On Tuesday, European leaders issued a joint statement rallying behind Denmark.

“Greenland belongs to its people, and only Denmark and Greenland can decide on matters concerning their relations,” the leaders of France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark said in a joint statement.

Stressing they were as keen as the US on Arctic security, the European signatories said this must be achieved by Nato allies, including the US, “collectively”.

They also called for “upholding the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders”.

A day after the US military action in Venezuela, Katie Miller, the wife of one of Trump’s senior aides, posted a map on social media of Greenland in the colours of the US flag, alongside the word “SOON”.

On Monday, her husband, Stephen Miller, said it was “the formal position of the US government that Greenland should be part of the US”.

Aaja Chemnitz, one of two MPs in the Danish parliament representing Greenland, told the BBC that the comments from the Trump administration were “a clear threat”.

“It’s completely disrespectful from the US side to not rule out annexing our country and to annex another Nato ally,” she said.

But Chemnitz said she saw this as unlikely – instead, “what we are going to see is that they will put pressure on us in order to make sure that they will take over Greenland over time”.

Aleqatsiaq Peary, a 42-year-old Inuit hunter living in Greenland’s remote northerly town of Qaanaaq, appeared indifferent to the potential of US ownership.

“It would be switching from one master to another, from one occupier to another,” he told the BBC. “We are a colony under Denmark. We are already losing a lot from being under the Danish government.”

Saying that he did not have “time for Trump”, he added that people were “in need”. Hunters like him, he explained, hunted with dogs on the sea ice and fish “but the sea ice is melting and hunters cannot make a living anymore”.

Additional reporting by Adrienne Murray in Copenhagen