On the 18th floor of the iconic headquarters of the Springer Group in Berlin, one of Germany’s most influential liberal-conservative voices has just welcomed two special guests: Mette Frederiksen from Denmark and Jens-Frederik Nielsen from Greenland.
His name is Ulf Poschardt, and he holds the title of publisher for media outlets such as Die Welt, Politico, and Business Insider. He has a Danish mother and proudly declares that he is in the same room as his »two superheroes« from the Kingdom of Denmark.
»Denmark and Greenland are currently receiving attention in Germany like never before. The two countries and their leaders have done a fantastic job. I believe it will help you. Danish politics now has a huge opportunity to move towards the center of Europe«, says Poschardt.
At that moment, Friedrich Merz walks past us. Poschardt interrupts himself:
»Hello, Mr. Chancellor«, he says.
Merz nods in return and hurries over to Jens-Frederik Nielsen and Mette Frederiksen a few meters away.
To begin with, he warmly congratulates Frederiksen on Denmark’s handball victory over Germany the night before. I don’t hear much more.
Merz is in the building because Die Welt is hosting a summit for the heavyweights in German business that day. With short notice, the Chancellor has requested to greet the Prime Minister and Greenland’s Premier, Jens-Frederik Nielsen.
The two are in town as part of a diplomatic charm offensive in Germany and France. To express their heartfelt thanks for the support in the sharp infight with Donald Trump over Greenland’s future.
On the front page
Such efforts cost blood, sweat, and diplomatic capital, which Frederiksen and Nielsen are eager to acknowledge after a month that has thrust them into the global spotlight in a wild way.
Take last week’s major news magazines. On the cover of The Economist, Donald Trump is depicted riding on the back of a polar bear. On Der Spiegel, Friedrich Merz stands in chainmail with Viking weapons, flanked by Mette Frederiksen, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
»Donald, that’s enough! (es reicht!, ed.)«, it says.
It has become clear to everyone that Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen have become central figures in a battle over NATO’s future and the rules-based world order in what the Italian star author Giuliano Da Empoli has more broadly called »the age of predators«.
For most of January, Mette Frederiksen has stuck to measured statements at press conferences and a few TV interviews. But Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, she invited Politiken into the diplomatic engine room on a trip to Hamburg, Berlin, and Brussels. Most of the time, she was in tandem with her colleague from Greenland.
According to domestic opinion polls, the Greenland crisis is shaping up to be a box office success for Socialdemokratiet (S) and Moderaterne (M). However, this does not change the fact that the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the Premier of Greenland remain in a historical context in a serious predicament.
In the post-war period, there is hardly a Prime Minister who has found themselves in a principled clash with the leader of the country that Prime Ministers and top officials have routinely leaned on and admired. And on which we are deeply dependent for security, technology, and trade policy.
Frederiksen does not have an emergency number to call at the White House, like Helle Thorning-Schmidt (S), Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Venstre, V), Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (S), and their predecessors, if things go south.
Fire to the restroom
Because, as we know, it is Donald Trump who has put the fat in the fire, and now it is the Prime Minister’s damned duty to walk a tightrope, form new alliances, and explain her message to a European public that has risked tariff penalties due to a seemingly peripheral conflict far to the north. At the same time, she must balance saying no to Washington without further provoking the President.
How she handles this difficult cross-pressure is one of the interesting aspects of the trip to the three Northern European metropolises, which only provide a snapshot of the week’s program.
In the days leading up to it, Frederiksen visited Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the United Kingdom last Thursday and was the main figure at an EU summit in Brussels on the Greenland crisis the same day. The next morning, she held a meeting with Mark Rutte about the framework agreement that the NATO Secretary General entered into with Donald Trump under unusual circumstances. Later that Friday, she traveled to consult with Jens-Frederik Nielsen in Nuuk.
If she could have done with a work-from-home day on Monday, she doesn’t show it in her actions.
Monday morning, departure from Kastrup is scheduled for 10:30 AM because Mette Frederiksen is to participate in a North Sea summit with a handful of Northern European heads of state and government on renewable energy.
