Arctic basic education – a self-serving gift
Everyone wants a piece of Greenland. To avoid losing its access to the Arctic, Denmark has to keep digging deep into its pockets. Its latest expenditure is for military training for young Greenlanders.
Gunshots echo through a Greenlandic valley. Nanna Broberg, dressed in military garb, lies on the sandy ground and aims at a cardboard torso a hundred meters away. Concentration, bang and hiss, over and over again. To the left and right, more camouflaged figures, someone somewhere shouting military jargon.
Greenland has no military of its own. Being a peaceful nation that has never taken part in a war is something the Greenlanders are proud of. Part of the foreign policy and the entire defense policy is the responsibility of Denmark, of which Greenland and the Faroe Islands are a part as self-governing countries. Thus, the flag of Denmark is sewn on Nanna Broberg’s left uniform sleeve – a white cross on a red background. On her right sleeve, the Greenland flag is attached with Velcro – a red and white circle on a white and red background. “We wanted to wear it,” says the 22-year-old about the flag, which officially does not belong on the Danish uniform, “because we are proud to be Greenlanders.”
The majority of the holes that Broberg shot into the cardboard torso are a few centimetres above the heart. She is pleased. “Many Greenlanders regularly go hunting, but I have never shot before,” she says, while she sits down on the cardboard and bends her eyelashes with an eyelash curler, “I enjoy it, everything about this training is fun, except for the long hikes.
This is the first time that the Danish military has trained young Greenlanders in Greenland. Over the course of six months, Broberg and her 18 colleagues learn how to shoot, rescue people from icy waters, put out fires, be punctual and get to know themselves better on seemingly endless hikes through the barren landscape. Denmark calls this basic Arctic training an investment in the resilience of Greenlandic society. Greenland accepts it with self-confidence.
This gift, however, is not as altruistic as Denmark portrays it to be. The development of the training alone cost the Danish military, which is facing financial difficulties and needs to save money, the equivalent of over 50 million Danish kroner (about 6 million Swiss francs). The gift is also a charm offensive, an attempt to bind Greenland closer to Denmark. Theoretically, the former colony could leave the union of states at any time. In this case, the Danish kingdom would lose 98 percent of its territory – an area 50 times the size of Denmark – and, above all, its access to the Arctic. Greenland has never been closer to independence than it is now. Or – even worse from a Danish perspective – open to relationships with other countries.
The river that forms a wide arc around the sandy area where Broberg and her colleagues are shooting has its source directly on the Greenland ice sheet. With an area of over two million square kilometers, Greenland is the largest island in the world, 84 percent of which is covered by ice. Most of the more than 56,000 inhabitants – about as many as the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific – live on the coast in the southwest.
Following the river, it takes an hour to drive east from the shooting range over a bumpy gravel road, passing reindeer and mountain hares, purple bilberry bushes and lakes reflecting the blue sky. Finally, you reach the seemingly endless ice sheet that has been attracting adventurers for centuries. Just half an hour’s drive to the west, you first get cell phone reception, then the settlement of Kangerlussuaq. Here, the river turns into a fjord, which then connects to the North Atlantic, and soon after, Canada. Politically, Greenland may belong to Europe today, but geographically it has always been connected to North America.
Seen from above, Greenland lies like a bulwark in front of the USA. Unsurprisingly, in 2019, then-US President Donald Trump wanted to buy the island. A bulwark against the East, against Russia and China and all the rest. This geography was important during World War II, when Denmark was under German occupation and the US monitored the Atlantic from Greenland, searching for German submarines and operating refueling stations for its own naval missions. Its strategic location was important during the Cold War, when radar stations on the inland ice were to have warned the United States of Soviet attacks. These radar stations were supplied by the military bases at Thule Air Base (now the Pituffik Space Base) and Kangerlussuaq. And this geography is important again today. Officially, the United States only operates research stations on Greenland.
But Greenland has even more to offer that is of interest not only to the USA, but to the whole world: Greenland is melting. As the ice sheet melts, mineral resources become accessible. Oil, gold, copper, rare earths, molybdenum for electrical engineering, anorthosite for the construction industry, rubies and pink sapphires for jewelry. An EU report in 2023 confirmed that large quantities of urgently needed minerals such as lithium, hafnium and tantalum can be mined relatively easily in Greenland.
