For some, the idea of buying and selling their homeland is a highhanded reminder of a painful and unresolved colonial legacy, which saw its indigenous inhabitants’ culture and language suppressed during centuries of rule from faraway Copenhagen. Others discern in the president’s apparent fascination a sign of the geostrategic importance of the self-governing territory, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Many simply see it as a joke…

Maya Sialuk practices traditional Inuit tattooing, an ancient art her ancestors used to ward off illness and seek good fortune when hunting and fishing. She described the idea of the U.S. buying Greenland as insensitive and rude.

“We are still trying to recover from a colonization period of almost 300 years,” she said. “Then there is this white dude in the States who’s talking about purchasing us.”…

In Copenhagen, which still sets Greenland’s foreign and defense policies, news of Mr. Trump’s enthusiasm for the territory has been interpreted as the latest signal from Washington that the U.S. is an engaged player in the Arctic, a zone of increasing economic and strategic rivalry with both China and Russia.