However, the Defense pilots have informed the Prime Minister’s Office from the morning that the Challenger aircraft cannot depart because the weather makes landing in Hamburg impossible. For the same reason, Frederiksen has an excellent excuse to stay home. But she apparently wants to go, so instead, the Prime Minister’s Office sends a couple of ministerial cars from Prins Jørgens Gård with the entire entourage on very short notice.
I ride in the rear car, which is delayed by a slow-moving salt truck on Lolland. So we don’t catch the same ferry as the Prime Minister in Rødby.
Frederiksen herself arrives late, but she is present at the meetings. The theme is energy, but Norway’s Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, confides to VG that the Greenland issue also occupies a significant part. At his press conference in Hamburg, Friedrich Merz delivers a few interesting, critical remarks about Trump’s USA, which I jot down to later test on Mette Frederiksen.
It is at the North Sea summit that Denmark and Germany, with plenty of state subsidy money, revive the Energy Island Bornholm project, which according to the Chancellor is a model for Europe. On behalf of Germany, he simultaneously promises »explicit« solidarity with Denmark and the people of Greenland.
Such sentiments are mainstream almost everywhere in Europe these days, and Denmark desperately needs the support. In her speech, Frederiksen warmly thanks the European allies for »emphasizing their strong support for the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland«. She adds that the fight has much broader perspectives than Greenland’s future. Namely, territorial integrity, sovereignty, and democratic principles.
All the words we have now become accustomed to but which until recently were a given.
Merz on Alex Pretti
At the press conference, Friedrich Merz not only promises support for Denmark. When ZDF asks what he thinks about the shooting death of the 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, he does not merely respond that it is an internal American matter. Merz shares his opinion. That the violent development in the USA is »really worrying«.
»I assume that the American authorities are now thoroughly investigating whether it was necessary to use force here. Whether there was actually a threat to the involved officers. I must say that this level of violence in the USA is worrying. It needs to be said«, says the Chancellor.
Tuesday morning, Mette Frederiksen is pleased at the breakfast buffet about the new agreement on the food check. She loudly wonders about the absence of the blue parties.
Danish politics still occupies a significant part, but my questions revolve around the transatlantic.
When I interview her later in the day, I am curious to see if she will express herself in the same way as Merz about Pretti and the ICE officers. After all, Trump and company have alternately mocked and threatened Denmark and Greenland for a month – or a year.
It was thought-provoking that Merz said he assumes the authorities will come up with an investigation of what happened. Do you share the same view?
»I have nothing further to add«.
But you don’t disagree, I assume?
»No, I don’t«.
Trump has also downplayed the efforts of European NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. Britain’s Keir Starmer said he would have apologized if he had expressed himself in the same way as Trump. Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius also believes that an apology would be appropriate. Do you think an apology would be in order?
»I now have a very principled stance that the communication we have with the Americans, we take in the process we have. So I am not going to have a discussion with the Americans in public. I have said what we think about the statements that have been made. I think it is unfair and unjust to talk like that about the Danish men and women who gave the best years of their lives. For some, even with death as a consequence. Besides those who have been injured«.
Why don’t you dare say that an apology would be appropriate?
»Because everything I have in communication with the Americans, I now take directly with the Americans«, says Mette Frederiksen.
The Prime Minister, like all of us, has woken up day after day in January to changing news that people from the White House have threatened, mocked, scolded, or sent degrading insults towards Denmark or Greenland.
How has that experience been for you? You sleep too, don’t you?
»What you say very precisely expresses how it has been to be Danish or Greenlandic in these weeks. Because of the time difference, I think what has happened in most Danish homes is that the phone has come into the bedroom. The first thing you look at is the phone instead of your partner«, she says, adding:
»It has just been a condition. Many of us are somehow going through a process. Because besides containing substance, it also contains a lot of emotions. Because we are totally connected with the Americans. Most Danes have always looked up to the USA«.
Atypical trip
This trip constitutes only a tiny part of the overall diplomatic mammoth task with no known end date. But this trip is atypical in its style, as the purpose is about more than just visiting a chancellor or president and then heading home. It is a broader attempt to create understanding for the kingdom’s viewpoint among key opinion leaders and the general public through media appearances in selected high-viewership TV programs.
