For years, a heated international debate has been ongoing among explorers, scientists, island-hunters and other interested parties about which is indeed the northernmost island on Earth.

Since 1978, what has appeared to be a mushrooming family of smaller islands north of Greenland has fueled the discussion as still new members of the family were spotted. At least seven of these phenomena have been recorded and celebrated by visiting explorers, adventurers and scientists.

In the summer of 2021, five members of a Swiss-Danish science expedition, including this reporter, landed in a helicopter on yet another and until then undiscovered ice-and-gravel phenomenon about two kilometers north of the Greenland mainland.

When we returned home and as our aerial photography was studied more closely, the muddy but sturdy structure turned out to be about 80 by 30 meters, rising to about two meters above sea level. We came to believe it was indeed at the time the northernmost island in the world — or at least some sort of almost-island located in this very special geographical spot.

What are they?

Now, a year later and following a new expedition counting Swiss and Danish scientists as well as two experts reporting to the Danish authorities, the issue of the small and poorly understood island-like structures has possibly been settled once and for all.

“For many years we all thought that storms from the north pushed sea ice from the Arctic Ocean towards Greenland, where the ice then forced sediments from the seabed towards the surface, so that these new islands were formed, but that is not the case,“ Rene Forsberg, a professor of physical geodesy with DTU Space at the Technical University of Denmark, told me at his office in Copenhagen.

Rene Forsberg and Martin Nissen, a geographer from the Danish Agency for Data Supply and Infrastructure, camped for two weeks with the Leister Go North 2022 expedition at Kap Morris Jesup, Greenland’s northernmost point. The expedition, like the Leister Around North Greenland Expedition in 2021, were funded by the Leister Foundation in Switzerland.

New surveys

Martin Nissen and Rene Forsberg joined the expedition this year to survey the structures in the waters north of Greenland for the authorities in Copenhagen. While Greenland — the world’s largest island — enjoys a large degree of political autonomy, the mapping of Greenland is still a responsibility of the government in Denmark.

During the two weeks of surveying, GPS mapping and lidar (or laser) mapping from a helicopter was carried out alongside bathymetric measurements both in the waters close to the disputed island-structure and also close to a new and previously unmapped member of the family. Some of the island-structures that were recorded years ago have disappeared and were therefore, of course, not subject to any measurement.

A peer-reviewed scientific rendering of the collected data will be published in the future, but a preliminary conclusion has been put into a press release.

“The new bathymetry observations confirmed all the ‘islands’ to be located at water depths in the range of 25-45 m, which uniquely confirmed all ‘islands’ to be grounded icebergs, with an usual cover of glacial soil, pebbles and rock debris, forming a new category of semi-stationary ice islands,” the press release reads.

In other words, and according to these new findings, all the structures recorded since 1978 are not islands in any classical sense of the word, but simply icebergs partly or fully covered by gravel and temporarily stranded on the seabed in the shallows north of Greenland.

Drilling for depth

Forsberg and Nissen also measured the water depth right next to the island-like structure that was discovered in the summer of 2021 during the Leister Around North Greenland expedition.

“We drilled through three meters of ice on both sides of your ‘island,’ and concluded with the help of ordinary echo sounders that the water is about 27 meters deep in this particular spot. When we drilled, we stood on the frozen sea 27 meters above the seabed. We concluded that the gravel on top of the iceberg — which you took for an island — presently lies 29 meters above the seabed,” Forsberg told me.

“We also determined that about nine-tenths of the iceberg lies under water, just like icebergs usually do. It is stuck on the seabed. Only when it melts sufficiently will it travel onwards,” he said. According to Forsberg, the new measurements correlate lidar measurements of the iceberg done earlier this year as Forsberg passed overhead in a fixed-wing plane.

Moving east

The gravel-covered structures north of Greenland — icebergs, ice-islands or ghost-islands, as you like — are potentially short-lived, but nobody knows exactly when they will disappear again.

The icebergs have most likely broken off from glaciers on Greenland’s mainland to the west of Greenland’s northernmost point, Kap Morris Jesup. These glaciers, like dozens of other glaciers in Greenland, carry with them gravel from Greenland’s interior. After breaking off into the sea from the calving glaciers, the icebergs drifted eastward. Those still visible are now temporarily stranded in the relatively shallow waters just north of Cape Morris Jesup and new ones will continue to appear.

“We don’t know when they will disappear again. But we now know that the northernmost island in the world is still Kaffeklubben Ø or Coffee Club Island. That is the northernmost land point on Earth, closest to the North Pole,” Forsberg told me, pointing at Coffee Club Island, or Inuit Qeqertaat in Greenlandic, on his digital map.

Inuit Qeqertaat lies somewhat closer to shore than the disputed icebergs. The small, roundish and storm-scarred island, some 30 meters high at the top, lies at 83°39’55” North, 30°37’45”West. It was named Kaffeklubben Ø by Danish explorer Lauge Koch in 1921, but was likely seen already by U.S. explorer Robert E. Peary during an expedition in 1900.

The Danish Agency for Data Supply and Infrastructure is currently mapping all ice-free land in Greenland in an exercise that also involves U.S. satellites, the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Danish defense forces and Greenland’s Self Rule Authority. The ice-free parts of Greenland’s landmass cover an area roughly the size of Norway; Greenland’s inland ice sheet is not included.

