On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle

Summary

Consider This from NPR: On the Road in Greenland, North of the Arctic Circle

Release Date: March 22, 2025

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Introduction

In the March 22, 2025 episode of NPR's Consider This, hosts Juana Summers and Scott Detrow embark on an immersive reporting trip to Greenland, venturing north of the Arctic Circle to the scenic town of Ilulissat. The episode delves into the intersection of climate change, economic development, and local identity, moving beyond the headlines dominated by political ambitions such as President Donald Trump's territorial claims.

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Journey to Ilulissat

Juana Summers and Scott Detrow recount their challenging journey to Ilulissat, a picturesque town renowned for its icebergs and vibrant tourist activities. The absence of roads connecting major Greenlandic towns necessitates reliance on small flights operated by Air Greenland. The team faced relentless weather disruptions, encapsulated by the Greenlandic term "sela", which refers to uncontrollable weather that one must adapt to.

Scott Detrow [00:04]: "There's this word that a woman that we met in Greenland told us. It's called sela, which means weather. But it also means, like, you can't control the weather. You just have to adapt around it."

Their determination was tested over several days of high winds and icy runways. Multiple flight diversions led them to unexpected locations, including Assiat Airport. Persistence paid off when, after numerous delays, an announcement in Greenlandic or Danish signaled their successful arrival in Ilulissat.

Scott Detrow [01:47]: "It is very clear that they don't want to be taken over. I think someone told us at one point, we don't want another colonizer."

Upon finally reaching Ilulissat, the team was captivated by its stunning landscapes, colorful houses, and the ever-present sound of sled dogs howling—a quintessential Greenlandic experience.

Scott Detrow [01:50]: "It's one of the most stunning places I've ever visited. It's a sort of scenic, beautiful tourist town... you can just hear the sled dogs howling all the time."

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Climate Change Impacts

The episode highlights the tangible effects of climate change on Greenland's traditional livelihoods. Scott Detrow narrates an excursion with Stella, a local dog sled musher, emphasizing the declining snowfall:

Scott Detrow [04:18]: "We don't have a lot of snow right now. It's actually pretty hot here. And when we don't have as much snow, it's harder for the dogs to pull."

Reduced snowfall not only hampers dog sledding but also affects broader aspects of daily life and the local economy, which heavily depends on tourism. Jan Kortzen, a boat operator, expresses concerns over the sustainability of tourism amid changing climatic conditions and the need for local investment in infrastructure to retain economic benefits.

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Political Ambitions and Local Opinions

A significant portion of the episode addresses the political tension surrounding President Trump's proposal to acquire Greenland. Despite international attention, the overwhelmingly negative sentiment among Greenlanders is evident.

Scott Detrow [08:18]: "Just 6% of Greenlanders said that they wanted their island to become part of the United States."

This sentiment is reinforced by statements from both Greenland's and Denmark's prime ministers, emphasizing Greenland's desire to remain autonomous and resist becoming a U.S. territory.

However, the episode also features a nuanced perspective from Jorgen Bosan, a Trump supporter who advocates for a free association agreement rather than outright acquisition. This stance seeks economic and military support from the U.S. without relinquishing Greenland's sovereignty.

Scott Detrow [09:44]: "He wants to see Greenland enter what's called a free association agreement with the United States... but he did not say that he wants to be American."

The team observes a palpable fatigue among locals toward international journalists, which made securing interviews challenging. Nonetheless, the steadfast opposition to colonialism and foreign acquisition remains a unifying theme among the populace.

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Cultural Encounters and Community Life

Beyond the political landscape, Consider This explores Greenlandic culture and daily life. The hosts immerse themselves in various cultural activities, such as:

• Dog Sledding: Experiencing firsthand the challenges posed by diminishing snow.

• Kayaking: Visiting a kayak club and witnessing the construction of traditional Greenlandic kayaks.

• Indigenous Cuisine: Engaging with an award-winning Greenlandic chef to understand the local food landscape.

