Friday
I get up around 6 AM. I usually do. For breakfast, I have eggs and toasted rye bread with cheese.
This deal with the United States and the whole Greenland crisis has been simmering for a long time, and it’s a fairly busy Friday.
It’s the day of the final preparations, and no one else knows that we’re heading to the United States.
I often work out, but not this morning, because I’ve been dragging around a small flu for a couple of weeks. So these days I’m trying to ease off a little on training.
Then I drive to work.
There are always worries in the back of my mind about one thing and another. And I know perfectly well that there isn’t a final deal untilpen has been put to paper. At this point, we’re also starting to fear that things could leak. If something like this gets off on the wrong foot, then things can … Anything can still go wrong on this Friday morning.
At the Prime Minister’s Office, I have a longer meeting with SACEUR, the top American general in NATO, and his team. We talk about our own rearmament, NATO’s eastern flank, and the hybrid war the Russians have launched, about Ukraine, and of course the Arctic as well. But I don’t discuss the deal itself with him.
What happens Friday evening is, first, a message from the president, and then a press release from me and Jens-Frederik Nielsen. And then it rolls on from there. It’s coordinated with the Americans. Not down to every last word choice, but it’s coordinated. He’s a president known for phrasing things in his own way, so at this point we’re following everything with great interest.
I’m home that evening, and I speak with both Juste (chief of staff Martin Justesen, ed.) and Barbara (permanent secretary Barbara Bertelsen, ed.) over the course of the evening and early night. I go to bed around 1.
Saturday
I’m still pretty sick, so I’m really trying to get well before we travel on Sunday. So it’s a quiet day. I get some fresh air, some healthy food, and fight to get my health back up. That means homemade fresh-pressed juice.
I eat grapefruit, lemon, ginger, and drink tea, which I otherwise can’t stand. And a lot of vegetables. I know perfectly well I won’t be able to get well in time, but I do what I can.
In the evening, my husband and I watch a fiction film about the evacuation of Kabul, with a fairly strong documentary feel, on DR.
Sunday
I’m still not quite on top of things, but I run on the treadmill and do some strength training.
Then it’s time to go. I’m in fairly close contact with various allies of ours: the Nordic leaders, different European leaders, and EU institutions. The last person I speak to on the phone before I step onto the plane is the new British prime minister, Andy Burnham.
We fly in two planes because we have a lot of people with us. The trip across the Atlantic is almost entirely preparation time. One thing is the meeting with Trump and the signing ceremony. But there’s also a press conference afterward, where we have to expect both Danish and Greenlandic reporters to start asking for more detail.
We have some salad and chicken. My health, as it’s been the whole way through, isn’t quite good.
We land in the afternoon and are preoccupied with how to handle the jet lag properly. So I take a long walk with Juste in New York. Down by the water we see that you can play pickleball. It’s an incredibly fun game, and we figure out we can play there the next morning.
You can probably find people who are bigger fans of New York than I am. I find it awful that it smells like weed everywhere. And I also think it sends a strange signal to children and young people that you can walk around there and be high completely legally as an adult.
Walking around in that weed haze only reinforces for me that we should never do that in Denmark.
We eat burgers and fries in the evening – truly American – and go to bed early.
Monday
I start the day by playing pickleball. There’s this huge, terrific public area where you can play squash, table tennis, pickleball, and do strength training. It’s the first time Juste has ever tried it, so we don’t play a real match.
All of Monday is one long preparation with my team from the Prime Minister’s Office, and then Jens-Frederik and his team arrive. And Múte B. Egede and Lars Løkke. So we have the Danish and Greenlandic delegation assembled.
The whole gang, if you will.
We take an unusually long walk again in the afternoon. Without pickleball, I think I get up to 22,000 to 23,000 steps. Both to handle jet lag, but also because for me it’s a way to keep my head clear.
Not many people recognize me, but some Americans wave, and some come up. Some who are happy with the way I am as prime minister.
In the evening, a conservative think tank on defense and security policy holds an event. I don’t know it and I’ve never been there, but Barbara and our ambassador in Washington (Jesper Møller Sørensen, ed.), whom I work very, very closely with, come up to me during the day and say that a lot of people around Trump are gathering tonight.
