åland;
• Germany (2): Büsingen am Hochrhein and Heligoland;
• Greece (1): Mount Athos;
• Italy (2): Livigno and Campione d’Italia;
• Spain (2): Ceuta and Melilla.

The cities of Melilla and Ceuta have had an autonomous system of rule since 1995. In addition, the plazas de soberanía or ‘strongholds of sovereignty’ are a series of Spanish territories scattered along the Mediterranean coast bordering Morocco. They are closer to Africa than Europe.

Quite separately, there are five European microstates that are not EU members: Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino and Vatican City. Gibraltar left the EU with the UK at Brexit, but an agreement last year (June 2025) creates a special relationship, joining Gibraltar to the Schengen Area and establishing a customs union with the EU, yet preserving UK sovereignty.

If Trump gets his small grubby hands on Greenland this year, could it be Guiana, or Guadeloupe soon after? He has already spoken of Gaza as desirable real estate; could he also have eyes on Gibraltar, with desires for the Mediterranean as a playground to twin with the Caribbean? Nothing is beyond the realm of possibility when it comes to the capricious whims of an autocrat. The fears of Denmark today should be the fears of all EU member states too.

A humorous Danish response to US claims on Greenland

13 million blog readers: but what does 13 million mean for the disabled, for tourism or for deforestation?

Greece is more than 13 million hectares in size, with a total land area of 13.2 ha, and has a coastline of 13.6 million metres (13,676 km) … the coastline below the Fortezza in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

This blog reached yet another new peak late last night (17 June 2025), totalling up 13 million hits since I first began blogging about 15 years ago, back in 2010.

Yet again, I find this is both a humbling statistic and a sobering figure that leaves me not with a sense of achievement but a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.

After I began blogging, it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. It was over a year before this figure rose to 1 million by September 2013. It climbed steadily to 2 million, June 2015; 3 million, October 2016; 4 million, November 2019; 5 million, March 2021; 6 million, July 2022; 7 million, 13 August 2023; 8 million, April 2024; and 9 million, October 2024.

But the rise in the number of readers has been phenomenal over the past few months, reaching 9.5 million on 4 January 2025, 10 million over a week later (12 January 2025), 10.5 million two days after that (14 January 2025), 11 million a month later (12 February 2025), 11.5 million a month after that (10 March 2025), 12 million early last month (3 May 2025), 12.5 million a month later (6 June 2025) and 13 million shortly before midnight last night (17 June 2025).

Indeed, January 2025 was the first month this blog ever had 1 million hits in one single month – or even within a fortnight – with 1 million hits by mid-January, in the early hours of 14 January, and a total of 1,420,383 by the end of that month (31 January 2025).

In recent months, the daily figures have been overwhelming on occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog were in January 2025 alone, and the other five of those 12 busiest days were in this month (June 2025):

• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 261,422 (13 January 2025)
• 100,291 (10 January 2025)
• 64,077 (14 January 2025)
• 55,614 (17 June 2025)

• 55,344 (25 January 2025)
• 52,831 (27 January 2025)
• 48,819 (15 June 1015)
• 46,920 (7 June 2025)
• 46,420 (8 June 2025)
• 46,042 (14 June 2025)

This blog has already had about 3.6 million hits this year, almost 28 per cent of all hits ever, by 6 pm this evening (18 June 2025) it had almost 49,000 hits.

Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.’ But I have noticed that seven of these days were in the week before and after Trump’s inauguration, the others were in the days around his outrageous military prade in Washington DC on 14 June and that the overwhelming number of hits are not from Ireland, the UK and Greece, as I might expect, but from the US.

The bots at work in Washington must be trawling far and wide for anyone critical of the Trump regime, but I doubt my criticisms of Trump, Vance and Musk are going to make it easy to get a visa to visit the US over the next four years, should I ever want to under the present regime. I’d prefer to boos my ego and cnvince myself that my popularity is growing and that I have become a ‘must-read’ writer for so many people every day. But, sadly, I don’t think that’s so. And if a minor critic of the Trump regime outside the US such as me is being intimidated, imagine how many critics inside the US feel they are being intimidated and bullied into success.