In 1978, as the first of the stranded icebergs was discovered, it was named Oodaaq Island after a famous Greenlandic dog handler. For years, Oodaaq Island, which lies a bit north of Inuit Qeqertaat, was talked about as the northernmost island in the world and added to formal Danish maps of Greenland. Now, as Oodaaq Island changes in status from island to iceberg, it will be scrapped from the maps again.

“Oodaaq Island will not appear on the maps when we publish our new maps of Greenland, most likely later this year,” Martin Nissen told me.

Hans Island will be divided into two parts, with the Greenland part slightly larger than the Canadian. The difference occurs because the new border will follow, in line with international norms, a natural phenomena; a rift in the surface of the island that runs from north to south — almost, but not quite, through the middle of the island.

According to the information available, none of the officials involved in the negotiations have visited Hans Island, but the rift on the island that will now be used as the basis of the new border is easily seen on satellite images that have been available to the negotiators.

The border will run from a small bay on the northern shore of Hans Island across the island to its steep southern precipice. Almost 60 percent of the island will be part of Greenland, including the island’s highest point, while the rest will belong to Canada. Both parties will own part of the bay on the north shore; the only landing place on the island.

At the same time, negotiators have agreed upon the northernmost end of the maritime border between Greenland and Canada in the Arctic Ocean and the southernmost end in the Labrador Sea, with most attention going to the Labrador Sea.

Canada and Denmark, which still holds sovereignty over Greenland, have disagreed for years about the rights to 79,000 square kilometers of seabed in the Labrador Sea, where oil or mineral extraction may be possible in future. According to the new deal the disputed piece of seabed will be split in two; again the Greenlandic part slightly larger than the area allocated to Canada.

Copenhagen and Ottawa both hail the deal as proof that mutually beneficial solutions to difficult territorial disputes can be reached on the basis of international law:

“It is an extremely fine signal to the whole world that you can solve territorial disagreements in a constructive way based on international law. It is exactly this type of message we need in a time when international law is under attack, in particular, of course, by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,” Denmark’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeppe Kofod told ArcticToday.

Message to Moscow

In Copenhagen, before traveling to Ottawa for the formal signing of the deal, Jeppe Kofod told ArcticToday that he expected the new deal to also have a positive influence on future negotiations with Russia over the seabed in the central parts of the Arctic Ocean. There, Canada, Russia and Denmark/Greenland have all made claims that overlap by several hundred thousand square kilometers.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a wholly unacceptable attack on international law” Kofod said. ”But everybody knows how important the Arctic is to Russia. In that region in particular they will have an interest in peaceful cooperation, even if there is conflict in other areas of the world. The agreement between the Kingdom of Denmark and Canada serves as an example that it is possible. They can tell now that it is possible to reach a result where everybody is a winner.”

Island politics

Hans Island is name Tartupaluk  — or “kidneyshaped” — in Greenlandc. It lies in the Kennedy Channel, a mostly frozen strait separating Canada’s Ellesmere Island and the very north of Greenland, some 650 kilometers east of Grise Fiord, the closest civilian settlement in Canada, and 350 kilometers north of Siorapaluk, Greenland’s northernmost township.

Hans Island has an area of 1.25 square kilometers, and its tallest point extends 183 meters above sea. Much of the island’s rock face rises vertically out of the sea; only to the north does it slant more lazily towards the ocean, offering potential visitors scalable access to its flat upper surface.

Most importantly, the islands lies exactly midway between Canada and Greenland. From a visit to Hans Island in 2018 this author remembers the unimpeded frosty views towards Greenland and Canada, both only 18 kilometers away. The island itself appears void of vegetation, its rock floor rounded by the violent storms that used to tear flags hoisted by the Danish soldiers to shreds.

The final compromise on the island border was agreed upon at what has been described as a diplomatic marathon in Iceland in November 2021. Final signatures are to be added to the deal Tuesday in Ottawa by Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly and Denmark’s Kofod. Also signing will be Muté B. Egede, chairman of Naalakkersuisut, Greenland’s self-rule government.

The deal seems unlikely to cause much controversy, and independent observers find it laudable:

“This is the solution I have suggested for decades. You will not hear me pointing out all the faults. I can’t see any,” says Michael Byers, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

No rewards

Parts of the maritime border between Canada and Greenland were previously agreed upon in 1973. Negotiators drew a line in the ocean to the shores of Hans Island, but they left the controversial issue of a terrestrial border on the island unresolved.

The lack of a final agreement has pained both sides ever since, even if the island offers basically no material rewards. Geologists at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland told ArcticToday that there might be deposits of zinc and lead on the island, but also that the island is so tiny that commercial mining is very unlikely. Any oil in the adjacent seabed will be more than 400 million years old and either gone or too old to be of use.

Strategically, Hans Island is regarded as equally irrelevant. There are often rumors of Russian submarines in Greenland’s waters. Also, Thule Air Base, the U.S. air base in northern Greenland, lies only a short flight to the south, but Hans Island has spurred no interest from the armed forces of any nation.

Politically, however, the island has long played a role.