Among them is Needham, who has been part of the working group, but also the U.N. ambassador, one of Trump’s former NSA security advisers, and various people from the security-policy inner circle around Trump. Barbara and Jesper ask whether I’d like to come by and say hello.
We do, and they’re clearly happy that an agreement has been reached, and then I think I might as well use the opportunity to say something, so I give a completely improvised speech.
First I joke that in that crowd they’ve invited a European social democrat, and they think it’s pretty funny themselves. And then I use the opportunity to speak more broadly about security policy.
Tuesday
I get up at 5:30, and we eat an early breakfast.
We get the very last things in place before the signing ceremony and my remarks for the press conference, before we meet with Jens-Frederik and Múte, and around 8 o’clock we head down to the General Assembly.
I need to meet with Zelenskyy to talk about air defense, the EU’s sanctions, and a couple of other things, including our cooperation on anti-ballistic missile defense. Zelenskyy congratulates me on the deal, but we don’t talk about his own experience with Trump. We go in together to the General Assembly hall.
During Trump’s speech, I’m just focused on what will happen afterward. Of course I listen to what’s being said (Trump threatens Iran with annihilation, among other things, and says Cuba will fall, prompting the Cuban delegation to walk out, ed.), but I’m probably most attentive to what’s being said in relation to Greenland and the Kingdom.
During the speech, I sit next to Jens-Frederik. The thing about him and me is that we didn’t know each other before he was elected leader of Greenland. We hadn’t even met. When he was elected, we decided to become each other’s closest partners. That’s why we don’t even have to say anything to one another. We know exactly what the other is thinking.
He is simply so capable, that man. Throughout this whole process he has been calm, reflective, and smart. I have enormous respect. He really is a natural at leading.
When Trump’s speech is over, things move pretty fast, because we agreed with the Americans that the signing ceremony would take place immediately afterward. So we have to get out of that maelstrom that happens when the whole world is represented in one room with an incredible number of people.
We hurry and go straight to the meeting room where we’re going to sign the first papers. We made this deal with the Americans that the agreement is to be signed in nine copies. Three in Greenlandic, three in Danish, three in English. And the protocol people – the ones who arrange a ceremony like that – agree it looks too strange if we’re going to sit there signing nine copies at the actual press conference.
When I meet Trump, I give him a fairly firm handshake and say: »We did it, Mr. President«.
He is clearly happy with the agreement, too. That’s also what we were told beforehand by his team.
Beyond that, we don’t have time to talk much back there, but Trump asks how many people in Denmark speak English. And then Lars Løkke and I try to give an estimate. We don’t know exactly, of course, but we know there are a great many Danes who speak English.
And then there’s a pretty funny moment about his pen. He has this very distinctive pen, almost like a thick marker, but I’ve just been given a fairly ordinary disposable ballpoint. So I tease him a bit and say that since he has such a big, nice pen, I want one like that, too, to sign with.
It actually ends with me taking his pen, but I also say, no, I can’t steal the president’s pen. But then he says, no, it’s a gift, and I take it with me.
I still have the pen, and I actually think we should put it in the National Museum. He’s a good host. He also pulled out the chair for me at the signing ceremony.
Out on stage, we sign the last three documents, and at the Prime Minister’s Office we’ve written a speech in which I get to mention our sovereignty, territorial integrity and the Greenlanders’ right to self-determination. Those are what we have always defined as our red lines, and I think it’s important to say it — also in front of him — on stage. But beyond that, of course, it’s a speech that is friendly and welcoming. There isn’t a phrase or a word that hasn’t been thought through in advance.
This agreement is undoubtedly one of the most important I will ever enter into as Prime Minister. Because it’s here to stay. As long as NATO exists, this agreement will remain in force.
I can hear that people are shouting among the journalists, but I can’t make out exactly what they’re asking.
After we leave the stage, I get a chance to speak with Trump, which I’m pleased about, because however you look at it, Europe is still heavily dependent on the Americans.
