On a recent evening, I heard a sentence I could not have believed a year ago that I would ever hear:
“I refrained from liking a critical post about Trump. Just imagine if we want to go to the US again soon?”
The words were my partner’s, and he sounded embarrassed. But rumors are circulating in Copenhagen about people whose phones have been checked at passport control, or who’ve been denied entry if they’ve spoken out against the American president. We talked about how wild it was that we were even having this conversation—that expressing one’s opinion, about the US of all places, could be a problem.
But enough was enough, we agreed. If anything is to change, we have to make ourselves heard—even if it’s only with a tiny little like. So when Vogue asked whether I would write about how we Danes feel about Trump’s idea of taking over Greenland—which has been part of the Kingdom of Denmark since the 19th century, and functioned autonomously since the 1950s—I could not possibly say anything other than yes.
I grew up with a heroic idea of the United States. Partly because you were heroes—you helped save us from Nazi Germany—and partly because Hollywood assured me that if everything went wrong, Tom Cruise would jump out of a plane to battle the bad guys.
Deep down, I have always believed that. With only six million people, we don’t really stand a chance if someone wants to harm us—at least not without alliances. We have the EU, NATO, and a relationship with the US so close that our prime minister in the 2000s went jogging with President Bush in Washington (a far bigger story in our media than in yours). Danish soldiers have also fought alongside American ones, including in Afghanistan.
I also grew up with the sense that you did everything—from wearing Uggs to practicing Reformer Pilates—at least two years before we did. When I was editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine in the 2010s, I convinced management that the magazine could effectively not be published unless I attended New York Fashion Week every season. It was just as inspiring to sit at Pastis in the Meatpacking District and watch well-dressed New Yorkers as it was to attend a Marc Jacobs show. This was before Noma, Ganni Girls, Scandi chic, and Copenhagen being named the world’s coolest city.
Our media and our dinner tables are swarming with attempts to understand Trump. “If you listen to a podcast about something Trump said about Greenland that was recorded on Thursday, it may be outdated by Friday,” the father of one of my son’s classmates said when we met for a dinner club last week. Is he exaggerating what he wants to do now in order to get his way on something else later? Should one take him seriously, but not literally? Is it all just a diversion from what’s happening in the US?
I ask a friend who works in communications whether she has ever believed that Trump would take over Greenland by military force. “No,” she says. “It’s not just land the US would be taking over, but people. Would they then become American citizens against their will? I don’t see that happening.”
But one thing we are both sure of is that Trump and his administration say many things that are factually incorrect—and that this makes us uneasy. “It reminds me of a manipulative friend I had in school, who lied about everything so convincingly that I almost started wondering whether I was the one who was crazy,” my friend says.