In a statement released on Saturday, the French presidency announced that French President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Greenland on June 15 and meet with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.
According to the French president, the leaders’ discussions will center on vital minerals, energy transition, climate change, and security in the North Atlantic and Arctic.
Greenland has been politically and culturally linked to Denmark for a thousand years, despite the fact that its capitals are located approximately 3532 kilometers apart. Prior to being reclassified as a Danish district in 1953, Greenland was a Danish colony.
Greenland has two representatives in the Folketing, the Danish Parliament, in addition to its own local government.
There are about 56,000 people living in Greenland. The 20% of the nation that is not covered by snow and ice is where they primarily reside.
After the sea froze in the narrow strait at Thule in Northern Greenland, the first humans to set foot on the island arrived between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago from the North American continent via Canada
There have been at least six significant waves of Inuit migration. The Thule civilization, who started migrating to Greenland in the 1200s AD, is the ancestor of the current population.
At the same time, Southern Greenland was inhabited by Norsemen under the leadership of Erik the Red, a Norwegian Viking. It has never been entirely determined why the Norse population vanished around 1500 AD.
The majority of Green-landers reside in towns and cities along the coast due to the region’s Arctic environment. Because of the brief summers, hunting and fishing have historically been essential for survival.
With the exception of the far south, where sheep grazing is common, Greenland’s climate and topography make farming nearly impossible.
Some experts have issued warnings in recent years about the massive Greenland ice cap’s shrinkage. Many blame this on human-caused climate change.
Greenland’s ice cap is losing over 110 million Olympic-sized swimming pools of water annually, according to a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Letters by an international team.
Source: Reuters and other media outlets
