History behind the headlines: How lawyers thwarted the last takeover of Greenland
Louis Morris - 27 January 2026
Among the many questions raised by Trump’s recent letter challenging Denmark’s “right of ownership” over Greenland, one of the more salient is why he sent it to the prime minister of Norway, an unrelated country. Yet perhaps there is method in the madness. For if anyone is equipped to explain to him why the Danes have a legal title to the Arctic island, it might be the Norwegians. After all, they were the last people to challenge it in court.
That challenge (known as the Eastern Greenland Case) provides some important backstory to the present dispute, as well as shedding light on wider principles of international law.
In 1931, Norway unilaterally proclaimed its sovereignty over a chunk of north-eastern Greenland, where it had sent exploratory missions and which it dubbed ‘Erik the Red’s Land.’
The Danes responded not with war, but with a submission to the Permanent Court of International Justice (the ancestor of today’s ICJ, which occupies the same building in the Hague). The legal battle was on.
The Norwegians’ case hinged on the disputed region being ‘terra nullius’. This means unoccupied land where no-one has any effective jurisdiction. In effect, they were arguing that Denmark had failed to properly exert its authority beyond the settled area of southern Greenland, leaving the rest of the island up for grabs. The court considered this line of reasoning but ultimately concluded that the Danes had taken the proper steps to stake a claim over the entire territory.
Perhaps ironically, one of the key documents demonstrating this was a 1916 treaty between Denmark and the USA, in which the latter promised that it “will not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland.” Awkwardly for the Norwegians, a 1919 verbal declaration by their own foreign minister also seemed to recognise Danish claims throughout the island, seriously undermining Norway’s case.
The court duly ruled in favour of Denmark in 1933, and Norway abandoned its attempt to repaint a corner of Greenland’s map (Erik the) red. No external power seriously disputed Denmark’s sovereignty thereafter. One member of the winning legal team, Gustav Rasmussen, did later reject an American offer to purchase the island while serving as Danish foreign minister.
Those are the facts, but is this case any more than an interesting historical curio? Its direct impact on the present crisis certainly seems limited as Trump’s interest in international law appears fleeting at best, and he publicly proclaims that his “own morality” is the only check on his actions.
Nonetheless, it may prove significant in the longer term. The judgement helped to establish the principles by which states can make good their claims to uninhabited lands, and although Earth may be running out of ‘terra nullius’, one reason why Greenland is coveted is the importance of its minerals and polar position for the burgeoning space-tech industry.
Could the failure of Erik the Red’s Land one day help to determine the division of the Red Planet?