The UK has priority rights to acquire Greenland if it is sold, the Sunday Times reported, citing Tom Hoim, who was Denmark’s minister for Greenland from 1982 to 1987.
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Trump said on January 7 that Greenland should become part of the United States and emphasized its strategic importance for national security and the defense of the “free world,” including from China and Russia. Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede, for his part, said that the island is not for sale and will never be sold. At the same time, Trump refused to promise not to use military force to establish control over Greenland.
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According to Høim, under the terms of an agreement reached more than a century ago, if Denmark were to sell Greenland, it would have to give Britain a right of first refusal.
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“If Trump tried to buy Greenland, he would have to ask London first. In 1917, the United Kingdom demanded that if Greenland were sold, Britain had the right of first refusal,” the publication quotes Høima as saying.
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As the newspaper explains, the 1917 deal in question was part of US President Woodrow Wilson’s purchase of the Danish West Indies, now known as the US Virgin Islands. The US bought them from Denmark for $25 million.
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One businessman strongly advised Wilson to buy Greenland, but at first he did not want to, not seeing the value in this land. When finally convinced of the feasibility of the purchase, Copenhagen did not want to include the transfer of this territory in the deal for the Danish West Indies. Danish authorities also demanded written assurances from the United States that Greenland would forever remain Danish, and Wilson provided them.
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“This means that the United States has officially recognized that Greenland is and always will be Danish. But Trump seems to have never heard of this,” the former Danish minister for Greenland said.
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At the end of 2024, Trump called it an “absolute necessity” for the United States to own Greenland, as he commented on his decision to appoint former US Ambassador to Sweden and entrepreneur Ken Howery as the new American ambassador to Denmark.
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Greenland was a colony of Denmark until 1953. It remains part of the kingdom, but in 2009 it received autonomy with the possibility of self-government and independent choice in internal politics. In 2019, a series of publications appeared in the media that Trump was considering the possibility of purchasing Greenland.