About 13 million tourists visit Venice each year … gondolas waiting for tourists near Saint Mark’s Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

With this latest landmark figure of 13 million hits by today, over 1.4 million hits in January alone, and almost three quarters of a million hits during June so far, I once again find myself asking questions such as:

• What do 13 million people look like?
• Where do we find 13 million people?
• What does £13 million, €13 million or $13 million mean, or what would it buy?

13 million or more people in the UK are disabled, from dyspraxia to impaired vision to Tourette’s.

It is estimated that there are about 13 million undocumented migrants in the US.

Burundi has a population of over 13 million people, and cities with a population of about 13 million people include Rio de Janeiro, Tianjin and Kinshasa.

There are have been protests throughout southern Europe about the over-tourism. About 13 million tourists visit Venice each year, 13 million tourists visited Berlin and the island of Mallorca last year (2024), Cyprus is expecting 13 million tourists this year, and already 13 million tourists have visited Hanoi and Thailand this year. Twice that number of tourists, 26 million, are said to have visited Barcelona, last year.

Greece is more than 13 million hectares in size, with a total land area of 13.2 ha, and has a coastline of 13.6 million metres (13,676 km), the ninth longest coastine in the world.

Greenland is melting at a rate of 13 million litres per second. That’s the equivalent volume of water in five Olympic pools discharged each second into the ocean.

Each year about 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are lost due to deforestation.

The number of olive trees in Crete vary in estimates from 13 million up to 30 million. The export value of California olives and olive oil is $13 million.
Lichfield District Council spends £13 million a year on local services.

Jeff Bezsos and Lauren Sanchez plan to spend $13 million on their ‘scaled-back’ wedding in Venice, with ‘a nice small gathering of 200 people’.


Each year about 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are lost due to deforestation (Patrick Comerford)

Saifullah Abdullah Paracha from Pakistan was held without charge by the US in Guantanamo Bay for over 18 years before being released in 2022. He had interesting perspectives on $13 million when he wrote for Reprieve back in January 2020:

‘I was surprised to hear President Donald Trump complaining about the $13 million that the US spends per detainee each year, to detain us without charge at Guantánamo Bay. It is difficult to think what they spend it on. Certainly, it is not spent on us. They do not need $13 million to close my cell door on me or to send me out into a shingle compound to walk in circles for an hour. I have diabetes, arthritis, and get chest pains that are clear warnings of my mortality, but they certainly do not spend $13 million on my healthcare. I have had two heart attacks and I fear it will not be third time lucky.

‘They don’t spend the money on the guards either. I have tried to befriend many soldiers over the years, as I feel sorry for them. They are little better off than we are. They are told we are the worst of the worst terrorists in the world, and that they are being sent here to do the job for which they enlisted – to make America safe. When they get here, they discover a bunch of nobodies – an old Pakistani businessman like me, a Karachi taxi driver like Ahmed, or Abdul Latif who was meant to have been on a plane home at the end of the Obama Administration. Trump has sworn he will not transfer anyone. We are “no value” forever-detainees, marooned here on a presidential whim.

‘Is it any surprise that soldiers here reportedly suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at a rate twice as high as those on the battlefield? At least the latter are doing the job they signed up for. Here, the guards find that they are not fighting, or even serving, the country they thought was America. Instead, they are riddled with doubt as to the meaning of their lives. I don’t get any therapy here for the abuses and the losses I have suffered, but I do find myself doling out advice to soldiers in their teens or early twenties who are psychologically lost. The S.O.G. is the Sergeant of the Guard in our camp. They call me O.G., which I am told stands for “Old Granddad”. One guard even ended up calling me “Father.”

‘My lawyer asked me what I would rather spend my $13 million on. I tell him, forget the $13 million, and just give me a boarding pass for the plane back to my family.

‘If I am not allowed that, first I ask why the American people would want to waste their tax dollars. So far they have spent $6 billion on this prison that has made nobody more safe and severely damaged the USA’s reputation as a country founded on the rule of law. My best estimate is that this could have saved the lives of 100,000 Americans – if it had been spent on health care, rather than torture.

‘Yet when pressed and told I must spend it all, I do not find that hard. It is what I used to do when I was a wealthy businessman, and had money myself. I do feel a duty to thank those who have helped me over many years, so I would donate $1 million to Reprieve to continue their good work. The rest I would invest in Pakistan, to help people to love life rather than cast it away on “jihad”. I have calculated that for each $1.5 million, I could create a hospital within a sustainable community – 200 families with jobs on the premises, a school, a fruit orchard and a hive of honey bees. It may sound impossible for that kind of sum, but it is Pakistan, where money goes much further. Indeed, I have written up an entire business plan which I call the “Milk and Honey Project.”

