The Saga of Donald the Orange: Would-Be Conqueror of Greenland

According to the Saga of Eirik the Red , from the year 1200, the Norse explorer who established homesteads on the island, Eirik, called the place Greenland, "Because,” he said, “men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name.”

For Donald the Orange of Florida the attraction of Greenland is not its good name, but obsession with land mass, strategic minerals, and Nobel prizes. Donald the Orange has threatened to annex Greenland from Denmark by force, if need be, “Whether they like it or not.” Raising the specter of the Norse god Loki the Trickster, he continued, “I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way. But if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”

President Donald Trump doesn’t know that Greenland, the world’s largest island at over 2 million square kilometers, is covered almost entirely by a massive ice sheet up to 3 kilometers thick. Its magnificent, unique fjords include Ilulissat, a UNESCO World Heritage site. He cares less that Greenland, territory of Denmark, has home rule by Inuit, of whom roughly 56,000 inhabit the land. And he has no concern that its ice sheet has been shrinking for 29 years. He wants mineral wealth.

Minerals and Trump

Donald the Orange’s involvement in disputes in Africa, Ukraine, Venezuela, and in his efforts to annex Greenland, indicate his belief that control of minerals and fossil fuels are critical to the US superiority in world affairs. Conquest of Greenland will enable the US to escape reliance on China which controls, mines, or processes many of the worlds strategic miners. Greenland has been “underexplored and is geologically very favorable," according to an economic geologist at Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

The Kalaallit and Danes do not need Trumps’s threats or his contaminated garbage.

A 2023 European Commission survey showed that 25 of the 34 minerals classified as "critical raw materials" are found in Greenland. They include rare earth elements used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, advanced electronics, and military equipment. There is great potential to develop zinc, copper, and nickel deposits, although oil and natural gas extraction are banned for environmental reasons. But mining projects would encounter bureaucratic hurdles as well as opposition from Indigenous communities. Hence annexation is Donald the Orange’s preferred path.

Donald the Orange and the Viking Myth

The Vikings had treaties to expand trade networks and influence across the Arctic. Donald the Orange rejects trade for tariffs and relies on bloviating threats that make him the consummate dealmaker. Trump first demanded Greenland as a gift; next floated the idea of purchasing it as "an absolute necessity”; and now is committed to military force to plunder its fish, gold, graphite, and zinc from Inuit people. Donald the Orange ultimately sees Greenland as an outpost of his bold leadership to keep the Russian and Chinese pillagers at bay.

Trump ignores universal European opposition to his plans. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that any attack by the US would destroy NATO. European NATO leaders issued a joint statement that "Greenland belongs to its people.” They pointed out that “the United States is an essential partner in this endeavor, as a NATO ally and through the defense agreement between the Kingdom of Denmark and the United States of 1951.”

But Donald the Orange rejects contemporary diplomatic maneuvers for a Viking, 19th-century view of international relations where power derives from control of resources. He ties this view to renewal of the outdated Monroe Doctrine (1823) to oppose European influence in the Western Hemisphere. He laughingly calls this policy the Donroe Doctrine.

Seeing landmass as strategic in an age of nuclear missiles, submarines, and bombers reveals only ignorance of modern military technologies. And annexing Greenland would lead to rippling strategic catastrophes. It would mean that a NATO member state had just invaded another member state. It would empower Russia to ignore NATO entirely and push beyond Ukraine into Poland and the Baltic states. Donald the Orange is helping Vlad the Impaler.

The US Legacy of Nuclear Greenland

Sadly, there is a long history of US military meddling in Greenland. During the Cold War, the US sought to transform the ice sheet into a nuclear weapon. There were two major programs: a nuclear bomber base at Pittufik (formerly Thule) and a nuclear-powered ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) network built under the ice sheet at Camp Century. Pituffik opened in 1951 after Denmark became of founding member of NATO. A major component of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and NATO's defense system, Putuffik supported nuclear bombers so that the US was always prepared to jet over the North Pole to bomb the USSR. Its construction forced the expulsion of Inuit from the region.

Donald the Orange is determined in conquest. Donald the Orange needs even more tribute. Perhaps he will threaten to annex Norway to control its NOK $2 trillion trust fund.

An even more audacious project was the never-completed “Project Iceworm” at Camp Century to move 600 ICBMs missiles undetectable by Moscow through a maze of ice tunnels spread over thousands of square kilometers. A 330-ton reactor was trekked in on sleds from Thule to power the station. Neither the missile maze nor the reactor worked as intended. The reactor exposed soldiers to high levels of radiation, and it leaked radioisotopes into the surroundings.

The US also dropped a nuclear bomb on Greenland in January 1968 when a B-52 bomber with four hydrogen bombs caught on fire, destroying the bomber’s electrical power grid; the crew bailed out at 4,300 meters; and the pilotless B52 crashed. The crash spread radioactivity over a 75 square kilometer area. One bomb was never found. The US refused to clean up the mess, but Denmark insisted upon careful removal of the debris in “Project Crested Ice.” US soldiers gathered and shipped to the US 163 drums of dangerous detritus, 14 engine containers, and 11 large fuel tanks, and 900 95 M3 tanks filled with ice and snow, leaving behind contaminated equipment, vehicles, mukluks, and clothing that became part of a nuclear cemetery.

Global Warming and Donald the Orange

The Kalaallit and Danes do not need Trumps’s threats or his contaminated garbage. Already scores of military Greenland sites have accumulated huge quantities of crates and barrels filled with tainted soil, PCBs, heavy metals, diesel oil, and radioactive waste. And more waste will appear. Donald the Orange and his advisers contribute to global warming through their devotion to fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the melting Greenland ice sheet will reveal Camp Century by 2090, when 200,000 liters of radioactive waste and other toxic materials will be released.

Donald the Orange is determined in conquest. Donald the Orange needs even more tribute. Perhaps he will threaten to annex Norway to control its NOK $2 trillion trust fund. Having occupied Oslo, he can claim as many Nobel Peace prizes as he wishes.