Greenland Is Not for Sale. And It Never Will Be.

In many ways, we are polar opposites. We are a Greenlander and a Dane, with very different political careers behind us, living on separate continents and on opposite sides of the political spectrum.

But as President Trump once again threatens our peoples and our countries — making the same overtures today that he did in his first term about buying Greenland, an integral part of the Kingdom of Denmark — we are uniting with one message: Greenland is not for sale and never will be.

One of us, Mr. Lynge, has spent decades fighting for Greenlanders’ right to self-determination and was a founder of the leftist political party Inuit Ataqatigiit, which governs Greenland. The other, Ms. Seeberg, has served in the Danish and European Parliaments as a member of Denmark’s Conservative People’s Party, for which king, God and country to this day remain the holy trinity.

In that way, we represent both the colonized and the colonizer — Greenland was a colony of Denmark until 1953, and the island gained home rule in 1979.

For years, though, the two of us have worked together to strengthen civil society in Greenland and ensure that the wishes and concerns of the Greenlandic people are heard and acted upon when it comes to their country’s natural resources. In the 2010s, Chinese interest in Greenland and its minerals was intense, and huge projects were proposed with little or no regard of the effect they would have on Greenlanders’ everyday life and their future. That rush led Greenlanders to rethink how to benefit from their land’s potential, and today Greenland is better prepared for dealing with foreign interest.

The most important takeaway, over time, has been that even in the most abstract sense, Greenlanders aren’t interested in their country being sold or letting the fate of their nation be decided by others seeking profit or promoting their own narrow interests.