this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
64 points (100.0% liked)

news

24588 readers
724 users here now

Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:

We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.

Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:

The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.

  1. Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.

  2. Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.

  3. Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.

  4. Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.

  5. Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.

  6. Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.

  7. American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.

  8. Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.

  9. AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

The U.S. has — by far — the world’s largest defense budget, spending $948 billion last year. Its armed forces have 1.3 million personnel — some of them currently stationed in Greenland. Denmark, for its part, last year spent $9.9 billion, has only 17,000 soldiers, and most of its heavy land-warfare equipment has been donated to Ukraine.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] CrawlMarks@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, in my head it was just just other Iceland. In retrospect I can't recall ever hearing anything about the area specifically. I think something about vikings setting up there in gradeschool then nothing more

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, Vikings did settle Greenland way back when, but these Norse settlers basically lost contact with Europe and all died out after a while. That's incidentally why the island ended up getting colonized again starting in the 18th century: since the Greenland Norse had submitted to the King of Norway, Denmark-Norway continued to claim Greenland despite no European having actually seen the island for several hundred years — and eventually Denmark-Norway decided that, since the Greenland Norse were surely still Catholics, that they should send out an expedition to convert the island's Norsemen to Protestantism.

...However, once the Dano-Norwegian expedition actually arrived to the island, they found that the only people living there both looked and sounded very different from how they'd expected, and hadn't even heard of the Pope. But not to let the people they were actually looking for starving to death ruin an otherwise good expedition, Denmark-Norway quickly started trading with these new Inuit people, and converting them to Christianity, and the rest is history.

Another incidental fact: since the Greenland Norse had submitted to the King of Norway, and the transfer of Greenland from the King of Norway to the King of Denmark was never really clearly legally established, Norway would actually end up claiming a stretch of eastern Greenland's coast from 1930-1933, calling it "Erik the Red's Land" after the Viking who founded Greenland's first Norse settlement. The Permanent Court of International Justice ruled that Norway's claim to any part of Greenland was legally invalid, and this was one of the PCIJ's highest-profile cases.