Tuesday morning, a larger gathering of researchers, editors, and students with foreign policy expertise is invited to a so-called Townhall event at the Danish embassy in Berlin, which shares an address with the other Nordic countries.
The director of the German Council of Foreign Relations, Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, is the moderator and asks »the TV star we all know« to give his assessment of where the Greenland crisis has moved after the peculiar framework agreement at the Davos meeting, which led Trump to call off the tariff war.
Frederiksen warmly thanks for the European support »in the strange and difficult situation we have been placed in by one of our allies«. She notes that the lesson is that the world order we knew is gone and is unlikely to return. She praises Germany and the EU for acting resolutely and defending international values.
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, however, probes into how she, as a declared transatlanticist, sees the future of cooperation with the USA. He asks three times and notes along the way that she keeps talking about what Europe should do. Even though he specifically asked if she still trusts that the USA will stand together with Europe in the name of the alliance.
»I don’t know. I hope so. But you are asking me to answer on behalf of our partner. And I can’t«, says Mette Frederiksen finally.
Immediately after, the Prime Minister participates in a closed discussion at the embassy for specially invited German experts in security policy and foreign economics. Phones must be left outside. People like Claudia Major from the German Marshall Fund, Nils Redeker from the Jacques Delors Centre, and a handful of other heavy experts participate.
Also Kleine-Brockhoff. When he comes out again and retrieves his phone from a locked cabinet, I ask him to interpret the Prime Minister’s reluctance to answer clearly on the question about the American part of the transatlantic.
»I interpret her as not building the future on the Americans. But she didn’t say that«, says Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff.
Mette Frederiksen also makes an appearance on the popular ARD talk show Maischberger, where the boycott of the World Cup, immigration policy, NATO’s future, and Denmark’s red lines in negotiations with the USA are themes.
Iconic moment
The next morning begins with the Swiss-Italian author Giuliano Da Empoli. Before writing his bestseller about the age of predators, he was an advisor to Italy’s former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
Empoli is a professor at the French elite political science school Sciences Po, and in a packed lecture hall, 300 students await to hear him ask questions to the heads of government Frederiksen and Nielsen.
Empoli describes it as nothing less than »an iconic moment for Europe« when Frederiksen shifted rhetorical gears on January 5 and said that »everything stops« if a NATO country attacks another. Empoli compares it to Mario Draghi’s famous words from the most acute phase of the financial crisis: When the then head of the European Central Bank declared himself willing to defend the euro »whatever it takes«.
»Now people are talking about a Greenland moment for Europe«, says Giuliano Da Empoli.
Mette Frederiksen sends a warm thank you to France, talks again about the vanished world order, which is unlikely to return. And about the need for a Europe that can stand on its own.
Also in the city of love, Mette Frederiksen participates in a closed meeting with Parisian elite researchers and in an interview with star reporter Léa Salamé on the news program Journal de 20 heures on France 2.
Again, the same messages. What the next step will be, she doesn’t know.
»There may be other shocks, other challenges«, she tells Politiken.
Do you fear ending up in a very, very unpleasant choice where the USA considers involving American security guarantees to Ukraine in the game over Greenland?
»I also said earlier today that there are some points in our shared history where you have to dare to write the conclusion first. Sovereignty, territorial integrity, international law, people’s right to determine their own future is a democratic principle you cannot compromise«, she says.
Finale with Macron
The trip’s finale takes place at the Élysée Palace with Emmanuel Macron, who outside the Nordic countries has probably been the kingdom’s clearest supporter. Unlike Merz, in Paris, it is an official reception at the President’s residence, where the Greenlandic flag flies side by side with the Danish flag, the EU flag, and the tricolor.
With his Top Gun sunglasses, Macron thanks his guests in Danish and Greenlandic before concluding with the words:
»France will remain committed to the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenland is not for sale and must not be taken. The Greenlanders will decide their future. We stand with you as we did yesterday, do today, and will tomorrow«.
After a working lunch with Macron, the Danish-Greenlandic team heads to Paris-Le Bourget airport. The Challenger lands in Copenhagen at 5:30 PM. An evening meeting awaits, Frederiksen tells me as she steps off the plane.
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