Sune Rasmussen
Appearances
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
Being Danish, I've actually always wanted to go to Greenland.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
will just take Greenland, just take control of it, Even if he were to take control of Greenland, mining the place is so difficult and so complicated that it wouldn't happen any time in his presidency. It's very easy to sort of speak in superlatives about a place like Greenland and about the untapped mineral wealth there is in Greenland when in fact getting to those minerals but also mining
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
finding use for the minerals, refining them, putting them in this supply chain in a way that's sustainable for Western national security interests. It's so much more complicated than just taking control of a piece of land.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
The culture itself is indigenous Inuit culture.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
You know, it sounds like it has all the makings of a gold rush, but at the same time, there's very little actual mining taking place. So what I was hoping to understand was why that is. Like, why is it so difficult to mine in Greenland? And what's holding people back?
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
I've tried to convince my editors to go, to send me to Greenland for a couple of years, but with very little success.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
The value of Greenland is twofold. It is especially valuable because of its strategic location. So it's placed right in the Arctic, which in recent years has taken on a sort of increased geopolitical importance as tensions have heated up between the US and Russia, the West and Russia. So that's one reason why it's important for the U.S.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
But Greenland is also home to extraordinary underground wealth.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
Everyone's talking about Greenland.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
That makes the West hugely vulnerable to, for example, a trade war. China can wage its control of these minerals in a trade war against the U.S., against Europe. So in that sense, the stakes are really high.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
Yeah, it's a good question. We don't actually know. There's a lot of exploration happening in Greenland, but we don't have a lot of data showing sort of exactly what that wealth consists of.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
Yeah, there was one taxi waiting for us outside. Because the whole town can see when the helicopter arrives, so I think the local taxi driver just got in his car and went to pick us up.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
Nasak is like on the very southern tip of Greenland. It's on the sea and it's kind of placed at the bottom of a mountain plateau, which is this place called Kvænefjell. And the houses in town painted these bright colors, like bright red, bright green, bright blue, and dotted across the landscape, both sort of at the foot of the mountain. And some of the houses are
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
It can be quite seductive to just listen to the headlines coming from President Trump about seizing control of a foreign country. And I think we're going to get it.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
sort of dotted up along the ridge of the mountain. So it's very picturesque.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
The entire mountain passes was snowed over and covered in ice. And the roads were impassable. What the photographer and I did was we found two local Greenlanders who had snowmobiles and who were willing to take us into where the mine is. So we borrowed two, like, snowsuits, onesies, basically thick onesies from a local farmer. These onesies that reeked of sheep.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
And then got in the back of two snowmobiles and then went in through this pathless gorge into the mountain. I made it to sort of just below the mine entrance. But the whole thing was snowed over. So we got as close as we could. And we got closer than the company. The company itself couldn't get closer than about six or seven miles.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
Well, I think the fact that this company had traveled from, the executives had traveled from Singapore, from Perth, Sydney in Australia, all the way to this small town in Greenland and still turned around, that to me spoke volumes about just how inaccessible Greenland is. And this is southern Greenland, remember.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
This is the most accessible part of the country because this is the warmest part of the country.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
But once you start digging a little bit, pun intended, you see that the issue is so much more complicated, as with many other things, right?
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
There's no roads connecting settlements in Greenland. And shipping is treacherous because of all the floating ice off the coast of Greenland. So even if you were to extract minerals from the ground, you still have to put it on a ship and somehow get it off the island, which is tricky in many parts because of all this floating ice.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
The prime minister who passed this uranium law back in 2021 is from Nassau.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
He actually ran and won the election on a campaign promise. His main campaign promise was this uranium law. He said, I'm going to pass this law so we can protect our local environment.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
And it's essentially impossible to extract these rare earths in Kvenefjord without also extracting uranium. So they kind of fell victim to this new law. And since then, the project has essentially been paused.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
I spoke to this young 25-year-old woman. And her argument was like, well, why is it always us, the indigenous Inuit people, who have to suffer for the development of the Western world? This is a very sort of colonialist way of looking at economic development.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
Well, I've sort of grown up with Greenland as part of my sort of awareness since I was a child. So I just wanted to go because it's a place like no other, right? Now here's my chance.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
So there's that argument in Nassau, and that's a very emotional one for an Inuit population who also for decades, for centuries, has lived under the control of Denmark.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
And these are people in Nassau, remember, who live off the land. They live off berries they pick in the mountains. They live off fishing. So they're very concerned about the environmental impact. They're also concerned about the impact on their traditional way of life.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
Like a big mining project will completely upend life in this part of Greenland where this largely Inuit population has maintained a certain way of life for decades, if not centuries, right?
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
They invited these local farmers, landowners, other people with sort of influence in the community. They were then pleading their case and socializing, buttering up the local power brokers.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
One thing they were trying to do was pitch to a local farmer, the biggest local sheep farmer in Nassau, that he should house hundreds of employees that would be working on this project on his farm, which he seemed happy to do because he probably stands to make a healthy buck from that.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
I think it's like the main issue that divides the local community. So I spoke to people who have had family members that were on the opposing side of the issue, and they've fallen out to an extent where they barely talk anymore in a town of 1,300 people. So this is something that creates a lot of tension.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
Oh, Greenland is a mind-blowing place. It's a huge landmass. It's nearly one-fourth of the territory of the United States. 80% of the island is covered by ice. In some places, the ice sheet is over a mile thick. So you have this country that, in some respects, is completely different from anything you've seen elsewhere in Europe. just the rawness of the nature.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
If they manage to actually mine in this area and start shipping out the minerals, I think that could probably give other companies a bit of confidence that it's possible to mine in Greenland and make a profit. Greenland potentially can be very crucial in the West's quest to build an alternative supply chain outside of China.
The Journal.
Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?
Yeah, and that is sort of, I guess, a bit of an irony here, is that the U.S. lacks large-scale refining capacity of rare earths. And the U.S. already sends the majority of its rare earth minerals to China for refining, which is why getting your hands on these critical minerals is the first step. I think it's also worth remembering that when President Trump sort of reiterates that maybe the U.S.