What a Greenlander in WA thinks about Trump’s threats

The people of Greenland did not ask for their remote, snowbound territory to become an international flashpoint, and Simon Lynge did not ask to become Greenland’s unofficial ambassador in the United States.

But U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to annex Greenland since taking office last year have forced changes on the autonomous Danish territory and on Lynge, who has lived in Washington state almost 20 years.

The son of a Greenlandic Inuk father and a Danish mother, Lynge was raised in Greenland and Denmark but is now also a U.S. citizen. So he holds a rare perspective on the recent tensions among the countries, which have terrified his Greenlandic relatives and bewildered many Americans, he said last week before a roundtable discussion at the University of Washington.

“It’s been like a bad dream,” said Lynge, 46, a singer-songwriter who lives in Port Townsend with his wife and sons. “It’s been like a nightmare to me.”

There were warning signs during Trump’s first term, when he said his administration was interested in buying Greenland, a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark between Canada and Iceland with a population of about 57,000. Denmark called the idea absurd, leading Trump to cancel a visit to Copenhagen.

“That’s when I kind of realized he was serious about this,” Lynge said about the 2019 flareup. “I’m not sure everyone had that feeling. But I did.”

Tensions returned after Trump’s 2024 election when he called U.S. control of Greenland “an absolute necessity” and wouldn’t rule out using military force, spurring Greenland’s then-Prime Minister to respond: “We are not for sale.”

The situation escalated again last month when Trump said the U.S. needed Greenland to counter China and Russia. He also threatened Greenland’s allies with tariffs, leading European leaders to issue a joint statement and send troops to the island territory to prepare for military exercises.

Trump has backed off somewhat since meeting Jan. 21 with the secretary-general of NATO about Arctic security. But no concrete deal has been reached, and stress levels in Greenland remain high.

Lynge monitors the news closely and communicates every day with friends and relatives in Greenland, including his dad, sister and cousins. He says the prospect of a military invasion has frightened them. People have been buying rifles and ammunition and making evacuation plans, he said.

“We have troops in Greenland now walking the streets of Nuuk,” the territory’s capital, and there have been warships in the fjord by the city, Lynge said, describing the military activity as more than he has ever seen before.

All the attention has unsettled many Greenlandic people, who tend to live quiet lives focused on hunting, fishing and being outdoors, said Lynge, who shot his first seal at age 6 and wore a polar bear claw around his neck at the roundtable hosted by UW’s Jackson School of International Studies. Lynge said he worries that an American annexation, even without bloodshed, could erode the nature-focused, communal values that make Greenland special.

“I’ve just had this feeling that if the U.S. was to take over Greenland, it would be kind of trampling the culture that I love,” Lynge said.

Greenland is becoming more militarily and economically important as the ice that covers most of the vast territory melts, allowing shipping routes and mineral deposits to emerge, other experts said during the UW roundtable.

Lynge suspects Trump also wants to grab Greenland partly because the territory looks large on a map, rather than for real strategic reasons.

“I think personal ambition is a big thing for him,” Lynge said of Trump.

When Trump began making threats, Lynge heard some Americans making fun of the president and joking about the situation. He explained to them why he did not think it was a joking matter. Now more people are catching on.

“I get a lot of apologies from people, even strangers, when I say I’m from Greenland,” said Lynge, who flies a Greenland flag in front of his home.

Lynge initially lived in Los Angeles after moving to the U.S. for music and meeting his wife. But they soon settled down in Port Townsend; Lynge says Western Washington is more like Denmark than Southern California is.

Given his public-facing role as a U.S.-based recording artist, among other reasons, Lynge has felt compelled to speak up about Trump, including on social media. The Greenlandic community is small; Lynge knows various leaders personally and has interacted with the territory’s most vocal Trump supporter.

Meanwhile, the crisis has complicated conversations about Denmark’s historical colonization of Greenland and Greenland’s potential independence. As a Greenlandic, Danish and American person, Lynge has sometimes felt overwhelmed by it all. He says his music has suffered.

“I’m trying to reconnect with that creative side of myself,” he said.

Ultimately, Lynge hopes the Greenlandic people are able to chart their own course. He put it this way: “It’s important that Greenland is left alone.”