As Donald Trump threatens NATO and obsesses over adding Greenland to our colonial map, Seattle’s deep connections with Nordic countries are a thread in the net restraining his imperialist ambitions.
Trump’s threats have turned these relationships upside down. Denmark, which lost as many soldiers as we did (per capita) in Afghanistan, deployed special forces for asymmetrical warfare against Trump’s threatened invasion. Despite being NATO allies, Denmark labeled the US a security risk.
As the drama unfolded, my blended American/Danish family moved to Seattle and found ourselves in a community with the same concerns, many of whom are resisting or redirecting Trump’s aggression.
One of our suburban state legislators was knighted in Finland for deepening diplomatic ties between Helsinki and Olympia. Our governor once played competitive chess in Norway. Our congresswoman, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, passed legislation to designate Ballard’s Scandi heritage museum the National Nordic Museum (suck it, Minnesota!).
This spring, Jayapal cosponsored the yet-to-pass “No Invading Allies Act” to prohibit the military from using taxpayer dollars to invade Greenland (and other places Trump has suggested seizing, including Canada and Panama).
Trump backed off in September at the UN General Assembly in New York and signed the Denmark-dubbed “bigger, better” treaty on Greenland. He was cordial. But foreign policy watchers doubted the man who had recently trashed treaties with allies (including his own trade agreement with Canada) could stick to the deal.
I knew the deal and Trump’s bellicosity would be the hot topic at the annual Nordic Summit hosted at Ballard’s National Nordic Museum. On a brisk October morning, I cruised past Seattle’s third most famous troll, Frankie Feetsplinters, to attend.
In the museum’s Osberg Great Hall, which looks like an Ikea version of the tesseract from Interstellar, Jayapal gave a speech about climate change, culture, social democratic politics, and the Greenland tumult.
“Our city’s Nordic roots run incredibly deep,” Jayapal said, down the hall from a new exhibit on Ballard’s fishing industry. “We place a high premium on sustainability, on social justice, on building systems that protect the most vulnerable amongst us.” She added later: “We can’t understate the damage that’s been done to the US reputation or to our own domestic commitment to democracy.”
She praised the Nordic model of governance: high and progressive taxation, universal safety nets, empowered unions, social trust, and serious accountability (just ask Inger Støjberg, the former Danish minister jailed for 60 days because she illegally separated several immigrant families).
Jayapal, who helped Seattle get the $15 minimum wage, noted how the federal minimum wage hasn’t changed in decades (it’s $7.25 per hour; Seattle’s is $21.30).
Denmark doesn’t need a minimum wage the same way it doesn’t need Obamacare. Empowered unions negotiate on behalf of virtually all workers to set living wage floors that keep companies running. Layoffs are no big deal: Unemployment benefits last years; there’s universal healthcare; childcare is affordable, even for the unemployed.
I caught Jayapal outside the conference room in a white atrium marked by a giant, red, Arctic-ready tent.
“There’s all this attack on socialism, on things that we have been trying to get, whether it’s universal health care or childcare. And when you look at the Nordic countries, it’s an example of how all of those policies are in place,” Jayapal says.
But what about Greenland? Would Greenlanders ever gain access to America’s $7.25/hour minimum wage and free market health insurance?
In addition to saying no, and reaffirming support for NATO, Jayapal emphasized the cost of Trump’s aggression to the US image. He could have gotten the same concessions—two more military bases and a promise to keep Russia and China out of Greenland—if he’d asked nicely.
“This is not a deal that’s built on cooperation and respect. It’s built on bullying,” she says. “He’s not taking over Greenland.”
But the day before, Trump had taken a sliver of Greenland’s sovereignty in his own vague, rhetorical way. Trump posted: “Massive Oil, Gas, and Mineral Exploration is getting ready to begin in our new and beautiful Greenland.”
The Danish foreign ministry fact-checked Trump in a Zoom speech the next morning at the National Nordic Museum.
The “agreement does not provide for any preferential position for US companies,” Jesper Møller Sørensen, the ambassador of Denmark to the US, said, adding, “we have not found the last two years too easy for the Kingdom of Denmark and our relationship with the United States.”
Later that day, Greenland’s deputy mining minister, Jørgen Hammeken-Holm, told CNN that “there are activities by US companies,” but “far away from ‘massive’ exploration.”
As DC alienates allies, Gov. Bob Ferguson told summit attendees that the other Washington will “make sure that our friends in countries like Finland understand that [we] care deeply about that relationship and want it to continue.”
When Ferguson was 18, before going to college, he tried to become a professional chess player. His parents did not approve. He faced off against a Finnish national chess champion in Norway.
“It was a good match, and I ended in a draw,” he said, before adding a nod to State Senator Marko Liias (D-Edmonds), who grew up speaking Finnish with his two immigrant parents and was knighted in Finland in large part for his contributions to diplomacy.
“So while I’ve not been knighted… I just want to put my credentials out there,” Ferguson said ahead of signing a memorandum of understanding with the Finnish ambassador.
While it can’t do anything about tariffs or invasions, the agreement cuts layers of red tape for Finnish shipbuilders and academics. Those ships are the same icebreakers that Trump wants the Fins to build because he’s jealous that Vladimir Putin has so many.
Trump’s emotions will continue to drive America’s important relationships with the Nordics. As this story was going to print, he called Norway, home of the Nobel Committee that snubbed him for a Peace Prize this year, a “shit house country.” And a week earlier, Trump said Europeans “were nice enough to give us Greenland.”
Obama’s former US ambassador to Denmark, Rufus Gifford, said Americans can help fix Trump’s reputational stain by traveling, by studying abroad. “I just don’t want people to feel hopeless here,” said Gifford, before taking selfies with Danish Seattlites. Diplomacy can happen on a civilian level.
At the Nordic Museum, I had sat down with two Seattle residents in the red glow of the Arctic, replete with down sleeping bags and side tables.
Swede Linda Strom is one of the tech brøs and gåls who moved to the US for work in the 1990s. She got to know American Susan Putnam while their daughters climbed in a climbing gym. Putnam traveled to Sweden and Denmark as a result. Their friendship captured what our peoples tend to see in each other.
“It’s so similar to our life back home. It’s just the mountains are bigger, the ocean is a little bit rougher, and you have a little bit of the American hospitality, a little bit of the hopefulness that is part of the American society,” Strom says, adding that the “Seattle freeze” was a breeze. “We recognize it, and we know how to handle it.”
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