In 1984, a Danish minister in charge of Greenlandic affairs raised the Danish flag on Hans Island, thereby initiating decades of national posturing by both Canada and Denmark. From 2000 Danish visits to the island became more frequent as old flags were replaced by new ones. Canada protested in diplomatic notes to Copenhagen, and in 2005 Canada’s then minister of defense landed on Hans Island in what was dubbed Operation Frozen Beaver.

A Danish flag was taken down and confiscated and, according to legend in the Danish foreign service, formally delivered to the Danish embassy in Ottawa in a cardboard box from a local bakery. Legend also goes that Danish and Canadian troops left bottles of spirits to each other whenever on visit to Hans Island; the media has often referred to the conflict as “the whisky war.”

Following the Canadian removal of the Danish flag, Denmark dispatched a naval ship towards Hans Island to raise a new flag. Before the ship reached the island, however, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Canada met in New York and agreed to replace any further gesturing with diplomatic efforts to resolve the issue.

Still, for years, nothing was solved.

Conservative governments in Canada, in particular under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper from 2006 to 2015, emphasized Canada’s intention to defend by any means its sovereignty in the Arctic.

“Stephen Harper would never have agreed to a partition or to give up Hans Island,” Byers told ArcticToday.

In 2018, diplomatic efforts picked up speed, reportedly on Canada’s initiative. A joint task force, working quietly behind the scenes, was to finally end the affair. In 2015, Canada’s Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau had taken office, eager to better Ottawa’s relations with Canada’s Arctic communities, and the work on outstanding border issues progressed. The Trudeau government favors the kind of value-based foreign policy also pursued by the current Danish government, in office since 2019. After half a century, diplomats eyed a solution.

Inuit influence

On the Danish side, diplomats from Greenland and Denmark worked in tandem to also satisfy Greenlandic wishes. In the preamble to the new arrangement, promises are made that inuit in Greenland and Canada who used to travel on the ice between Canada and Greenland without regard to any borders, will still be able to enjoy unhindered mobility, hunting and fishing. Before the final settlement was reached, officials from Nuuk and Copenhagen twice travelled to Qaanaaq and Siorapaluk, Greenland’s northernmost settlements, to consult with the local communities.

In the preamble to the new deal, there is mention of the Pikialasorsuaq Commission, established in 2016 by the Inuit Circumpolar Council to investigate avenues towards joint Inuit control over Pikialasorsuaq, or the North Water Polynya, a vast polynya famous for its abundance of wildlife in the same strait as Hans Island. In the new deal, the governments of Denmark and Canada promise to look at further options for increased Inuit control over relevant matters in the area.

“We will establish a border, but I hope that the border will in fact draw people closer together. The idea is that the practical implications of the border should be minimized to the benefit of those who live in the area and have lived there for generations without being preoccupied with borders,” says Kofod.

“The most important is the work that follows to secure cooperation after the agreement on the border. That people are free to move, secure agreements on fish stocks and other resources; anything that is relevant to this geographical area. This will not be up to the Danish government, but to the government of Greenland,” Kofod told ArcticToday.

In Canada, Aluki Kotierk, president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI), the legal representative of the Inuit of Nunavut on native treaty rights and treaty negotiation, hailed the deal in a statement to the Toronto-based Globe and Mail:

“The dispute between Canada and Denmark over Tartupaluk or Hans Island has never caused issues for Inuit. Regardless, it is great to see Canada and Denmark taking measures to resolve this boundary dispute,” Kotierk said.

“As geographic neighbors with family ties, Inuit in Nunavut and Greenland recognize the significance of working together toward our common future. NTI expects this long-standing relationship between Inuit in Nunavut and Greenland to be a symbol of continued co-operation between Canada and Denmark,” she said.

And who is Hans?

Suersaq, who signed his name Hans Hendrik when working for foreign expeditions, was a Greenlandic hunter and doghandler, serving between 1853 and 1883 as a guide, translator and provider of food for five Arctic expeditions. His close encounters with polar bears, grumpy expeditioners and wrecked ships are depicted in his “Memoirs of Hans Hendrik, The Arctic Traveller,” translated from the Greenlandic in 1878.

In the south of Greenland, he and his family were attached to the German mission of the Herrnhuts, until, in 1853, Suersaq took hire with an American polar expedition. His mother, who had recently been widowed, begged him to remain at home, and his farewell-promise burned itself into his memoirs: “If no mischief happen me, I shall return, and I shall earn money for thee.”

Hans Hendrik, however, never returned home. He settled in the north of Greenland. He found life appealing there with plenty of walrus, seals and bears. He married, raised a family and for a series of still more adventurous American and European polar expeditions, he made survival possible.

Notorious in particular were his efforts when in 1872 half of the American Polaris Expedition, who had set sail for the North Pole, got separated from the main party in the ice north of present day Thule Air Base. For seven months the group survived in igloos on ice floes. Also Hans Hendrik’s wife Mequ and their three children, the youngest only a couple of years old, had to make do as waves and heavy currents cut piece after piece off their floes. Meanwhile, the seemingly indefatigable Hans Hendrik and a Canadian inuit colleague hunted seals and bears, meat for the hungry and blubber for their oil lamps. Life was sustained, all survived, saved at the last instant by an American seal hunting vessel after drifting more than 1,500 kilometers at sea.