These interactions aim to shed light on Greenland's rich heritage and the resilience of its people amid environmental and economic changes.

Scott Detrow [10:11]: "For me, what was most enriching was trying to open up those other parts of Greenland to a US Audience that really hasn't given this place and its people and its history like much consideration."

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Conclusion

The episode of Consider This offers a comprehensive look at Greenland, portraying it as a land of stunning beauty grappling with significant challenges. Through the lens of climate change, economic dependence on tourism, and resistance to political overreach, Juana Summers and Scott Detrow provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of a region often overshadowed by geopolitical narratives. Their journey underscores the importance of respecting local sentiments and appreciating the intricate balance between tradition and modernity in Greenland's evolving landscape.

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Produced by: Noah Caldwell and Matt Ozug
Edited by: Adam Rainey, Ashley Brown, and Courtney Dorning
Executive Producer: Sammy Yenigan

Transcript

[Juana Summers]

When you're on the road as a reporter, you're bound to pick up some local vernacular.

[Scott Detrow]

There's this word that a woman that we met in Greenland told us. It's called sela, which means weather. But it also means, like, you can't control the weather. You just have to adapt around it.

[Juana Summers]

That, of course, is All Things Considered co host Juana Summers. Last month, she and a team went to Greenland for a reporting trip and encountered a ton of Sila.

[Scott Detrow]

One thing to know about traveling in Greenland is that there are not roads between the major towns and cities. So you've got to take these little small flights on Air Greenland to get from place to place.

[Juana Summers]

One place they were trying to get to was a little town north of the Arctic Circle called Alulissat. But the sila had other ideas. They had days of high winds and icy tarmacs.

[Scott Detrow]

We were supposed to leave on a Thursday. No flight happens the next day. We get up, we pack all our stuff, we get to the airport, we get on a plane, Plane gets diverted, we land in a completely different part of Greenland. We're there for like a half hour or something like that. Back on the plane, the cycle plays out over and over again. Finally, I think this is on Sunday. Pack up all our stuff, leave the hotel, get on the plane again. Plane gets diverted again to this place called Assiat. So we're now here at the Asiat airport in Greenland. On our way, we're attempting again for the third time to fly to Alulissat. We're gonna see if we're gonna make it. And finally, after about two hours of sitting there and wondering what's gonna happen, this announcement comes over the loudspeaker. It is in either Greenlandic or Danish languages. I do not speak. I didn't have to understand those languages to know what was happening because everybody started cheering and we actually made it four days later understand that it seems like we're going to make an attempt to fly to Alulusad. I don't know if you can hear the crowd got pretty excited. The small group of us that have been.

[Juana Summers]

What was Lulu Sat like when you finally got there? What did it look like?

[Scott Detrow]

I mean, it's one of the most stunning places I've ever visited. It's this sort of scenic, beautiful tourist town. It's a place where lots of people go to set out and see the icebergs, to take boat tours. All of the houses are super colored, beautiful snowscapes. And I think the thing that sticks with me is the fact that you can just hear the sled dogs howling all the time. Like even before you see them, you can hear them. And then when you see them, they're also pretty darn cute.

[Juana Summers]

Consider this. Greenland is a lot more than an object of Donald Trump's territorial ambitions. It is a place whose small population is facing big questions about climate change, economic development and identity. So today we are bringing you a reporter's notebook, traveling through Greenland with Juana Summers and her team at a time of huge political uncertainty. From npr, I'm Scott Detrow.

[Scott Detrow]

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[Juana Summers]

It's Consider this from npr. Juana Summers and her team initially went to Greenland because of the bold claims President Donald Trump has made about taking it over. But it is a place with a lot more to cover than political jostling. So today for our weekly Reporter's Notebook segment, we are on the road in Greenland and we will start in that little town north of the Arctic Circle, Olulissat.