‘Imagine – or help America’s leaders to imagine – how much goodwill this would buy. Remember, also, that this is just the money being wasted on keeping one old man locked up. There are more than twenty “no value” detainees like me held in this dreadful prison, at an annual cost to the US taxpayer of over $250 million. I must agree with the President: it is a “crazy” waste of money. A man who so often boasts about getting a good deal should recognise that it is about time he stopped throwing the money away.’

Saifullah Abdullah Paracha is reortedly back Pakistan; Donald Trump is disgracefully back in the White House.

The world has a population of 8.2 billion people, and 13 million people represent only 0.16% of all those people, a modest number I suppose.

One of the most warming figures personally in the midst of all these statistics is the one that shows my morning prayer diary continues to reach an average of 73-75 people each day in the past month. It is over three years now since I retired from active parish ministry. But I think many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches averaged or totalled 510 to to 530 people a week.

Today, I am very grateful to all 13 million readers and viewers of this blog to date, and for the small and faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.

Lichfield District Council spends £13 million a year on local services (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Who is looking after the North Pole when Santa is away on Christmas Eve?

Who owns the North Pole? A map in the current edition of ‘The Economist’

Patrick Comerford

All the news reports say Santa Claus is about to leave the North Pole and to start on his rounds, working from east to west through the time zones to deliver his presents around the world as Christmas Eve turns to Christmas Day.

But when Santa and his little helpers and the reindeer have left the North Pole, who looks after the North Pole? Who responds when the burglar or fire alarms go off during these 24 hours? Who looks after the melting polar ice caps while he is away? Indeed, who owns the North Pole?

It is such an unsettling and disturbing question that the current edition of The Economist has devoted over half a page in an effort to answer who owns the North Pole.

In its Christmas double edition, The Economist recalls how Artur Chilingarov, a Soviet polar explorer claimed in 2007, after planting a titanium Russian tricolour on the sea bed 4 km beneath the North Pole, declared: “The Arctic has always been Russian.”

However, a Cold War scramble for the North Pole never heated up, and the Arctic Council moved in to settle a border dispute between Norway and Russia.

Now, however, Denmark is staking a claim to the North Pole, too. Less than 10 days ago, according to The Economist, Denmark claimed on 15 December that, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, 900,000 sq km of the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland belongs to it.

Denmark argues that the Lomonosov ridge, which bisects the Arctic, starts in Greenland. Greenland is still a self-governing part of Denmark, but Denmark’s claims are in conflict with those of Russia and Canada, and perhaps also Norway and the US. The prize for these countries is not Santa’s Grotto or some igloos, but the mineral wealth of the Arctic, which may become more accessible with global warming.

Santa better get back quickly to plant his flag and stake his claim to the North Pole.

Meanwhile, the current Christmas double issue of The Economist discusses some other seasonal topics. Who were the Three Wise Men? What threats are facing the smaller religious groups in the Middle East? And what do they call turkeys in Turkey?

Greenland takes steps towards becoming a big small nation

Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, looking towards the National Cathedral, built as the Church of Our Saviour (Vor Fresler Kirke) in 1849.

Patrick Comerford

The people of Greenland have voted for greater autonomy in a recent referendum seen as the latest step towards independence from Denmark for the Arctic island country. Many people already think of Greenland as a country in its own right, and although it is a part of Denmark it has been outside the European Union since 1982.

At 2.1 million sq km, Greenland is the world’s largest island. Geographically it is part of the North American continent, but politically and historically it has always been a part of Europe, closely tied to Iceland, Norway and Denmark.

If an independent Greenland returned to EU membership it would be the largest member state in terms of land area, but the smallest in terms of population. With about 50,000 people, it barely ranks ahead of the smallest European states – the Vatican (911) with the smallest population in the world; San Marino (30,800) which is landlocked by Italy; Monaco (33,000), the smallest UN member state and the most densely populated country in the world; and Liechtenstein (35,365), landlocked by Austria and Switzerland – and just behind Andorra (83,137). Like Greenland, however, none of these microstates is a member of the EU.

