The Arctic Sends a Loud Message Amid Geopolitical Tensions

From pawn to power, Greenland flips the Arctic script

It’s a new Arctic sunrise (created by author)

I was thirteen the first time my grandmother Alme let me brew the coffee for the adults’ room. I close my eyes and remember her fingers, veined like river deltas, tapping the side of the pot with practiced timing. “Don’t let it boil,” she whispered. “Let it speak.”

The pot hissed gently as I poured it into the thermos — old steel, dented from years of being dragged to snowmobiles, Sámi councils, and community meetings. That afternoon, I carried it carefully into the adults’ room, where the air was dense with quiet voices and long futures. I didn’t know the word “geopolitics” then. But I knew what they were talking about: the land, the ice, , the salmon runs. The Arctic. Our Arctic.

They weren’t arguing. That’s not how we did things. It was all about tempered voices, careful listening. Humility. Cooperation. The kind of governance that doesn’t make headlines because it doesn’t demand a microphone.

I thought about that moment again this Sunday, May 11, 2025, when Kenneth Høegh, a native Greenlander, quietly took over leadership of the , the highest body of multilateral cooperation in the North. The handover — from Norway to the — was…