NUUK, Greenland—On a Saturday evening in early May, the future of Greenland packed an arena no larger than a high school gymnasium.
It was Fight Club Nanoq, a place for teenagers in Greenland’s capital to box. The night’s contests, which also featured overseas fighters, drew a cheering crowd that spanned all ages.
Fists flew and beer flowed. Outside, where temperatures hovered around freezing, the polar day wore on, well past 10 p.m.
Before the evening’s bouts began, people stood for the Danish and Greenlandic anthems, with the younger group whooping for the latter. Greenland is still a territory of Denmark, and although March’s election seems to have deferred any bid for independence, the hope is palpable among the young.
American interest, epitomized by President Donald Trump’s talk of acquiring the island, comes amid new great power competition in the region. As Russia works to improve its position in the Arctic, China has also sought to establish a foothold there, joining military drills with Russia in the region last October.
With the eyes of the world on Greenland, Nuuk finds itself at a crossroads.
The Price of Growth
Tour guide Pakkutannguaq Larsen sounded excited about one new symbol of the future—the capital city’s airport, launched as Nuuk International Airport last November.She and others have said that direct flights to Nuuk from the United States could drive tourism, diversifying Greenland’s economy and strengthening the case for independence.
“Some people are positive, and some people are afraid [of] what’s going to happen here,” Larsen told The Epoch Times while on a boat operated by the Nuuk Water Taxi.
Trump isn’t the only observer who foresees upheavals in the region.

Larsen, who moved to Nuuk from her home in southern Greenland, described huge social shifts in the capital over the past several years.
Its population has grown from 15,500 in 2010 to more than 20,000 today.
The Deserted Village
Larsen said she likes showcasing Greenland’s culture and natural beauty to visitors from around the world.On an afternoon in early May, she led a group of visitors out of Nuuk Harbor, past the Datcha, an icebreaking superyacht linked to Russian-born entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov.
The international group of visitors—a Swede from that nation’s far north; a Ukrainian living in the United Kingdom; and a Texan and a New Yorker, both working for the U.S. government—motored up the fjord, passing mountains and dark blue icebergs.
If the boat had traveled far enough, it would have approached the ice cap that sprawls across Greenland’s vast interior.
On May 5, its destination was closer—Qoornoq Island, a casualty of the changes that took place a generation ago.

The G60 plan aimed to modernize Greenland along Danish lines, promoting urbanization, industrial fishing, and the adoption of Danish language and culture.
But modernization disrupted traditional modes of hunting and fishing, undermining local languages, customs, and social organization.
Those changes came as Greenland’s cod stock, vital to the island’s economy, collapsed. Scientists have attributed the trend to overfishing and change in ocean temperature. Cod had almost vanished by the early 1990s, and shrimp helped fill the void.
The Social Struggle
Away from the fancy restaurants and government buildings, parts of Nuuk look less traditional Inuit and more mid-20th-century socialist.On a cold day in May, a stray dog wandered through an eerie landscape of Soviet-style tower blocks. A cairn, dated 1978, sat atop a rocky outcropping nearby. A dedication on it honors the Danish royal family.
As the Danish government centralized much of Greenland’s scattered population, suicide rose dramatically. Suicide rates have fallen since the 1980s, but are still among the highest on the planet.
Alcoholism also surged when restrictions on alcohol sales were lifted. Alcohol consumption, like suicide, has declined over the past four decades.
During that same period, Danish health authorities fitted up to half of fertile Greenlandic women with contraceptive devices, allegedly in a bid to control population growth.
In 2024, a group of indigenous women from the island sued Denmark for forcing them to be fitted with the devices in the 1960s and 1970s and demanded compensation of 43 million kroner, or $6.3 million.

In the mid-20th century, attempts to “Danize” Greenlanders included the “Little Danes experiment” of 1951, which aimed to create a new, Danish-educated elite within the Arctic territory.
Twenty-two children were taken from their homes; and while some were adopted into Danish homes, most ended up in orphanages there.
Denmark’s government formally apologized in 2020 and again in 2022.
“You lost touch with your immediate family, your life story, and therefore your roots—the whole foundation that every child, every human being, needs and demands. No children should be exposed to it,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in 2020.
While The Epoch Times has not confirmed a Larsen family link to the Little Danes experiment, the trauma of “Danization” has touched them, too.
“My father was forcibly sent to Denmark for a year once he was 12 years old,” she said. His parents thought he would only be gone for a few days.
The G60 period is in the rearview mirror. But Nuuk has continued to grow—and its future development could erode remaining links to tradition.
Larsen worries the other small fishing villages scattered across Greenland will lose even more of their young people to the capital.
What could keep those places from disappearing?
“Tourism,” she said.

An American Future?
The United States could be a source of new tourism and mining projects. But the possibility of a more American future has divided Greenlanders, including those in Nuuk.Skepticism of the United States wasn’t hard to detect at one downtown bar, where a mixture of older Danes and Greenlanders drank Carlsberg from the can.
One woman greeted two Americans who were entering by saying that Trump would never take the territory.
The U.S. president has not ruled out using military force to acquire Greenland.
Another local, Laila, was critical of both Trump and the United States. By contrast, she praised the Danish government, telling The Epoch Times that they “take care of us.”
More than half of the Greenlandic government’s budget comes from an annual block grant from the Danish government, equivalent to $500 million. The country’s central hospital, Queen Ingrid’s Hospital in Nuuk, has 130 beds, but advanced medical care often involves a trip to Denmark.
Laila vowed that Greenlanders would fight if the United States invaded.
Yet she predicted, “I think Trump’s going to take it anyway.”
Some younger Greenlanders see things differently.
Inuk, a cab driver, told The Epoch Times that he hoped Americans would cut deals with his home country.

While Laila was wary of the United States, Inuk was optimistic about what future coordination might bring—though he stopped short of endorsing an outright takeover.
He said he thinks older Greenlanders have been misled by Denmark. Yet he also worries about the history of the United States’ treatment of Native Americans.
With Greenland at a crossroads, Inuk said he believes his country must not dwell on an often-painful past.
Faith and Hope
The morning after Fight Club Nanoq, Sunday services at the Nuuk Cathedral connected the fast-growing city with its heritage.A bronze statue of Hans Egede stood on a snowy hill above the red wooden church, facing the Nuuk Fjord. The “Apostle of Greenland” brought both Danish-Norwegian control and Lutheranism, Greenland’s prevailing religion.
In the pews, people sang hymns in Greenlandic, the Inuit language spoken by most locals. Reliefs of Egede and his wife, Gertrud Rask, looked on from the walls.
The crowd was small and skewed old. But new life flickered around the edges.
Before the service ended, a family in traditional Inuit clothing brought an infant to the pastor for a baptism.
Snow flurries fell; faith leaped into the future.