Hans Hendrik had an island named after him (actually two, but according to Danish author Jane Løve, the other is more of a rock than an island). The naming of Hans Island took place during the better days of the Polaris Expedition in 1871. Expedition leader C.F. Hall pointed out the island, named it, but then died a few months later. The name stuck, but we have no knowledge of C.F. Hall’s reasoning behind it.

After the naming of the island, 100 years passed before Danish and Canadian negotiators, about to draw a border at sea between Greenland and Canada, discovered that the island lies on exactly equidistant between Denmark and Canada.

The new deal may well be the end of Hans Island’s fame.

“That could certainly be one of the outcomes. In 20 years from now, perhaps nobody will be speaking about Hans Island anymore,” says Byers.

The new deal still needs to be ratified by the Danish parliament while a similar procedure takes place in Canada. Also, negotiations with the EU Commission are pending. As Greenland is part of the so-called Schengen Area in which Europeans can travel freely with principally no border control, the new border on Hans Island will also be considered an EU border towards Canada. It’s possible, though, that the EU Commission in Brussels may accept that no formal border control on Hans Island will be needed.

Before you begin to read this story, you may wish to look up the Russian naval base at Gadzhiyevo in Russia’s Arctic northwest on Google Earth.

This will help to illustrate why Norway is particularly worried about the current standoff with Russia over Ukraine and the prospect of a possible armed conflict there.

At Gadzhiyevo, and at the main naval base of Severomorsk — which are both very close to Norway — one can zoom in directly on the nuclear submarines and naval vessels of Russia’s Northern Fleet. They are blurry but visible like steely eels to anyone with a laptop.

The Northern Fleet is the largest and potentially most lethal hammer in Russia’s arsenal, its ultimate means of foreign policy pressure.

In the fjords on the coast of Russia’s Kola Peninsula just east of Russia’s Arctic border with Norway lies the core of the nuclear arsenal that Russia sees as its final instrument of nuclear deterrence or balance of power with the United States and its NATO allies.

Norway’s particular pain comes from an understanding that increased tension or actual conflict in Ukraine will sharpen Russia’s desire to protect this nuclear arsenal — and that this might lead to unwanted fallout in Norway.

The authorities in Oslo are understandably cautious not to create unnecessary public fear and apprehension in Norway — which might increase the effect of any further Russian moves to destabilize Norway’s resolve — but in January prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre aired his concerns in an interview with The Times in London.

The prime minister said that Russian-backed hackers were already targeting Norway’s government institutions; his government’s computer systems had been badly hurt by an outage.

“Cold winds blowing in the Arctic often spill over from other geopolitical conflicts. Today those cold winds are coming out of Ukraine,” he said. “I am very concerned about it. We now experience hybrid operations, sometimes aimed at companies and technological research, but also [at] key institutions such as the Storting.”

Norway’s parliament, Stortinget, was targeted by hackers in 2020 and 2021 while radio-jamming has hampered air traffic in the vicinity of Norway’s Arctic border to Russia several times.

Great power thinking

To understand the underlying currents, I called Tormod Heier, a lieutenant colonel who serves as a professor at the Norwegian Defense Command and Staff College and knows intimately the depth of Norway’s worries:

“Luckily, we are not at that point yet, but the Norwegian authorities fear that in the event of a war in Europe that involves a NATO country, Russia will move troops into northern Norway and onto (the Norwegian islands of) Svalbard, Bear Island and Jan Mayen because Russia will need greater strategic depth and room to shoot down U.S. missiles before they hit the base complexes on the Kola Peninsula or the government structures in Moscow,” Heier explains.

In anticipation, Norway has assumed a larger role in the military developments in the Arctic, and not surprisingly, Russia has made known its displeasure with the close military cooperation between the U.S. and Norway and with the growing number of U.S. military assets in Norway. From the Russian perspective, the enemy is moving far too close for comfort to its nuclear arsenals and to Moscow — precisely as Russia fears its adversaries will move closer to Russia in Ukraine, if Ukraine becomes a NATO country.

Modern U.S. missiles can reach Moscow in seven to 17 minutes, says Heier – whether from Ukraine or Norway:

“It is classic great power thinking. In a conflict situation you need room to move and act and that means that your counterpart must be kept as far away as possible. The U.S. would think in exactly the same way if Russian missiles were in place in Cuba or in Mexico,” he says.

Wrong path?

Heier has just published the very timely and lucid book: “En randstat på avveie? Norges vei inn i den nye kalde krigen 2014-2021” (”A Border-State on the Wrong Path? Norway’s Way Into the New Cold War” 2014-2021, only in Norwegian).

He explains to me why Oslo has been so eager to move personnel and military equipment closer to the border with Russia in recent years. Norway wants an alarm so fool-proof, that it simply cannot fail. Any Russian incursion onto Norwegian soil must be immediately followed by fighting so heavy and calamitous that no one in Washington or at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels will consider for a second not throwing themselves at Norway’s defense.