In addition, the melting of the Arctic sea ice north of Greenland will open up a new sea route that will shorten the transportation of goods from China to North America and Europe. Ships will no longer have to take the longer routes along the Russian or Canadian coast, but will be able to take a short cut across the North Pole. They would bypass Greenland.
And not forgetting tourism. Already today, around 30 cruise vessels sail around Greenland during the summer weeks. The icebergs shimmering in all shades of blue in Disko Bay, the colorful wooden houses in Ilulissat and the modern cultural center in the capital Nuuk attract visitors from all over.
Greenland is a hotspot in terms of security, ecology and economics. At the time, Trump received only a short answer from Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen that the island was not for sale . But this offer, however brief, put Greenland on the geopolitical map. It flattered Greenland and alarmed Europe.
Thus, Denmark had to invest in the relationship. In 2020, the Danish Ministry of Defense sent a permanent advisor to Nuuk . He is based in the same building where the US flag flies. This spring, the EU opened an office in Nuuk as Greenland is not a member of the EU. Denmark has prevented China from participating in the construction of two new airports by making a better offer.
And now military training as a gift from Denmark to Greenland. Simon Kokfelt is head of the training program. The Dane emphasizes the official goals: strengthening Greenlandic society, improving the career opportunities of the participants, acquiring recruits for the Danish military. “But for me,” says Kokfelt, “the Arctic Basic Education is above all a great social project.”
Only half of young Greenlanders go to school beyond the mandatory period, and one in three young people is currently neither in school nor working. Greenlanders are still struggling with the aftermath of colonization by Denmark, resettlements, forced sterilizations, and the loss of identity. Greenland has the highest suicide rate among young adults in the world, alcohol consumption is a problem, and those who go to Europe or North America for training or work often do not return.
The history of Greenland is also reflected in this first class of basic Arctic training. There is a student who is afraid to go out into nature because she is afraid of the Qivittoq has. The Qivittoq is a mythological creature, an outcast from society who has supernatural powers and is said to rape women. There is a student who named his weapon after his best friend who committed suicide. There is a student who was known to the police for various offenses. When they completed a course with the police, they hardly recognized him. There is a student who was anorexic for years. She says she regained her self-confidence during the training. All of their names are not to be mentioned here.
And there is Nanna Broberg. Because her parents were very young when she was born, she grew up with her grandparents. In Kangerlussuaq, the former US military base where the Arctic Basic Education also takes place. Today, the settlement is little more than an international airport with a hotel, which employs most of the 500 or so inhabitants. It is a transfer point for planes or cruise vessels and a starting point for tours to the inland ice sheet or hunting for northern lights and musk oxen. The old military buildings house the Arctic Command, the Danish military unit tasked with guarding Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the surrounding waters. Even in kindergarten, Broberg considered the US uniform as cool and as soon as she got her own, she visited this kindergarten again so that the children would have something to dream about.
The training brings together Greenlanders from very different backgrounds. Jensiinannguaq Madsen from Ittoqqortoormiit on the east coast, for example, a sparsely populated region. She speaks little and only Greenlandic, hardly any Danish and hardly any English. To get to Kangerlussuaq, she had to get on a helicopter, then fly to Keflavik in Iceland, then to the Greenlandic capital Nuuk on the west coast and then to Kangerlussuaq. A journey that any East Greenlander hardly ever undertakes, partly because it is expensive. Unlike Jakob Herluf Pedersen from Nuuk, who speaks the three languages fluently and translates from Danish to Greenlandic and vice versa in class, and sings Greenlandic songs while cleaning his rifle.
Simon Kokfelt, head of the training, says: “Some of the participants were asked to do something for the first time in their lives.” Over the past few weeks, he has witnessed how a wildly mixed bunch of school dropouts, unemployed and particularly motivated young people have become a group of disciplined young people. Even if they don’t always march to the beat. Kokfelt is amazed at the attention they get. The Danish Minister of Defense has already visited the training, as has the Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament, and the Greenlandic Minister of Independence and Foreign Affairs welcomed the students in May. “Yet these are just a few young people getting an education,” says Kokfelt.