[Scott Detrow]

So we did this story and this is something I wouldn't have thought about before we started researching this trip about intersection of dog sledding and climate change. So we actually got to go out with this woman who's a dog sled musher named Stella. And when she took us out, she kind of warned us, you know, we don't have a lot of snow right now. It's actually pretty hot here. And when we don't have as much snow, it's harder for the dogs to pull. I think we've righted things. They're picking up speed again. And we're kind of looking out in front of us and you can see some snow. But there's like also these stretches of just sort of rough terrain. There are rough rocks and moss and we just went across a pretty big rock. It's kind of brown looking. So we're seeing this in real time. And that is definitely the case when we took off on this dog sled. Like, it just there wasn't enough snow in some stretches, which meant that we were getting off the dog sled at times and running alongside of it.

[Juana Summers]

Had you dog sledded before in your life?

[Scott Detrow]

Nope.

[Juana Summers]

How would you say you were as a dog sledder?

[Scott Detrow]

I mean, I would like to say that I'm very good at following directions. I think it helps that, like you, I'm a runner. So running alongside of it, I was definitely looking at my Garmin. Like, man, maybe I should have started my Garmin. My heart rate is really up. Just get on. Just get on. Easier said than done.

[Juana Summers]

Before we talk about the other topics, what for people who didn't hear the piece, what is the general feeling, though, of people whose livelihood depends on this tourism industry? Depends on snow when north of the Arctic Circle in February? Snow is a problem.

[Scott Detrow]

Yeah. I think it touches every part of life there. When we talk to Stella, the woman who took us out with the dog sleds, or when we talked with a man named Jan Kortzen who took us on his boat to the icebergs, there's a concern. These are people who have lived in Greenland their whole lives, and they're pointing to these tangible examples every day of how climate has affected them. And the other thing that we heard from them, and particularly from Jan Cortson, is these are all people who depend on tourism. Right. They want more people to come to this small town of fewer than 5,000 people to go on their dog sleds to go out on their boats. But they want to make sure that as Greenland opens up more to the world, the island has invested a ton of money in new airports and stuff. They want that money to stay locally rather than to benefit outside operators. And that's a really big tension in the small town that we went to, too.

[Juana Summers]

Speaking of outsiders, President Trump wants to acquire Greenland. This is something you as a reporter want to learn about, but you are also an American coming in from an American news outlet to talk to people about this. How are you received?

[Scott Detrow]

We were pretty well received. One thing that we were warned about from people that we were talking to in pre interviews is that there was just A lot of fatigue around international journalists and American journalists. And you could really see that. I mean, as we were walking around Nuke and Potato, we saw tons of other journalists. Several other big US Outlets were there at the same time we were there. Yeah, people were nice, but people were pretty over it at times. I'll give you just one super visual example. We did a story where we asked people, you know, what they thought about President Trump's ambitions and how they felt about if that were to come to pass, potentially becoming a part of the US and we went to a place called Nuke center, which is like, the biggest mall in Greenland. And we're standing there at the doors, and we're just, like, sitting there asking people, hey, do you want to talk to us? Hey, can I ask you a question about President Trump? And at one point, things got so bleak that I was actually sitting there tallying in my notepad how many people said no and how many people said yes. And we got more than a dozen nos before we even got one yes, and we only got one.

[Juana Summers]

I've been in situations like that where you're going into a community that has just been inundated by reporters, and I found myself that, like, I don't even get the syllables of reporter out before. I'm a. Nope. Like, I'm a full stop. Yeah, Nope. Like. Or they could just tell by the body language as you come up that you're. But then eventually you were able to make connections. You were able to get people to talk about this. Did you find, like, a wide range? You know, you talk about it's a diverse place, but also it's a place with, you know, 57,000 people total. What was the mix of opinions on this strange situation Greenland finds itself in?