Early history

Greenland was home to some ancient Eskimo cultures, and in AD 984 was colonised by Erik the Red and Norse or Viking people from Iceland, who built two settlements on fjords near the south-west coast of the island.

The Saga of Erik the Red says he “named the land Greenland, saying that people would be eager to go there if it had a good name.” When he was exiled from Iceland for murder, he explored Greenland’s coasts and returned to Iceland to bring settlers back to Greenland. His son, Leif Eirikson, left Greenland in 1000 to discover Vinland, generally believed to be present-day Newfoundland.

The settlements in Greenland thrived for centuries, and the Vikings and their descendants enjoyed a prosperous life. The climate was in an extraordinarily warm phase, and the name Greenland may have been more appropriate than it is today. The people wore contemporary European fashions and trade with Europe was brisk: walrus tusks from Greenland almost pushed elephant ivory off the market, animal hides were popular exports, Greenland eiderdown was in great demand, the island’s falcons – considered the best in the world – were sold as far away as Baghdad, and Greenland’s polar bears were prized exotic pets among Europe’s nobility.

By 1200, however, climatic change brought the arctic ice pack further south, and navigation in Greenland’s waters became increasingly hazardous, even in summer. In 1261, the Greenlanders accepted union with Norway in return for Norway sending two ships to Greenland each year. This shut off other markets from Greenland, and sometimes even the promised Norwegian ships failed to make it through the ice.

The once independent Greenlanders were soon reduced to the status of serfs and tenant farmers, and the Norse settlements went into decline with famine, increasing conflicts with the indigenous Inuit, and the onset of the Little Ice Age. By 1340, most of the Western Settlement’s 190 farms had been expropriated by the Church in lieu of payments for indulgences and masses for the dead. Two years later, the people of the Eastern Settlement left en masse, abandoning their houses, churches and livestock. The Greenlanders were excused from paying tithes in 1345 because of poverty, and the Western Settlement was abandoned around 1350.

The last reported ship to reach Greenland was a private ship blown off course in 1406. There was correspondence between the Pope and Bishop Bertold of Gardare in 1408, and the last written records of the Norse Greenlanders are of a marriage that year in the church of Hvalsey – today the best-preserved of the Norse ruins. The ship finally left Greenland in 1410 with the last news: the marriage of the ship’s captain, the burning at the stake of a condemned witch, and the insanity and death of the woman the witch tried to seduce.

Christianity survived in Greenland throughout the early 15th century and human remains found in the churchyard in Herjolfsnes include bodies dressed in 15th century clothing with crucifixes around their necks and their arms crossed in prayer. Some voyages may have reached Greenland as late as the 1480s, but by the 16th century all the settlements had been abandoned. The only visitors in the 17th century were whalers hunting in the pack ice off the east coast who came ashore for drinking water.

Renewed trade contacts

In 1721, a joint missionary-merchant expedition to Greenland led by Hans Egede (1686-1758) opened up Greenland to Danish merchants once again, but it remained closed to all other foreigners. A new colony settled at Godthab (“Good Hope”) on the south-west coast, and later became Nuuk, the capital of Greenland.

When Norway and Denmark separated in 1814, Greenland and the other colonies remained Danish. The first local elections were held in 1862-1863, but there was no assembly for the island as a whole and most decisions were made in Copenhagen, where Greenland had no representation.

American explorers mapped out northern Greenland at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries; they discovered that Greenland was an island and those discoveries were used to advance US territorial claims. Norway occupied uninhabited parts of East Greenland in 1931, but the International Court ruled in Denmark’s favour.

With Germany’s occupation of Denmark in 1940, war-time Greenland forged closer links with Canada and the US, and the US built military bases on the island. After World War II, the US offered $100 million for Greenland, but Denmark refused to sell.

Greenland’s colonial status ended in 1953 when it was integrated into the Danish kingdom. A modern welfare state was introduced with state health care and state education. In the decades that followed, the population became more concentrated in the towns, and people who once depended on fishing had a hard time finding work. The changes contributed to rising unemployment and other social problems that continue to trouble Greenland.

In the Danish referendum in 1973, 70% of Greenlanders voted against EEC membership. A campaign for self-government began, and Greenland was given home rule in 1979. Feeling threatened by European fishing fleets and quotas and fearing trade with neighbouring Canada and the US was threatened, a majority (53%) voted in 1982 for Greenland to leave the EU.