Kristian Søby Kristensen is not surprised. He is convinced that the Arctic Basic Education is finally a project that will benefit both the government in Copenhagen and the government in Nuuk. Kristensen heads the Center for Military Studies at the University of Copenhagen and researches Arctic security policy: “The Danish military has been trying to work more closely with the Greenlandic population for a long time.” For Greenlanders on the remote east coast in particular, it must feel like modern colonization when the Danes arrîve with their grey navy vessels, without speaking Greenlandic, do something and leave again. The Arctic Command helicopters are therefore painted red, with the logo of the airline Air Greenland, “their” logo. “Acceptance is the practical reason why the Danes want more Greenlanders in the military,” says Kristensen. “But of course they also want to show how generous they are and how Greenlanders benefit from them.”
In 2021, the Danish parliament approved the money for basic Arctic training as purely military training. However, the Greenlandic parliament objected to this, as it did not want any more Danish military presence on the island. Therefore, the purely military content was turned into training with a strong focus on protection and rescue. Coast guard, fisheries supervision, patient transportation, first aid – tasks that are not normally carried out by the military, but by the police and civilian rescue services. Greenland wants to be independent, but it must be able to help itself. The Arctic Basic Education is considered a small step in this direction.
Like the first female Greenlandic employee at the Permanent Representation of the Kingdom of Denmark to the NATO Alliance in Brussels, who was appointed last year. She is tasked with bringing the Arctic into NATO and raising Greenland’s awareness of security policy issues. With its war against Ukraine, Russia is also causing great insecurity in the Arctic. Or the new security and defense strategy for 2024 to 2033, which the Greenlandic government presented in February of this year. Entitled “Greenland in the world – Nothing about us without us”, the strategy shows that Greenland intends to play a more active role in the world, but above all in the Arctic. Meanwhile, Greenland and Denmark have agreed that a Greenlander will head the Arctic Council when the Kingdom of Denmark takes over the chairmanship of the largest international forum of Arctic states from next year. After all, without Greenland, Denmark is not an Arctic country. In addition, Greenland has threatened at times to withdraw from international agreements if Denmark does not toe the line.
It sounds contradictory, but these Danish concessions and investment in Greenland’s independence are at the same time a plea to remain a partner. Greenland is still very dependent on Denmark. On Danish security policy, but also financially. Greenland receives the equivalent of almost 3.5 billion Danish kroner (approx. 500 million Swiss francs) from Denmark every year. And the EU, of which Denmark is a member, is supporting Greenland with 225 million euros from 2021 to 2027. Money that will primarily go towards education.
“Greenland is important for Denmark because Greenland is Denmark’s access to the Arctic, land resources, shipping routes and tourism,” says Danish military researcher Kristian Søby Kristensen, “but Greenland is also important for Denmark because Greenland is important for the USA.” Denmark considers the USA to be its most important military partner. Iran, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf – the Danish military is a fairly uncritical ally of the USA. If Denmark can prove to the US that it can provide security on and around the Greenland bulwark, everyone will be happy. And for Greenland, this protection by Denmark is also very practical in the current tense situation. Denmark’s investment in Greenland’s independence is the only way to remain friends.
The day after the shooting practice, Nanna Broberg walks through Kangerlussuaq in civilian clothes. She visits the kindergarten, where she used to look at the uniforms, the sports hall with an indoor swimming pool, the second one in Greenland after Nuuk. It is a remnant from the time when the US military was stationed here. The bowling center is no longer in operation.
“It’s not that I don’t like the Danes,” she says, ‘I just don’t like what they did to us Greenlanders with colonization.’ The big question here is when a debt from the past is paid off. Because at the same time, Broberg says, ”We young people in Greenland have every opportunity.” No one has to pay for school or an education. She plans to study Greenlandic culture and history at the University of Nuuk in the spring and doesn’t have to worry about not being accepted – there aren’t enough applicants for that to happen. And the money she doesn’t have to pay for school, university and training comes from Denmark and the EU.
This article was financially supported by the media fund ‘real21 – understanding the world’.
Brigitte Wenger is a freelance journalist for Swiss and German newspapers and magazines. Her journalistic focus is on environmental protection, Arctic geopolitics and sport. She travels to the Arctic several times a year to draw the world’s attention to this hotspot.
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