“What our authorities fear the most is a fait accompli where Russian soldiers are suddenly operating in northern Norway without causing any U.S. or NATO reaction,“ Heier says. In his book he calls this scenario “a conflict too big for Norway but too small for NATO.”  One can envision northern Norway violently transformed into some sort of Scandinavian Crimea: occupied by Russian troops and the subject of heated global protests, but without any military response from any western power.

Heier stresses that this is absolute worst case scenario — hopefully never to be realized. But something less dramatic may also hurt:

“We want to stand up and be counted right alongside the U.S. when it comes to the sovereignty of Ukraine and its right to choose its own alliances, but for Norway it is also important to avoid further tension with Russia,” he says.

“Norway does not want a militarization of our North, our strategically most important regions, where we haul in the enormous amounts of oil, gas and fish that make Norway one of the richest countries on Earth.”

Stronger defense

In his book Heier poses difficult questions about Norway’s ever more intensive partnership with the United States. It is not all parts of the U.S. military presence in Norway that are in Norway’s own national interest, he finds. In his book, he explains that when the U.S. military moves so close to Russia’s nuclear bases that it causes Russia to further boost its own military in the waters, skies and territories closest to Norway, it has no positive effects in Norway.

“Norway sees Russia as a difficult, but legitimate and necessary collaborative partner in the North, while the USA most of all sees a strategic competitor and rival,” he tells me.

His point is that while increased Russian jitters in the North, caused by U.S. maneuvers ever closer to Russia’s bases, may not cause any immediate trouble back in the U.S., Norway may experience plenty of unwanted Russian reactions.

Heier argues for a much stronger Norwegian defense that would enable Norway to operate more forcefully on its own in the regions closest to Russia, thus dampening U.S. wishes to do the patrolling with U.S. planes and vessels.

“If the U.S. and Russia continue to militarize the North, it will create greater risks of mistakes, misunderstandings and unwanted clashes. This could have very adverse consequences for Norway,” Heier says.

“Military leaders will gain more influence. Politicians will find it harder to maintain control. Mistrusts among the countries will grow, diplomatic channels close and the security margins disappear. That is what we fear: A conflict between the great powers escalating in the midst of our northern regions, because the crisis is not handled in our Norwegian, more cautious ways.”

Two-legged strategy

Meanwhile, Norway continues to increase its cooperation with the U.S.

Støre met recently with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington to talk Russia.

Norway’s strategy towards its Russian neighbor has rested for decades on two legs: A strong military capacity for immediate response to any Russian aggression but always coupled with never-ending, pragmatic dialogue and cooperation with Russia: Fish stock management, environmental protection, civilian exchanges, border-region collaboration and so forth.

Norway and Russia have been neighbors for an eternity and as Norway’s leaders have been keen to stress no wars have been fought between the two for more than a thousand years.

Also importantly in this context — and as any Norwegian will know — Russian soldiers have been in northern Norway before. At the close of World War II, when Norway — and its northern regions in particular — were bloodily occupied by forces from Nazi Germany, Soviet troops crossed Russia’s Arctic border into Norway and pushed the Germans out. The Soviet troops liberated northern Norway and soon after withdrew peacefully to positions on their own turf. Russia had no wish then, and has shown no intentions since, to violate Norway’s sovereignty.

Military build-up

As Heier points out in his book, however, a serious military build-up in Russia’s Arctic in recent years has coincided with an equally serious deterioration of Russia’s relations with the West —  and the military leg of Norway’s Russia-strategy has grown visibly longer than that of dialogue and pragmatism.

Norway collects intelligence on Russia with sophisticated equipment and financing from the U.S. In 2017, Norway received the first of 40 F-35 fighter planes bought in the U.S., planes that are suited to operate side-by-side with the U.S. Air Force. From 2017 to 2020, several thousand U.S. marines were rotated in and out of Norway on six-month training tours. In September 2020 ,U.S., British and Norwegian warships cruised along Norway’s northern coast and then crossed into Russia’s economic zone — right outside Severomorsk, the main base of Russia’s Northern Fleet. The ships remained in international waters, and therefore wasn’t a breach of international conventions, but it was still a signal as tall as Russia’s own snowiest peaks that the U.S. presence in these parts is expanding.

This year, Stortinget, the parliament in Oslo, is expected to ratify an arrangement with the U.S. which will allow U.S. forces unhindered access to build and station troops, fighter planes, ships and munitions at four Norwegian bases, two of which are in Norway’s Arctic.

Come March this year, some 35,000 NATO troops, bolstered by the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and the British carrier HMS Prince of Wales will take part in Cold Response 2022, a bi-annual military exercise in Norway. Much of this will take place within easy shooting range of both Gadzhiyevo and Severomorsk. A spokesperson at the Norwegian Joint Operations Headquarters told High North News that “this will be the largest Norwegian-led exercise conducted in Norway since the 1980s.”

Listening for subs

Any Russian observer would add to this, of course, the several U.S. and Norwegian P-8 Poseidon planes that are particularly equipped to track and destroy the Russian nuclear submarines — the very cornerstone of the nuclear arsenal of the Northern Fleet.

U.S. Poseidon planes, until recently operating from an airstrip at Andøya, an island 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, have recently been paired with the first of five similar planes which Norway bought in the U.S.

