Danish king will visit Greenland to meet with its new prime minister

Denmark's King Frederik X attends a ceremony at the Danish monument outside of Sainte Marie du Mont, Normandy, France, Thursday, June 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez, File)

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Danish King Frederik X will visit Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, next week to meet with the new prime minister and his government, the royal house said Wednesday.

The trip comes weeks after U.S. Vice President JD Vance visited a remote U.S. military base in Greenland and accused Denmark of underinvesting in the strategic Arctic island. President Donald Trump seeks control of mineral-rich Greenland, saying it’s crucial for U.S. security. Trump has not ruled out taking the island by military force, even though Denmark is a NATO ally of the United States.

King Frederik X will visit the capital city of Nuuk on Monday, his office said in a news release. From there, he will travel to Station Nord, the island’s northernmost military and scientific station, and meet with an elite dogsled unit of the Danish special forces that patrols the remotest parts of northeast Greenland.

The king visited Greenland last July, months after he took the Danish throne upon his mother’s abdication.

Denmark’s government said Wednesday that the new Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen will fly this weekend to Denmark to meet with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. Frederiksen visited Greenland earlier this month.

Nielsen will return to Greenland with King Frederik X for the royal visit to the island.

Political parties in Greenland, which has been leaning toward eventual independence from Denmark for years, recently agreed to form a broad-based new coalition government in the face of Trump’s designs on the territory.

“President Trump says that the United States ‘will get Greenland.’ Let me be clear: The United States will not get it. We do not belong to anyone else. We decide our own future,” Nielsen said in a Facebook post last month.

The Associated Press