[Scott Detrow]

Well, on this topic, people were actually pretty uniform. There was a poll that came out shortly before we arrived in Greenland, and the stat was pretty striking to us. Just 6% of Greenlanders said that they wanted their island to become part of the United States. Just 6%. And that really bore itself out. As we were going around and talking to people. The thing that sticks in my mind that I kept hearing over and over and over again from people is they would say, greenland is not for sale. That is something that Greenland's prime minister has said. That is something that's been echoed by Denmark's prime minister, because Greenland, of course, is an autonomous territory of Denmark. That just was the thing that people kept coming back to. It is very clear that they don't want to be taken over. I think Someone told us at one point, we don't want another colonizer. I'm paraphrasing here a bit. Yeah. But I will say we did meet one sort of very big Trump super fan, this guy named Jorgen Bosan. He actually helped orchestrate Don Jr. President Trump's son's visit to to Greenland. That happened, I think, a little bit before the inauguration. And what's interesting about him and listening to him when we sat down with him is that even he didn't come out and say that he wanted the US to acquire the island. He made the case that he wants to see Greenland enter what's called a free association agreement with the United States. So he wants to see the United States provide economic support, military support, defense support. But he kind of stopped short of saying that he wanted to be part of this country. He did not say that he wants to be American.

[Juana Summers]

What did you like? I feel like when we're going on a reporting trip, we do a ton of research, we done a ton of prep before we go, figuring out what we want to talk about, who we want to talk to, but just also the basics of the story, because you don't want to walk in blind. And yet there are always really big surprises. What was most surprising to you about this trip and what was something that maybe you thought about? I didn't quite grasp this idea at all, or I had it a little bit wrong. When I was thinking about it from.

[Scott Detrow]

Afar, the thing that surprised me the most was how challenging it would be to get people to talk. Like, I knew the influx of journalists would be there, and I know they had had so much attention. And like on these trips, you know, you pre plan so much, you do pre interviews, you send emails, but, like, that's just not the way that things happen there. It's very much an island where the best interviews we got, I think, were by way of introduction of someone else. The people who really stuck with me the most were people that we were introduced to, either by our fixer, Yona, that we worked with, or by other people that we had met. The word of mouth currency was just so much more important. When I told most people in my life, like outside of our business, hey, I'm going to Greenland for this trip, most people came in with the baseline of knowing nothing about this island. And I think that that's really flattened the culture in some ways. So we were really intentional about doing stories. Yes, we talked about President Trump's ambitions, but we also talked about dog sledding. We also went to a kayak club and watched the construction of traditional Greenlandic kayakers. We sat down with an award winning Greenlandic chef who talked to us about indigenous cuisine and the food landscape there. So I think for me, what was most enriching was trying to open up those other parts of Greenland to a US Audience that really hasn't given this place and its people and its history like much consideration.

[Juana Summers]

Juana Summers, thank you so much for talking to us.

[Scott Detrow]

Thanks, Scott.

[Juana Summers]

This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell and Matt Ozug. It was edited by Adam Rainey, Ashley Brown and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's CONSIDER THIS from npr. I'm Scott Detrow.

[Scott Detrow]

Singapore is one of the busiest cities in the world, but biologist Philip Johns is fascinated by different inhabitant on the island otters.

[Juana Summers]

At rush hour downtown, the otters would swim toward each other and there are literally tens of thousands of people who are on their way to work.

[Scott Detrow]

How ideas, emotions and creatures coexist. That's next time on the TED RADIO Hour from npr. Man, I mean, that might have been the only time I've really faced myself.

[Juana Summers]

I'm Jesse Thorne on Bullseye. George Lopez on the time that he swung a bat at a pinata of George Lopez.

[Scott Detrow]

You know, like I wasn't supposed to hit it that many times that hard.

[Juana Summers]

Getting very real with George Lopez on bullseye from maximumfun.org and NPR want to.

[Scott Detrow]

Hear this podcast without sponsor breaks. Amazon prime members can listen to Consider this Sponsor free through Amazon Music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get consider this [e-mail] that's plus npr.org.