You might have noticed that Greenland has been in the news a lot in the past few months: There’s a new international airport in the capital city of Nuuk and game-changing direct flights from the United States; President Trump can’t stop talking about taking over the island; and plans for independence have been heating up. Yet, as Greenland teeters on the precipice of being “discovered” by a new generation of adventure-seeking tourists, you may find yourself realizing that there’s quite a bit about the country you don’t know. What’s the political structure? Is it really as enormous as it looks on maps? And why is the American president so obsessed with it? Here’s our Greenland 101 primer.
How big is Greenland really?
Very, very big—but still not as enormous as you may think. Mercator projection maps stretch out the size of landmasses toward the poles, making Greenland look bigger than Africa or Australia. In reality, it’s significantly smaller than those countries, but it’s still the world’s largest non-continental island: At 836,330 square miles, it would be the 12th largest country in the world if it were independent, falling between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Saudi Arabia, and it’s roughly as tall north-to-south as the continental United States.
How many people live in Greenland?
As of 2025, the population hovered around 56,000—which means that everyone in the country could fit comfortably in many American football stadiums, in some cases with tens of thousands of seats to spare. That makes Greenland the least densely populated place on earth, with about 0.07 people per square mile. In other words, if the island were divided equally, each islander would get 15 square miles to themselves.
There are so few people on Greenland that everyone could comfortably fit inside an American football stadium.
Photo by Nicholas DeRenzo
What is the political structure? Is Greenland independent?
Greenland has been impacted by Nordic colonization since the 980s C.E., when the Viking explorer Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland for murder and stumbled upon the island. He called his discovery “Greenland” to make it sound attractive to potential future settlers. Over the centuries, colonizers came and went, and in 1721, Danish missionaries founded a permanent settlement at Godthåb (now Nuuk). Greenland was a Danish territory from 1814 to 1953, at which point it became an overseas county within the Kingdom of Denmark.
In 1979, nearly three-quarters of the population voted in a referendum for greater autonomy, which resulted in Greenland becoming a constituent country within the kingdom. A Greenlandic Parliament was established, and its people gained more autonomy in areas such as education, health, and fisheries, while Denmark continued to control foreign relations, defense, and currency. In 2008, 76 percent of the country’s citizens voted for greater self-rule, which expanded Greenlandic control over its own legal system, law enforcement, and coast guard, and there’s increasingly vocal support for full independence.
In a New Year’s 2025 address, Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede said, “It is now time to take the next step for our country. Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation—which we can describe as the shackles of the colonial era—and move on.” According to the 2009 self-rule agreement, Greenland is allowed to declare independence after a successful referendum, which Egede suggested may come as early as this spring, at the same time as parliamentary elections.
What language do Greenlanders speak?
Since 2009, Greenlandic has been the sole official language of Greenland; Danish lost its “official” status, though it’s still taught in schools. Greenlandic is part of the Inuit language family and is closely related to the languages spoken in Arctic Alaska and Canada. It’s a polysynthetic language, which means you can string together a root word with a bunch of suffixes to convey an entire sentence’s worth of information in one word. As an example, popular Greenland-based content creator Qupanuk Olsen (@qsgreenland) shared a video in which her friend recited an 85-letter word Nalunaarasuartaatiliorfissualioqatigiiffissualiulersaarsimagaluaraminngooraasiinngooq, which translates to “They have once again considered planning to start up a big consortium to construct a building to make radio stations.”
The Ilulissat Icefjord is one of three UNESCO World Heritage sites in Greenland.
Photo by Nicholas DeRenzo
So why is President Donald Trump so obsessed with buying Greenland?
In his first term, President Trump talked about his desire to buy Greenland from Denmark, in part because of access to natural resources such as coal and uranium and in part because of its strategic location. The expansionist rhetoric has only picked up this year, with Trump saying that he wouldn’t rule out the use of military force to seize Greenland.
Prime Minister Egede isn’t scared of the threats, responding in a statement, “We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.” American involvement in the island goes back to World War II, when the Germans invaded Denmark and the U.S. and Danish governments signed a defense agreement. The northwest coast of Greenland currently hosts the American military’s northernmost installation, Pituffik Space Base (formerly known as Thule Air Base), about 947 miles from the North Pole.
“The conversation hasn’t stopped,” says Laali Berthelsen, the Nuuk-based local product manager for HX Expeditions. “It’s been politically intense. However, within the tourism sector, the attention has been positive. Any publicity helps bring more focus to Greenland and attracts more visitors.”
Greenland has a new international airport. What will that mean for tourism?
In November 2024, the capital city of Nuuk welcomed a new international airport, which promises to open up the island to a new wave of tourists. In the past, the vast majority of arriving visitors would have to fly through Iceland or Denmark, turning what could be as little as a four-hour flight from the East Coast into an all-day (or multiday) journey. Two more airports are also being built by 2026 in Ilulissat and Qaqortoq.
Beginning in June, United Airlines will kick off a twice-weekly nonstop seasonal flight from Newark to Nuuk, marking the first direct connection between Greenland and the United States. The increased air routes have also allowed Greenlandic people more direct access to neighboring Inuit communities in Arctic Canada. A new Air Greenland route, for instance, now connects Nuuk to Iqaluit, Nunavut, in about two hours—a journey that previously would have taken a day and a half and required connections through Europe.
How do visitors get around?
There are no land routes—highways, trains—connecting settlements across Greenland; in fact, only about 93 miles of roads traverse the entire island, many of which aren’t paved. To get from town to town, you have to take a ferry, helicopter, or small plane.
The new Nuuk airport will allow expedition cruise itineraries to go farther north up the coast of Greenland to its charming and colorful small towns.
Photo by Nicholas DeRenzo
How will expedition cruising be impacted by the new airport?
One added benefit of the new airport is that it will reshape the expedition cruise industry in this area. Historically, most Greenland itineraries would have started and ended in Iceland, so multiple days were wasted in transit across the often rough waters of the North Atlantic. (You’d barely get to Greenland waters before needing to turn back around and head home.) Now that guests can fly directly to Nuuk, cruise lines like HX are planning itineraries that can push even farther north, granting visitors access to more of the island.
Despite the potential tourist boom, Berthelsen believes that growth will inevitably be moderated by constraints like the number of available hotel beds. “For land-based travelers, flight seats can only be booked if individual guests can secure accommodations,” she says. “So if we don’t have enough beds, the number of visitors will naturally be limited.” For cruise guests, Berthelsen says, as long as the number of ships arriving in port at the same time is managed, “it won’t feel overwhelming for the locals.” Instead, she says, “it will create more jobs for locals and bring more customers to shops, restaurants, and other businesses in town.”
Are there measures in place to avoid the pitfalls of overtourism that occur in other destinations?
Greenland’s rapidly melting ice sheet and retreating glaciers have become shorthand for climate change and environmental devastation, and some in the industry have voiced concern about the potential negative effects of overtourism on the local population. As a starting point, the major tour outfitters and cruise lines that operate in the region are members of AECO, or the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators, which strictly regulates experiences to limit environmental impact and practice Indigenous sensitivity. Planned in collaboration with Visit Greenland and the Greenland Ministry of Nature and Environment, these AECO guidelines include everything from safety during polar bear encounters to limits on drone usage and the mitigation of damage to fragile cultural heritage items.
