Trump revives Greenland claim, Iceland warns on sovereignty, Arctic security stays exposed

• Kristrún Frostadóttir said Greenland is part of the Danish realm and belongs to the Greenlandic people.
• She linked Iceland’s message at the NATO summit to defence spending and Arctic security responsibilities.
• Trump’s renewed claim reopens a question Nordic governments keep treating as closed.
• For Iceland, which has no standing army, US rhetoric on Greenland cuts directly into the region’s security order.

Before the NATO summit in Ankara, Icelandic Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir used a RÚV interview to answer Donald Trump’s latest remarks on Greenland with unusually plain language: Greenland is part of Denmark, belongs to the Greenlandic people, and its sovereignty must be respected. RÚV reports that she described Trump’s comments as not entirely unexpected, while adding that the lines among allies are clear.

She paired that warning with a second message aimed at the summit itself. Frostadóttir said Iceland is meeting the expectations placed on it in defence-related spending and is now close to 1 percent of GDP in such outlays. She described Iceland as “the eyes and ears” of the alliance in the Arctic, a familiar phrase in Reykjavík but one that acquires a harder edge when the president of the alliance’s largest member again talks about absorbing Nordic territory.

That is the awkward position for Iceland. The country has no army of its own and has long built its security around geography, basing access, surveillance, and alliance guarantees. When Washington treats Greenland as an object of acquisition rather than a self-governing part of the Danish realm, Iceland is left affirming sovereignty while also advertising its value to the same security system that makes such pressure possible.

Frostadóttir’s formulation also widened the issue beyond Copenhagen. Formally, Greenland sits within the Danish kingdom with extensive self-rule. Strategically, it anchors the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap, the North Atlantic sea and air corridor that has shaped Western military planning for decades. A US president talking openly about ownership is therefore not just creating a bilateral dispute with Denmark; he is testing how firmly the Nordic states can insist that the region’s map is not up for negotiation.

Iceland’s answer, at least for now, is to demonstrate usefulness. Frostadóttir stressed spending, capability targets, and Arctic monitoring rather than any new Icelandic line on defence. That reflects the country’s narrow room for manoeuvre: it cannot deter alone, and it cannot ignore the power that underwrites its air policing and wider defence. But the repeated Greenland episodes also sharpen an older Nordic question. If control of the North Atlantic is central enough that Washington keeps returning to Greenland, the incentive for tighter Nordic coordination grows with each outburst.

For Denmark, Greenland and Iceland alike, the arithmetic is plain. The Arctic is rich in position, sparse in population, and defended through arrangements still dominated by outsiders. In Ankara, Iceland’s prime minister answered a territorial claim by pointing to a budget line just below 1 percent of GDP.

Källor: RÚV