ARCTIC: Trump-NATO Deal & more – 27th Jan 2026

Góðan daginn from Oakley! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 27th of January twenty twenty-six. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

After weeks of rising geopolitical tensions between the US, Denmark and Europe over control of Greenland, this week saw a welcome calming down of the situation.

While attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Wednesday the 21st, US President Donald Trump announced that he will not impose economic tariffs on European nations that defend Greenland, and ruled out the use of military force to annex the country.

These remarkable reverses came after he held a meeting with Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General, where he said he agreed on a framework for a deal that will see all NATO nations commit to increasing their Arctic security presence, while giving the US full, permanent access to Greenland’s territory for any security concerns.

The problem with this deal? No one asked the Greenlanders what they thought. On Thursday the 22nd, Jens Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s Prime Minister, gave a speech where he called the Trump and NATO potential deal unacceptable.

Nielsen said that his country has the right to self-determination, and that any deal that gives the US full and permanent access to Greenland crosses the line, and will not be accepted by the Kingdom of Denmark or Greenland.

The US may need to look to supporting its own Arctic citizens before it tries to take over another country. On Friday the 23rd, the Anchorage Daily News, an Alaskan newspaper, reported that the government is considering scrapping a federal program that has supported Alaska Native Corporations since nineteen sixty-seven.

Pete Hesgeth, US Defence Secretary, announced he wants to end the 8(a) Business Development Program, which provides small businesses nationwide with access to government contracts. The program has been especially beneficial in Alaska, where there are few private business opportunities available. This access to federal contracts means job security for many native communities.

Hesgeth called the program race-based contracting which doesn’t help the country win wars, and therefore doesn’t have a future under the current administration.

One way Alaskans are finding daily life more difficult is in their traditional fishing grounds, where once plentiful salmon populations are close to disappearing.

In an impassioned essay for the Alaska Beacon published on Friday the 23rd, Brooke Woods, of the Koyukon Native Community, writes that the Alaskan government is doing nothing to protect salmon populations, which large fishing companies have overfished, and then imposes fishing restrictions on the Native people instead of the large companies. Woods writes that in recent years, salmon in the Chinook, Yukon, Kuskokwim, Norton Sound and Bristol Bay tributaries have collapsed. She believes that if the salmon disappear, so will Alaska’s native communities, and calls for the government to take care of its citizens, rather than its corporations.

To read the full essay, check out the link in the show notes.

Meanwhile, over the border in Canada, there’s hopeful news for one of the nation’s oldest caribou herds. According to an interview between Nunavut’s Environment Department and the Nunavut newspaper, Nunatsiaq, published on Tuesday the 20th, scientists studying Baffin Island’s caribou herds say there has been a ten-fold recovery of the population in the past decade.

Between the eighties and twenty fourteen, the once massive herd of 150,000 animals suffered a catastrophic collapse as it fell to under 5,000 caribou. The local government worked with Baffin Island’s Indigenous communities to restrict hunting and focus on conservation efforts, and now the population measures almost 50,000.

Another Arctic creature doing whatever it can to survive is the beluga whale. On Wednesday the 21st, researchers from the Florida Atlantic University published their research into beluga whale mating habits, with surprising results.

Focusing on the 2,000 beluga whales in Bristol Bay, Alaska, the researchers discovered that they have been engaging in a strategic polygynandrous system. Males don’t compete for female attention, nor do they stick with one partner long term. Instead, males and females swap partners every few years to ensure there is an even spread of genes in such a small population.

The researchers believe that female whales are key to this, choosing when to end a mating season with one male and which to choose next, and this female-led strategy is keeping Alaska’s beluga whales alive.

In other science news, the efforts to keep the Arctic from warming up have an unlikely ally. An international research team led by the University of Birmingham published a study into the origins of clouds in the Russian Arctic on Thursday the 22nd. They found that rivers across Russia are indirectly keeping the Arctic cool.

Organic matter, like leaves and soil, is carried by these rivers to Russia’s northern sea. As this organic matter rots, it releases gases that help to seed clouds in the atmosphere. These clouds then keep sunlight from hitting the Earth, reflecting heat energy back to the Sun.

This study is important as Russian permafrost melt is causing more organic matter to erode into rivers, but now we know that this additional land erosion could help slow the acceleration of warming across the Arctic.

Some residents of the Russian Arctic are probably hoping for things to get warmer. As reported by the northern news agency The Barents Observer on Monday the 26th, over the weekend several power masts collapsed in the Kola peninsula in northwestern Russia, causing widespread blackouts that are still ongoing.

The major affected settlements are Murmansk, the largest city in the whole Arctic, and Severomorsk, the town that hosts Russia’s crucial northern fleet. Hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens are without heating in an area where temperatures have dropped as low as minus thirteen degrees Celsius (ten degrees Fahrenheit).

The power network for the region was built in the sixties and hasn’t been replaced since, leading to this vulnerability. In response, the regional power company, Rosseti, has promised to spend over $30 million US dollars to upgrade the network.

Let’s move over to Sweden, where locals in the north are unhappy at how the national government is treating them. As reported by national broadcaster SVT on Friday the 23rd, the national government has overruled the opposition of the local government of Norbotten to the creation of a new graphite mine.

The government has approved plans to enable mining operations at the Nunasvaara graphite deposit in Vittangi in the Kiruna Municipality. Even though locals opposed the plans, the government called the Nunasvaara graphite deposit Europe's largest and richest, giving it international importance that cannot be denied by local opposition.

Meanwhile, in northern Norway, the Arctic has celebrated its biggest football win. On Tuesday the 20th, Norwegian club Bodø/Glimt became the first Arctic team to win a Champions League match, beating one of the biggest clubs in the world, Manchester City, at their home stadium above the Arctic Circle, winning by three goals to one.

However, Bodø/Glimt faces a struggle to progress further in the competition, as it needs to win its final league stage match in Spain against Atletico Madrid. Whatever happens, they’ve made history in the north.

That wasn’t the only reason Northern Norwegians can feel proud of themselves this week. On Thursday the 22nd, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the US announced its nominations for the twenty twenty-six Oscars. Among the films nominated was The Ugly Stepsister, a Norwegian film that twists the classic Cinderella story into a disturbing horror film. The director, Emilie Blichfeldt, who comes from the Senja region of north Norway, has proven that being from the far north doesn’t mean you can’t stand tall among Hollywood icons.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

Bless bless