Arriving a bit early, about 20 preschool children in yellow smocks, down jackets and colorful hats sat quietly in front of the stage set up in the small Arrivals hall at Nuuk Airport, the capital of Greenland. Then, as the Air Greenland plane landed on the tarmac, more and more adults applauded and cheered. Greenlanders gave a hero’s welcome on Tuesday, January 20, to their foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt, who was returning from a brief international tour amid heightened tensions with the United States.

Moved to tears, this 53-year-old teacher, a member of the Greenlandic government for several years, took hold of the long traditional whaling harpoon topped with the Erfalasorput, the red and white flag of Greenland, that was handed to her, sweeping it through the air. “These are difficult times, but we are working tirelessly,” she said in Greenlandic, before descending into the crowd. “Now I’m back in my country, with my people. It’s important to show the world that we stand together,” she told Le Monde privately. “But we still have a lot of work ahead of us.”

The Greenlandic minister left the island on January 14 to travel to Washington, where she met, alongside Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The meeting began, according to Rasmussen’s diary published in the daily Politiken, with a discussion about polar bears: Motzfeldt revealed that her father had killed two. Rubio replied that he preferred alligators. On January 19, the Greenlandic minister then accompanied Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen to Brussels, where they met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. Her face is now all over the island’s social media.

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