Forget Donald Trump Junior's visit to Nuuk on January 7, and his father's declarations that he was ready to "take control" of the autonomous Danish territory. In the midst of an election campaign for the March 11 legislative elections in Greenland, dominated by the question of the island's independence, an unexpected subject has just entered the debate, further souring relations between Nuuk and Copenhagen. At the heart of the discussion: Greenland's cryolite and the money its extraction has brought to Denmark for over a century.

Previewed at the Nuuk cultural center on February 8, then broadcast on the Danish channel DR, a documentary entitled Greenland's White Gold has sparked controversy. It focuses on this very rare mineral, which looks like a block of ice and is used in aluminum the production. Its only deposit, now depleted, was at Ivittuut (formerly Ivigtut), on the west coast of Greenland.

According to the documentary, the exploitation of this deposit, from 1854 to 1987, generated the equivalent of 400 billion kroner (nearly €54 billion) for the company in charge of extraction and the Danish state. The same amount went to the American company which bought the raw cryolite and sold it to other firms in the US.

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