These highly sophisticated planes may for instance be called into action by news from the sensor-rich cables that Norway’s defense forces operate on the seabed north of Norway as part of a 24-hour look-out for Russian submarine activity.

“Norway is an important listening- and warning-post for the U.S. We have sound profiles on basically all Russian submarines and we try to find out which crew are operating and when they plan to travel,” Heier says.

[A year into Biden’s presidency, U.S. military plans for Greenland remain unclear]

Russian submarines departing from Kola Peninsula bases must sail for about 20 hours in the relatively shallow waters of the Barents Sea parallel to Norway’s northern coastline before they can hide in the much deeper Atlantic Ocean. Thus, for many hours close to Norway the submarines are particularly vulnerable, and while the whole world is watching what happens in Ukraine, mobilization continues in the North.

On the last day of 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the Northern Fleet had successfully test fired a number of the so-called Tsirkon missiles, the hypersonic missiles that are the latest and fastest ever in Russia’s command, and that this missile was now installed on both frigates and submarines of the Northern Fleet.

As I write this, the Northern Fleet is completing a highly visible exercise in the Barents Sea — even as other units of the Russian Navy do so in the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean, the Pacific and the Sea of Okhotsk.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion in 2019 that he wanted to buy Greenland signaled an intense strategic U.S. interest in the island, an autonomous country in the Danish realm. But, now, a year into his successor Joe Biden’s tenure, it is still not clear what Washington really wants in Greenland.

The latest news in that regard reached the public only indirectly in late 2021. It was in Danish and woven into an answer from the Danish minister of Foreign Affairs, Jeppe Kofod, to a member of the Danish parliament who had asked what the Danish government knew of any U.S. plans for an upgrade of Thule Air Base in the far north of Greenland.

The reason for this exchange was an article I had written a few days earlier in Weekendavisen, a Danish broadsheet, highlighting how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in November 2020 — still in the Trump era — launched a market survey to identify private engineering companies interested in providing architectural and engineering services for a seemingly rather large upgrade to Thule Air Base.

It was a non-binding market survey, not a formal tender, but it mentioned a sum that must have had people in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere reaching for their phones. The public announcement of the market survey explained that the plan was to award five-year contracts to five companies to the total tune of $250 million — a quarter of a billion dollars just for architectural and engineering services. The object here was obviously not any small time upkeep of existing facilities at Thule.

There was no indication as to how large the budget for the actual construction at Thule Air Base would be, but there was a neat list of what would most likely be needed — and please allow now a somewhat lengthy quote:

“Construction of new and renovation/upgrade of multiple hangar/buildings, maintenance, training facilities (hands-on/simulators), Aviation facilities, Runways and Taxiways, Aircraft Fueling facilities/distribution, Industrial facilities, Vehicle Maintenance facilities, Research & design facilities (Armament, Munitions and Communications), Munitions and Storage facilities, Dining facilities, Academic Labs, Barracks/dormitories, Academic Facilities, Administrative Office Buildings. Arctic/Cold Region Construction and repair of airfields, runways, taxiways, aprons and Apron refueling systems. Whole building renovations which address interior re-configuration, life/safety, energy conservation, and utility systems.”

The list went on and on:

“Fire suppression and water supply systems, fire alarm and mass notification system, cybersecurity, fire detection/protection/monitoring and controls, heating and ventilation systems, plumbing systems, electrical systems, telecommunication and cabling systems, closed circuit television (CCTV), alarm and card access systems, and public address systems”.

“Topographic surveys, geological surveys, geotechnical investigations, environmental investigations, Master Planning Studies, Value Engineering Studies, Field Investigation Studies, construction support services”.

Even the caretaking of historical buildings at Thule Air Base was mentioned.

When?

A year later, well into Biden’s presidency, when I asked if there was any news as to when all this would happen in Greenland, the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen had no comment. Only when the Danish minister of Foreign Affairs had to answer in writing a question from Aaja Chemnitz Larsen, one of the two Greenlandic members of the Danish parliament, who was surprised that neither she nor her government in Nuuk had heard anything, did a message from Washington seep through.

“The U.S. authorities have informed (the Danish government) that the market survey has not till now resulted in any concrete tenders, and that it has therefore not led to any construction at the base. Neither is there on the American side any expectation that this will likely happen in the near future,” the answer from the Danish foreign minister read (this translation is mine).

Thule Air Base was established by the US army in the very north of Greenland in the 1950’s. The goal was to bring US military aircrafts as close to the Soviet Union as possible. The base covers a total area of some 620 square kilometers.

That was all. And I assume that the most likely interpretation by those who live in Greenland and by many others who follow U.S. military activity in the Arctic with mounting interest would read something like this: In 2020, the US Corps of Engineers had very serious thoughts about upgrading Thule Air Base, but now — well into the Biden days — these thoughts are no longer current and there is no immediate political desire to pursue them.

It seemed to be a straight and precise message. But it ran, as I will try to explain, somewhat contrary to a string of other U.S. actions in Greenland and in the rest of the Arctic.

