President Trump’s quest to have the United States gain ground, through what might possibly be a leveraged purchase of Greenland from Denmark, is gaining momentum. What initially seemed like an atavistic aspiration after a stressful election is becoming a more serious prospect as Denmark announced a massive increase in security spending on Christmas eve. Alarmingly, the Russians have expressed support for Trump’s suggestion as this would drive a wedge between the US and its European NATO allies. Further, it could also validate Russia’s interest in a repurchase of Alaska which many nationalists feel was an unfair sale price in the nineteenth century. While Trump is likely to fully defend Alaska’s security, the scramble for polar resources is likely to get messier as the first U.S. Ambassador at large for the Arctic considers his future three months after senate confirmation.
What is driving Trump’s interest in Greenland is no doubt its minerals endowment and this is by no means a new motivation for U.S. security presence on the world’s largest island. For the past two years, I have been leading a U.S. National Science Foundation project to consider ways of redeveloping Greenland old mineral infrastructure for a warmer world. My doctoral student Thomas Hale conducted field work and consultative meetings on the island with reference to an old mining site that has a storied past linkage to American security interests which I discovered while doing research for a book titled Soil to Foil: Aluminum and the Quest for Industrial Sustainability.
Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust but paradoxically it was among the last to be isolated for industrial use. The secret sauce that allowed for industrial exploitation of aluminum was a rare mineral called “cryolite.” The co-discoverer of this process of using cryolite was a Charles Hall, who was also the founder of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). The only known cryolite mine in the early part of the twentieth century was in Greenland. As demand for aluminum grew astronomically with the advent of military and commercial aviation, so too did the salience of Greenland.
There was increasing anxiety about the dependence of the production process on this one single mineral source in a remote, isolated location. Researchers at Alcoa were tirelessly working to find a way to synthesize cryolite from more abundant primary materials. Finally in 1932, three researchers at Alcoa led by John Morrow filed a successful patent for the synthesis of cryolite from fluorospar (fluorite, or calcium fluoride) and sodium aluminate. Although fluorspar still needed to be mined, it was far more abundant and accessible, as was sodium aluminate. The availability of synthetic cryolite (sodium aluminum fluoride) began to reduce the demand for natural cryolite toward the late 1930s.
However, during World War II, the critical need for aluminum demanded huge quantities of both natural and synthetic cryolite. The U.S. government thus built a navy base near the Greenland cryolite mine called Bluie West Seven. During the initial period of U.S. humanitarian aid to Greenland (1940), the cryolite mine was identified as the only sensitive military target in need of protection. In addition to fears of German attacks, there was also concern about labor unrest at the mine, and to allay these concerns a force of 15 U.S. servicemen were given discharges and then hired by the Cryolite Company. This wartime town, Kangilinnguit, is now a Danish military base. It is connected by a five-kilometer road to Ivigtut, which was subsequently renamed “Ivittuut.” The production of the mine peaked in 1942, when it mined and shipped 85,000 tons of cryolite to North American aluminum smelters.
In December 2019, the Smithsonian journalist Katie Lockhart published an article about her visit to Ivittuut, which has now become a regular stop-off for Greenland tourist cruises. Her interview with Rie Oldenburg, a historian and head of education at Campus Kujalleq, a school in nearby Qaqortoq, Greenland, revealed that given security concerns, no photographs of Ivittuut were allowed to be taken during the war, and no one was allowed to write letters to family or friends for fear that the Germans would intercept them. Her visit took place during the presidency of Donald Trump, and when she asked local Inuit about what it was like during the war and their relationship with Americans, they declined to answer, fearful that their responses would reflect poorly on the United States at a time when the president was openly mulling purchasing the island.
The locals did indicate that American soldiers had left a remarkable testament to materialism behind that would shape modern Greenland consumer culture—Sears, Roebuck and Company catalogs! Long before the ubiquity of Amazon Prime, these catalogs allowed Inuits and Danish Greenlanders alike “to order name brand appliances, like General Electric stoves and refrigerators and boats that modernized the way of life in Greenland.” The mine continued to operate with a 1,500-foot-long inclined tunnel and workings as deep as two hundred feet below sea level. The world’s only economically viable cryolite mine had produced 3.7 million tons of ore grading 58 percent cryolite by 1962, when it was officially declared “depleted.” Mining operations ceased, and only small crews remained to clean up the old dumps. By 1987, the town of Ivittuut was abandoned, and its infrastructure and quarrying cavity became heritage sites.
Deep, complex, and dramatic stories of mineral availability and supply are inextricably linked to the history of human livelihoods and security. Cryolite became essential for aluminum production merely by acting as a solvent for aluminum’s primary ore and making it cost-effective to extract the metal by lowering the temperature, and hence the energy demand, for the reaction. It was that specific innovation of aluminum production that led to the development of a small Inuit village in the Arctic and even an American military base.
Minerals as primary inputs to industry can muster such marvelous levels of influence that they can drive and transform the lives of individuals, communities, and countries. Yet, all this was possible in Ivittuut without the U.S. “buying” Greenland. For minerals that are needed for the green transition or for defense purposes such as rare earth metals, as well as Arctic environmental security imperatives, the United States can learn from our legacy of cooperation with Denmark. Greenland now has self-rule within the Kingdom of Denmark, and this should also be respected by the United States as well as all other countries that support self-determination of indigenous communities. We can have environmental security, mineral security and indeed human security without physical purchase or annexation through sensible diplomatic engagement.
