NewsTracker Answers for week of Jan. 13, 2025

Q: President-elect Donald Trump recently said U.S. control of Greenland is an “absolute necessity” for security and declined to rule out using military force to seize the island. Leaders of Greenland and Denmark said “no sale” just like they told Trump during his in his first administration. Where is Greenland?

Circle the area on this map


Q: The world’s largest island and part of the North American continent, Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark. How long has Denmark been a military ally of the United States?

A. 50 years

B. 75 years

C. 100 years

D. 125 years


B. Denmark and the United States were among 12 nations that formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, when Trump was three years old. NATO members agree to defend each other if attacked. A U.S. air base was built on Greenland in 1951 to protect against any attack by the Soviet Union on America. The base is still active.


Q: About 80 percent of the island is covered by a two-mile-thick ice sheet. Who named it Greenland?

A. Exiled Norseman

B. Native Americans

C. Portuguese explorers

D. U.S. serviceman


A. In 986, a group of Norseman who had been exiled from Iceland established a settlement on the island. They named the world’s northernmost land area “Greenland” in hope of attracting more settlers. They were the first Europeans known to settle in North America, more than 500 years before Christopher Columbus arrived.


Q: Those early Norse settlements disappeared in the 14th or 15th centuries amid the cooling temperatures of the Little Ice Age. Now, quickly warming temperatures around Greenland are increasing …

A. Arctic shipping

B. Ice sheet melting

C. Ocean levels

D. All of the above


D. Trump called climate change a “hoax,” but the warming Arctic is opening new shipping routes and could make oil-drilling and mineral mining possible. Shipping and natural resources make Greenland more attractive to world powers. Rising sea levels from the melting ice sheet threaten some of the world’s most populous areas.


Q: With an area of 836,330 square miles and 56,643 people, Greenland is the least densely permanently populated territories in the world. The vast majority of Greenlanders are descendants of which ethnic group …

A. Aleuts

B. Danes

C. Inuit

D. Sami


C. The Inuit are the largest Indigenous group in the Arctic and subarctic regions of North America. Greenlanders elect a government to take care of domestic affairs and representatives to Denmark’s government which handles foreign and financial affairs of the island. Greenlanders may vote for complete independence from Denmark at any time.