Crucial relations

I should add first, though, that the question of U.S. military activity in Greenland is of course of immense interest first of all to the 57,000 inhabitants in Greenland but also to the rest of the Danish Kingdom of which Greenland is still a part. The ways in which the U.S. decides to pursue its strategic interests in Greenland will impact, for instance, directly on Greenland’s and Denmark’s standing with regard to other countries — Russia in particular, at a time when tension with Russian already at a peak. It will impact Greenland’s economy, its infrastructure, and — especially if more U.S. soldiers are to be stationed in Greenland, even temporarily — the social fabric of Greenland.

In Copenhagen, relations with the U.S. are considered crucial to basically all Danish security and many foreign policy issues. Denmark’s government considers the permanent maintenance of a close military alliance with the U.S. to be at the very core of its responsibilities.

As an example, in December, the head of the Danish Defense Intelligence was put under arrest allegedly accused of leaking information to the press. His arrest followed revelations by the media that — among other related issues — the security service had long cooperated much more deeply with those of the U.S. than most Danes had ever anticipated. The connection to Thule Air Base, I admit, is slight, but I mention this illustrate how the advancement of U.S. military ambitions in any part of the Danish Kingdom will play more or less directly into many other strands of politics, including intelligence issues, military budgets, the question of how to calibrate the Danish defense forces in Greenland and the delicate issue of how to handle internal differences between Denmark and Greenland (as well as the Faroe Islands, the third part of the kingdom).

The U.S. wants, for instance, increased “situational awareness” in the Arctic and Denmark has promised to finance and build a large, new radar in the Faroe Islands. The local politicians in Torshavn, the Faroese capital, however, have shown little enthusiasm for this increase in the military infrastructure on their islands. And Pele Broberg, Greenland’s foreign minister until recently, talked openly of his desire to limit Denmark’s military presence in Greenland while strengthening ties to the U.S.

Meanwhile, it is not forgotten how Trump’s idea to buy Greenland seemed to reflect a firm and steadfast U.S. wish to counter Russia’s military build-up in the Arctic and China’s economic and diplomatic inroads in the region. Both are clearly considered to be real and current threats to the U.S., — thus positioning the Faroe Islands and Greenland smack in the center of U.S. strategic concerns.

The recent message from Biden’s Washington that there are no current plans to upgrade Thule Air Base therefore leaves a more basic question still baying for answers: What then does the U.S. military plan in Greenland?

If the Trump administration — including its foreign service and the Pentagon — was so eager to embrace Greenland, reopening the U.S. consulate in Nuuk, investing for the first time ever in Greenland’s civil society and sending frequent signals about about Greenland’s strategic importance, what then are the Biden-administration’s plans for follow-ups?

Mapping Greenland

While we wait, a string of related U.S. actions in Greenland and the rest of the Arctic are keeping observers in both Nuuk and Copenhagen on their toes.

The first recent signal of U.S. intent to invest in additional aviation facilities in Greenland was advertised through the U.S. Embassy in Denmark in 2018.

Since then, high ranking U.S. officials have repeatedly expanded on this theme. According to my sources both in Greenland and Denmark, this has included briefings by U.S. officials in the secret so-called Permanent Committee, where high-ranking U.S., Danish and Greenlandic officials exchange views and information on U.S. military matters in Greenland.

Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken (second from right) in Greenland last summer – with Danish foreign minister Jeppe Kofod (far left), Greenland’s premier Mute B. Egede and climate researcher Mie Winding. Photo: Leiff Josefsen, Sermitsiaq

Also, a team of technical experts from the U.S. defense forces have been to Greenland to assess whether two new civilian airports under construction in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, and in Ilulissat, a town further north, could potentially be useful for the U.S. Air Force. Others have speculated that a deepwater port in Greenland will soon be among U.S. naval priorities.

According to other sources in Denmark and Greenland, including military sources, U.S. satellites under the auspices of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Springfield, Virginia, one of the arms of the U.S. intelligence community,  have lately been steadily collecting data about every inch of Greenland not covered by ice; this is territory the size of Norway or two-thirds the size of Afghanistan. In an effort that also involves the Danish and Greenlandic authorities, this immense amount of data will be turned into electronic, seamless maps (think Google Maps, just better). These maps will enable smoother and safer operations by U.S. and other military forces in Greenland and, as an extra bonus, also indirectly benefit the making of maps for Greenland’s civilian life.

The runways at Thule Air Base have recently been equipped with extra so-called tail-hooks; wires fastened to concrete structures which can help fighter planes brake more rapidly when landing. Long-planned demolition of older structures at the base have been canceled and among Danish military brass, rumors of upcoming larger-scale upgrades have been circulating for some time.

In 2020 and in 2021 — bridging the Trump and the Biden presidencies — the U.S. and the Canadian air forces conducted two major exercises in the Arctic dubbed Amalgam Dart. According to Skies Magazine, the exercise in June 2021 involved more than a thousand troops, 60 fighter jets and other aircraft and Thule Air Base played a key role.

“The exercise went very well and provided an excellent opportunity for our Airmen to work in a deployed location to refine Agile Combat Employment processes for maturing the C-17 capability for future wet-wing defueling missions,” said Chuck Keasey, CONR-First Air Force Aircraft Maintenance Branch Chief. “Our proven ability to conduct wet-wing refueling enhances our capability to defend North America,” he said.

