10 Comments
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Joseph E's avatar

Very informative article!

Dindu Nuffin's avatar

Excellent piece — thanks for the history!

Alan Perlo's avatar

Awesome piece, Greenland is one of those places where I hadn't seen a good meta-history written about it. Probably colder than any inhabited place in Europe, though I'm not sure about North America and Asia.

Betsy's avatar

What a fascinating essay - thank you.

Janārdanaḥ's avatar

Excellent write up , I think the growing independence movement along with self determination can also be traced to the sterilization policy.

On the Kaministiquia's avatar

Great work! Thanks so much for writing this. I’ve been lucky to have twice visited Greenland in 2009, working as a musician on a cruise ship crossing the Atlantic from Dover to New York. What an interesting place it is.

SP's avatar

I still don't get why Trump wants to annex Greenland. Under the current situation, the US can already use Greenland as it desires without paying any of the costs. The US already has military bases there, if we want more, we could have just nicely asked the Danes, and they would have agreed.

American companies already have access to the Greenlandic market just as much as any other country. Is the idea that only we should have access to Greenlandic minerals? Something could have been worked out with the Danes without too much issue.

Danish government consistently used to be one of the most pro-American for the last 70 years, they would have agreed to our requests. If we annex Greenland, not only will we have to subsidize the local population, we will have pissed off a consistently pro-American country for no good reason.

atown's avatar

what was the population of Greenland in 1720?

atown's avatar

Grok thinks 5-8000 total in 1721. Pop is 5000 in 1805 census of which on 250 were not Inuit. 85 years and negative or 0% population growth due to disease and what else? Should have built some immunity in three generations?