deliriouslove1970. The life & times of Gary and Denise Flanders. (Free and worth every penny. If you would like to compliment the editor, send to garytheflan@deliriouslove1970.com. If you would like to complain, call your mother.)

“Greenland, the world’s largest island, lying in the North Atlantic Ocean. Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) is noted for its vast tundra and immense glaciers. Although Greenland remains part of the Kingdom of Denmark, the island’s home-rule government is responsible for most domestic affairs. The Greenlandic people are primarily Inuit who, depending upon the region they are from, call themselves Kalaallit (West Greenlanders), Inugguit (from Thuledistrict), or Iit (East Greenlanders). They call their homeland Kalaallit Nunaat (“Country of the Greenlanders”). The capital of Greenland is Nuuk (Godthåb).”

“More than three times the size of the U.S. state of Texas, Greenland extends about 1,660 miles (2,670 km) from north to south and more than 650 miles (1,050 km) from east to west at its widest point. Two-thirds of the island lies within the Arctic Circle, and the island’s northern extremity extends to within less than 500 miles (800 km) of the North Pole. Greenland is separated from Canada’s Ellesmere Island to the north by only 16 miles (26 km). The nearest European country is Iceland, lying about 200 miles (320 km) across the Denmark Strait to the southeast. Greenland’s deeply indented coastline is 24,430 miles (39,330 km) long, a distance roughly equivalent to Earth’s circumference at the Equator.”

“Greenland’s major physical feature is its massive ice sheet, which is second only to Antarctica’s in size. The Greenland Ice Sheet has an average thickness of 5,000 feet (1,500 metres), reaches a maximum thickness of about 10,000 feet (3,000 metres), and covers more than 700,000 square miles (1,800,000 square km)—over four-fifths of Greenland’s total land area. Layers of snow falling on its barren, windswept surface become compressed into ice layers, which constantly move outward to the peripheral glaciers”

“In 1867, United States Secretary of StateWilliam H. Seward worked with former senator Robert J. Walker to explore the possibility of buying Greenland and, perhaps, Iceland. Opposition in Congress ended this project. Following World War II, the United States developed a geopolitical interest in Greenland and in 1946 offered to buy the island from Denmark for $100,000,000; the Danish rejected the offer.”

Queen Margrethe II followed the 1953 Danish Constitution which ended the colonial status of Greenland and made it a county of Denmark. She further proclaimed ‘home rule’ in 1979 and self rule in 2009.

In 1951 Denmark and the United States signed the Greenland Defense Agreement, which allowed the United States to keep its military bases in Greenland, and to establish new bases or “defense areas” if deemed necessary by NATO. The U.S. military could freely use and move between these defense areas, but was not to infringe upon Danish sovereignty in Greenland.

The bottom line remains that Greenland, at the moment, is a part of the sovereign nation of Denmark. There is some movement by groups within Greenland become a sovereign nation. All interest by anyone else is a simple matter of its physical position on the globe. There are some possible natural resources but very few, and, 4/5 of the continent is covered by ice. In my opinion, leave the Greenlanders alone.

(Sources: Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannia.)