In 2021, the US defense forces were granted unhindred access to four military installations in Norway; underscoring the importance of access to the Arctic close to Russia’s large bases west of Murmansk on the Kola peninsula  / Graphics: Business-Insider

In another illustration of increased U.S. focus on the Arctic, the U.S. last year in a deal with the Norwegian government was awarded “unhindered access” to four military installations in Norway, two of which are in the Norwegian Arctic. From there, U.S. fighter planes, military vessels and submarines now conduct maneuvers in the North Atlantic ever closer to Russia’s main Arctic bases. And in a few weeks, the mighty USS Harry Truman, an aircraft carrier, will team up with HMS Prince of Wales, a British equivalent, for one of the largest military exercises ever in the Arctic parts in Norway; military cooperation with Sweden and Finland are also on the rise.

Several of the most recent Arctic strategies from various branches of the U.S. military talk about new and growing threats to the U.S. from the north, and Thule Air Base — even if some structures there date all the way back to the 1950s — is listed as a key U.S. asset in this regard.

As associate professor Rob Huebert, an Arctic security expert from the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary, told me in December:

“An upgrade to Thule Air Base would basically mean that the U.S. was investing precisely as they have written in their strategies that they would over the last couple of years. It would fit nicely into the pattern that has already been drawn by the U.S. in northern Norway and at the U.S.’s own military facilities in Alaska,“ Huebert said.

“It is a simple analysis. You have a shorter reaction time today than previously,” in case of a Russian attack, he said. ”And the Americans think they need to do something about it.”

Strategic minerals

To sum up, there are no signs that U.S. interests in Greenland are diminishing. Quite the contrary. When Trump announced his wish to buy Greenland, he talked of the strategic minerals in Greenland’s subsoil, and this particular priority seems to also still have Washngton’s keen interest; the U.S. is also keen to thwart any risk that China might gain control over Greenland’s resources.

As an example, on December 7 the Australian mining company Ironbark happily announced that the U.S. investment bank EXIM, the Export-Import Bank of the United States’ government, had formally confirmed its interest in investing some $657 million in a huge zinc mine at Citronen Fjord in a remote part of extreme northeastern Greenland which Ironbark has worked on for years.

Zinc is on the U.S. list of strategic minerals; in increasingly short demand while still crucial for, among other things, galvanizing iron. According to Ironbark’s announcement, EXIM’s investment would basically finance the entire mine in Citronen Fjord. Also, it would effectively kill Ironbark’s previous intention to let the Chinese state-controlled mining giant China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group finance the project.

According to the Financial Review EXIM’s financing is a result of a U.S. government lender’s special “402A program” designed to help companies compete with China. Australia’s former foreign minister Alexander Downer, one of Ironbark Zinc’s directors, told Financial Review that: “the 402 program was set up, in a sense, as a way of competing with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.”

“It has strategic intention, and it has been legislated by Congress and then implemented by regulation by the EXIM Bank. And we’re the first standalone project to get approval as a 402A project,” Downer said.

Next in line may be Greenland’s large deposits of minerals from the so-called rare earths, which are of particular significance to the U.S. arms industry.

In July 2019, only a few weeks prior to his admission that he would like to buy Greenland because it would be “strategically nice,” Trump issued a presidential memorandum to his Defense Secretary explaining that domestic production of rare earth minerals was no longer sufficient to secure U.S. supplies, and that foreign sources would have to be pursued.

That same summer, Greg Barnes, an Australian miner with a license to mine rare earths in south Greenland, was summoned, as he told me in 2021, to the White House with short notice and questioned for several hours by a panel of more than 10 people from the president’s staff and the U.S. intelligence community on how he intended to proceed.

Later the same year, an airborne survey of mineral resources in south Greenland was carried out with U.S. funding. And according to sources in Nuuk, a delegation of high-ranking officials from the U.S. State Department that visited Greenland in late 2019 and included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s chief adviser, Thomas Breckbull, was especially preoccupied with Greenland’s rare earths.

Biden’s administration has not yet exercised the same zeal on the ground in Greenland, but it is obviously aware of the pressure to secure ample supplies of rare earth minerals for the U.S. And Greenland just happens to be home to sizable, proven deposits.

In February 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense announced an investment of some $30 million in a rare earth refinery in Texas. In June 2021 the Biden administration established a “Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force” to combat a range of potential shortfalls, including that of rare earths: “China accounts for an outsized share of the world’s refining capacity, meaning that even if the United States were to diversify our sources of critical minerals or increase domestic extraction, we would still be reliant on China for processing before use in end-product manufacturing,” a fact sheet from the White House said, heralding much action and investment. A White House background report was equally adamant: “The United States must secure reliable and sustainable supplies of critical minerals and metals to ensure resilience across U.S. manufacturing and defense needs” it said. In December 2021, Biden issued his own presidential memorandum focused, like Trump’s, singularly on rare earths:

“Shortfalls”, Biden wrote, “would severely impair national defense capability.”

Again, Greenland’s rare earth deposits are most likely still blinking visibly on the radar of the planners and strategists in Washington. However, like in the military sphere, it might be that at this point in time nobody in the new administration has yet figured out exactly how to proceed.