“I would say that everybody has been agreeing that Greenland will be independent at some point, and the disagreements were on when,” said Camilla Siezing of Kalaallit Peqatigiiffiisa Kattuffiat Inuit, an organisation that represents Greenlanders living in Denmark. “But this situation has moved back a lot of things in this regard, because I think Greenland realised how fragile we are. A lot of the discussion for independence has been on the economic and social parts. But now we also have to think about the international security issue.”

The US has had extensive access to and a military presence in Greenland since 1951, when it signed the US-Denmark Defence Agreement as the Cold War intensified. The treaty granted it operational rights on the island, including over construction, logistics, military activity and mining. Earlier this year, the concession of Greenland’s Tanbreez mining project was sold to New York-based Critical Metals Corp.

For Trump, though, the agreement is no longer enough. He began signalling his expansionist aims towards Greenland in his first presidency, initially arguing that the White House should be able to buy the island from Denmark. Earlier this year, he upped the ante, claiming US annexation of the island is necessary to secure his “golden dome” defence system, in which the Pentagon would use Greenland to launch its air defences against a hypothetical missile attack from Russia.

Similarly, as the Arctic becomes a high-pressure region in terms of security and resources, the US president says he is also concerned by China’s expansionist aims. With Greenland, he says, he could better defend his country against any eastern aggression.

Defence experts say Trump’s logic is flawed. “The US falsely claimed that there has been an increase in Russian and Chinese presence in and around Greenland,” wrote Rachel Ellehus of the Royal United Services Institute, a UK defence and security think tank, last month. “Actually, there has been little to no Chinese and Russian military activity around Greenland over the last decade.” This was echoed days later by Spenser A Warren, the Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, who branded Trump’s national security claims “grossly overblown” in the War on the Rocks blog.

There is a more extractive motivation behind the US’s interest in the Arctic. Greenland is rich in mineral wealth, including much-coveted rare earth minerals essential for technologies such as phones and the growing AI industry. Seizing Greenland would give the US access to the minerals and mining territories desired by its government and its billionaire class.

“To some of Trump's supporters, some of the tech billionaires, Greenland has become a new territory from where the US can expand and enlarge,” said Cecilie Felicia Stokholm Banke, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, when we met in her book-lined office in Copenhagen.

Greenland is not an empty island, existing only to provide minerals and military bases – despite how some members of the US right have sought to portray it in recent months. It’s home to 70,000 people, and has a diaspora of around 18,000 in Denmark.