Why is Donald Trump so obsessed with Greenland? During his first presidency, Trump surprised many by voicing his intention in 2019 to buy the Arctic island from Denmark as part of a real estate deal.

At the time, he was mostly met with ridicule, spurred in no small part by Trump himself tweeting an image of his vulgar Trump Tower planted in the serene Greenlandic scene: “I promise not to do this to Greenland.” After all, 80 percent of the country’s surface area is covered in ice, and its GDP (US$3.24 billion in 2021) is generated largely through fishing exports and subsidies from the Danish government.

It might have appeared as if Trump’s megalomania was fixing its sights on a bizarre, even outlandish, object. Certainly, the US president did not take the wishes of the Indigenous Inuit population into consideration, while Denmark, which continues to retain certain privileges of a colonial master, brushed his remarks aside.