The Danish king has shocked some historians by changing the royal coat of arms to more prominently feature Greenland and the Faroe Islands – in what has also been seen as a rebuke to Donald Trump, The Guardian reports.
Less than a year since succeeding his mother, Queen Margrethe, after she stood down on New Year’s Eve 2023, King Frederik has made a clear statement of intent to keep the autonomous Danish territory and former colony within the kingdom of Denmark.
For 500 years, previous Danish royal coats of arms have featured three crowns, the symbol of the Kalmar Union between Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which was led from Denmark between 1397 and 1523. They are also an important symbol of its neighbour Sweden.
But in the updated version, the crowns have been removed and replaced with a more prominent polar bear and ram than previously, to symbolise Greenland and the Faroe Islands respectively.
The move comes at a time of increased tension over Greenland and its relations with Denmark, which continues to control its foreign and security policy.
Incoming US president Trump last month said again that he wants the US to buy Greenland, and the Greenlandic prime minister, Múte Egede, recently accused Denmark of genocide in response to investigations of the forced contraceptive scandal of the 1960s and 70s. In Egede’s own new year’s address he accelerated calls for Greenlandic independence and called for the “shackles of the colonial era” to be removed.
