Summary
Danish King Frederik has redesigned the royal coat of arms to prominently feature symbols of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, replacing the historical three crowns, in an apparent rebuke to Donald Trump’s renewed interest in buying Greenland.
The change underscores Denmark’s commitment to maintaining its territorial integrity.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Egede firmly rejected Trump’s suggestion, declaring, “Greenland is ours.”
This marks the fourth revision of Denmark’s coat of arms since 1819 and highlights Greenland’s century-long political and cultural ties to Denmark despite U.S. military presence on the island.
I don’t know that it technically is a colonial problem because the Inuit came to Greenland after the Vikings had already settled it (it was unsettled before the Vikings), but then Denmark came back after the Vikings had abandoned Greenland and re-claimed it.
The Inuit and the Vikings settled different parts of Greenland, but were close enough that they could see each other across the fjords. There isn’t much evidence for direct contact, probably because the devoutly Christian Vikings did not care for the animist Inuit.
All that aside, I do agree that they deserve independence if they want it.
Maybe imperialist is a better word. I’m not sure if the definition of “colonial” require that the subject population was there first.
I would say imperialist works better here. And I would agree with you about colonial as a use-phrase in general, but this is a special case where the Danes were there first and then they left and then came back. So it’s hard to call that colonial in this specific case.