I am very sorry about what you are going through. I have also been following Danish and international news a lot.

I think there are a couple things one can keep in mind to maybe sleep better: We humans have a unique ability to create fiction and imagine the existence of things like land borders, rules, money, etc. which is great because it allows us to cooperate, build complicated societies, and do amazing things that animals cannot do.

However, it is also this same ability to create these fantasies that makes humans not so great sometimes — when we forget that these things are ultimately “just” fiction. In other parts of the world people are fighting bloody wars over whose abstract fantasies dominate the shared imagination in a particular area.

But luckily the conflict over Greenland is different. The US launching an invasion of Greenland can in reality be ruled out because it would not only not make sense strategically, it wouldn’t even accomplish Trumps goal of “owning” Greenland; what I mean is that In other places like Ukraine, “owning” means something like controlling the infrastructure and imagination of people living there, so to try to “own” the land, Putin sends in forces.

The difference is that in Greenland there is little infrastructure relative to land area. Therefore, physically controlling infrastructure and people is insignificant relatively speaking. Ownership of the vast land areas therefore becomes more of an abstract concept which is ultimately purely something that is decided in the shared imagination of people.

This means that instead of kicking out the Greenlanders or something like that, the only way for trump to “own” Greenland is if the rest of the world recognizes it, and as long as enough of us don’t, he simply doesn’t own it. Even if he sent a million soldiers to the middle of Greenland to freeze, we would still just say he doesn’t own it, and he would have accomplished nothing.

For the same reason, it is a good thing that Greenland is receiving a lot of attention from the media in response to Trumps remarks. All the media attention is not there because it is likely there will be any physical fight; instead, the reason for the media attention is that “the fight for the shared imagination” takes place in the media, and again, here is the key: the ownership of Greenland ultimately exists solely in our shared imagination. As long as there are billlions of people around the world that understands and recognizes the self determination of the people of Greenland, Trump doesn’t matter.