An historic church

Lief Erikson brought Christianity to Greenland from Norway in 999, and the first church was built by his mother. In the early 12th century, plans for a separate bishop for Greenland were approved by the King of Norway. Arnaldur, who was consecrated by the Archbishop of Lund in 1124 as Bishop of Greenland and Vinland in partibus infidelum, arrived in Greenland in 1126 and built Greenland’s first cathedral, dedicated to Saint Nicholas. In all, 16 churches were built on the island, the biggest being the sandstone cathedral at Gardar (Igaliku), which was cross-shaped, 84 ft long and 60 ft wide.

The Diocese of Gardar was subject to the Archbishop of Lund until 1152, when the dioceses in Greenland, Iceland, the Isle of Man, the Orkney Islands and the Faroe Islands became subject to the new Archdiocese of Nidaros (Trondheim) in Norway.

The devout King Magnus Eriksson of Norway donated a large sum to Gardar Cathedral in 1347. In 1354, Paul Knutson was sent to restore the people of Greenland to Christianity and took with him as his navigator Nicholas of Lynn, an English Franciscan friar and astronomer. The last Bishop of Gardar, Álfur, was consecrated in 1368 and held office until 1378.

The return of Christianity

By the 18th century, people in Norway and Denmark wondered whether people were still living in Greenland, whether they had retained pre-Reformation Catholicism, or whether they had abandoned Christianity. In 1721, the Norwegian Lutheran priest and missionary Hans Poulsen Egede led a joint missionary-trading expedition to Greenland.

Egede found no survivors from the original colonies, and started a mission among the Inuit. He used his imagination in some of his translations – the Inuit had no bread and no word for it, so he translated the Lord’s Prayer with the equivalent of “give us this day our daily harbour seal.”

When King Christian VI of Denmark called all Europeans back from Greenland in 1730, Egede stayed on, and in 1733 he was joined by Moravian missionaries from Herrnhut. Egede, who was named Bishop of Greenland in 1741, died in 1758. The town of Egedesminde was named after him, and he is known today as the Apostle of Greenland.

The Church of Greenland today

More than 90 per cent of Greenland’s people are Lutherans. The Church of Greenland is part of the Church of Denmark, but with its own diocese and bishop. The Diocese of Greenland, divided into three deaneries, has 40 churches, 19 parishes, and 25 vicars or priests.

Greenland was part of the Diocese of Copenhagen until a new Diocese of Greenland was formed in 1993. The Church of Our Saviour (Vor Frelser Kirke), built as the parish church of Nuuk in 1849, became the cathedral.

Bishop Sofie Petersen was consecrated Bishop of Greenland in 1995.

In 1995 Bishop Sofie Petersen, then only 39, became Bishop of Greenland and the second woman to become a bishop in the Church of Denmark – in 1987, she was the second woman to be ordained in Greenland. She has been vocal on the rights of the indigenous Inuit people, who are more than 80 per cent of the population, on the effects of global warming on their environment and livelihood, and on the need for more men in the priesthood in her Church.

“I decided to become a pastor when I was 11 years old. My father was a pastor,” says the bishop, who is divorced and has one son. Bishop Sofie, who is Inuit, says: “I am proud to be indigenous.”

She describes the melting of snow and ice in her diocese as a major challenge to the traditional way of living for the Inuit people who live close to the ice cap.

Ordained women outnumber ordained men by almost three to one in Greenland. “In my church, there are 25 pastors, but only nine of them are males,” she says. “What’s more there are three deans in our church and two of them are women … I really think that we miss our male pastors.”

A nation-in-waiting

Although Denmark continues to control foreign relations, self-governing Greenland sees itself as an Inuit nation. Danish place-names have been replaced, and Godthab, which was founded by Egde, has been renamed Nuuk and is the capital of a country close to sovereignty.

The flag of Greenland was first raised in 1985

However, the economy is dependent on fish exports and substantial support from the Danish Government, with the public sector dominating the economy. Full independence for Greenland may not be as imminent as some voters hoped in the referendum at the end of November.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essay was first published in the January 2009 editions of the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough), the Diocesan Magazine (Cashel and Ossory) and Newslink (Limerick and Killaloe)