Fact check: The false claims in Trump’s extraordinary message to Norway

(CNN) — In an extraordinary message to Norway’s prime minister, President Donald Trump linked his pursuit of the self-governing Danish territory of Greenland to his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He repeated his long-debunked claim that he ended eight wars. And he made another false claim – that no written documents support Denmark’s ownership of Greenland.

“Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also,” Trump wrote.

In reality, Nordic boats began arriving in Greenland centuries before the United States even existed; the settlement that became Greenland’s capital of Nuuk was established by a Danish-Norwegian missionary in the early 1700s, decades before US independence. Of course, the history of many countries, including the US, also involved Europeans arriving by boat and claiming territory in regions previously populated by Indigenous peoples. But just as that wasn’t the end of the story for the US, it’s not the end of the story for Greenland. There are numerous written documents recognizing Danish sovereignty over Greenland – some of them signed by the US government during this century and the last.

“Donald Trump’s claim is false, again,” said Marc Jacobsen, associate professor at the Royal Danish Defence College who is an expert on Arctic security and diplomacy. He noted that Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland has been repeatedly recognized internationally, “not least” by the US.

Below is a sampling of the documents the president suggested do not exist.

1916

As part of a deal in which Denmark sold the Danish West Indies to the US, where they renamed them the US Virgin Islands, the US agreed in 1916 to issue a written declaration acknowledging Danish sovereignty over Greenland.

Then-Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote in the declaration that, “duly authorized by his Government,” he had “the honor to declare that the Government of the United States of America will not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland.”

1933

In 1931, Norway occupied and claimed sovereignty over part of eastern Greenland. But after the dispute landed at the Permanent Court of International Justice (later replaced by the International Court of Justice), the court issued a ruling in 1933 in favor of Denmark’s argument that it had sovereignty over all of Greenland.

Among various other factors, the judges cited another document: an 1814 treaty in which Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden but Denmark retained Greenland.

1941

An agreement signed during World War II by the US secretary of state and the Danish ambassador to the US, while Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany, gave the US broad powers to construct and operate military facilities in Greenland. But that agreement explicitly and repeatedly acknowledged Danish sovereignty over Greenland.

“Although the sovereignty of Denmark over Greenland is fully recognized, the present circumstances for the time being prevent the Government in Denmark from exercising its powers in respect of Greenland,” the preamble to the agreement explained.

The agreement itself said, “The Government of the United States of America reiterates its recognition of and respect for the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Den­mark over Greenland,” the agreement said. It also said, “The Kingdom of Denmark retains sovereignty over the defense areas mentioned in the preceding articles.”

1951

After the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, the US and Denmark signed an updated agreement to incorporate NATO into their 1941 arrangement and to set some rules governing the US military presence in Greenland.

Before laying out US powers in the “defense areas” in which the US military was permitted to operate in Greenland, the agreement said that these powers were granted “without prejudice to the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark over such defense area and the natural right of the competent Danish authorities to free movement everywhere in Greenland.”

The New York Times noted in its news article at the time: “Danish sovereignty is fully and explicitly realized in the agreement, and in recognition of that fact, the North Atlantic pact nations recommended that a Danish officer be given supreme command of the local defenses of the island.”

2004

An agreement signed by the US under the Republican administration of then-President George W. Bush, which updated and amended the 1951 agreement, again explicitly noted Danish sovereignty over Greenland. The revised deal noted that Greenland’s status had changed “from colony to that of an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark under the Constitution” and that “a wide ranging Greenland Home Rule” had been established. This deal included the government of Greenland as a third signatory alongside the US and Denmark.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.