If we are to defend our own populations, it has to be done in cooperation with the rest of NATO, and the United States plays the key role in that. And because everything has gone well, and he and I have had a good moment together, we also end up having a good conversation after the signing ceremony itself about Russia and Ukraine — about what Russia’s next move might be, and how best to protect our countries.
Of course, I try to pull him as much as I can in my direction, and in Europe’s. That is my job as a European leader. And I also think that, now that this has actually ended in a way all of us can live with, it is important to use the moment to move on to the next challenges we need to tackle together.
But it is not all serious. You can joke around with him too. After we sign, Trump says, »You are a tough woman.«
I say, »It’s been quite a few years since you first said that.« He laughs and says he remembers. Back in 2019, he had called one of my remarks ’nasty’, but shortly afterwards I met him and Melania in New York at an event where he used much the same wording — saying that I was a tough woman. That is the kind of thing you can joke with him about in a situation like that.
Once we are done with the Americans, Jens-Frederik and I hold our own press conference. Naturally, it is important for him to be able to say a few words in Greenlandic. I speak in Danish. At that point, we are speaking directly to the people back home in the Kingdom and in our own countries. And up there on that rooftop in the middle of New York, you can really feel how happy everyone is — back home as well.
I was ill throughout the whole process, and in the middle of a sentence about Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, my voice catches in my throat. I have said Pituffik many, many times before, so it is not the word itself that makes me cough. I am simply sick.
Even though, in response to one of the first questions from the press, I say that I’m simply in work mode and that we deal with things like this in a very professional way, there is of course also a sense of relief once it is all over and the agreement is signed.
This has been a critical situation. We have been facing something extremely, extremely difficult — in relation to Greenland and the Kingdom, our relationship with the United States, and NATO.
As we stand there thanking each other, it also feels, hopefully, like some kind of ending. We do not know what tomorrow will bring, of course, but at least for now it is the end of a very, very, very, very, very tough mountain stage.
Right at the end of the press conference, I spontaneously say that we should go out and have a beer. I do not drink beer very often, but at that moment I really feel like having a cold draft beer. As it turns out, the rest of the delegation feels the same way.
For some of them it turns into several, but I only drink one. Afterward, a few of us take a long walk before we have to fly. We go down to Strand Bookstore, an old bookshop. Legendary. I think it’s 100 years old, or maybe more. There I buy Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy, which I first read 30 years ago in Danish. Now I think, I’m damned well going to buy it in New York today.
In the evening we’re a bit late in finding a restaurant, but one of the staff calls an Italian place to ask if there’s room. There isn’t, but when the owner is told that it’s Denmark and the prime minister who want to eat there, he finds room for us anyway.
I get some chicken, and then I don’t know why, but they’ve decided the side dish is Brussels sprouts. I think that’s an unusually disappointing ending to an otherwise good day. They really shouldn’t have done that. It’s a pretty sorry excuse for food.
We fly back to Denmark around 10 or 11 p.m., and I manage to sleep a little on the plane.
Wednesday
We land around 10 or 11 a.m. I have jet lag, but I’m happy.
I shop for groceries so I can make Danish meatballs in curry sauce for the family that evening, and I joke a little with people in the supermarket. One person says, ‘That’s really something. I just saw you over in New York — and now you’re standing here buying ground meat.’
I often talk to people when I’m shopping. But it’s very rare that I talk with everyone. And it’s very rare that you talk about the same thing with everyone. But this is one of those days when people are like … ‘Welcome home. Well done. Thank you. What a day yesterday.’
In the afternoon, I go to work out and make some small talk with people.
Then in the evening I meet up with some of the family and make Danish meatballs in curry sauce.
Thursday
I sit at home writing the opening speech for Parliament.
My experience is that Denmark is happy and in good spirits about this (the Greenland agreement, ed.). I talk with colleagues, friends, family and Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (former Social Democratic Prime Minister of Denmark). He says it’s huge.
I’ve started reading a bit of Paul Auster. And I’m already well into a book by Mich Vraa.
We also watch an episode of ‘Mobland’.
In the evening we have rice-paper rolls with chicken and vegetables.
I go to bed around 11 to 11:30 p.m.
A wild week, right?
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