Look, we’ve all been there. You spend weeks doing the same search on Gumtree every single day, hoping to find an island located primarily within the arctic circle with an area of 2,166,086 square kilometres — and hopefully for a reasonable price. Finally, you come across one that seems perfect. It has everything: deposits of titanium and uranium and tungsten and platinum, a thriving fishing industry. It almost seems too good to be true. Then you message the bloke only to receive in reply the four worst words in the English language: “Not available sorry mate.”
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This all-too-relatable tragedy is the one currently being experienced by President of the United States Donald Trump, whose hopes of purchasing the country of Greenland have been rudely punctured by the prime minister of Denmark.
Trump, whose brain would be visibly riddled with cracks if it was ever held up to a light, was revealed last week to have been asking his advisers about the possibility of purchasing Greenland, confirming publicly yesterday that he was, indeed, interested. Trump told reporters that purchasing Greenland would basically be a “large real-estate deal” that would be “nice” for the US.
While this sounds absolutely ridiculous, it would not be the first time the US purchased an enormous parcel of very cold land from a foreign country, having purchased Alaska from Russia back in 1867. It’s still not entirely not ridiculous though, largely because Greenland is not for sale.
While technically part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland has its own parliament and has been granted increasing degrees of self-governance since 1979. As Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen so unambiguously told newspaper Sermitsiaq, “Greenland is not for sale. Greenland is not Danish. Greenland belongs to Greenland.” Frederiksen called the whole discussion “absurd”, adding that she “strongly [hopes] that this is not meant seriously.”
In a more generously worded statement, Greenland’s government said they viewed the discussion as “an expression of greater interest in investing in our country and the possibilities we offer,” although they finished it off by definitely stating that, again, Greenland is not for sale.
Better luck next time, I guess.
