For some Greenlanders, sorry isn’t enough.
The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, made a special visit Wednesday to Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, to apologize in person for a traumatic chapter in Greenlandic history, when Danish doctors forced birth control on a whole generation of indigenous Greenlandic women and girls.
Ms. Frederiksen has stepped up her efforts to repair relations with Greenland and address old wounds, ever since President Trump insisted that the United States take over Greenland, a gigantic Arctic island and a semiautonomous Danish overseas territory.
But the reception was mixed.
There were gray-haired Greenlandic women in the audience who had been victimized and silently weathered the ordeal for decades. Some wiped away tears. Others sat stone-faced. One woman painted black stripes on her face and stood during the speech with her back turned to Ms. Frederiksen, in protest.
“I know I cannot take away your pain or give back what you lost,” Ms. Frederiksen said. “But I hope it can stand as recognition that what you went through was wrong, that it was a betrayal, and that the responsibility no longer lies on you but on us.”
Some people at the event were suspicious about the timing, saying that the Danish government is apologizing only now that Mr. Trump has ratcheted up pressure over Greenland.
“Why didn’t they say sorry 30 years ago or 20 years ago or even 10 years ago?” asked Qupanuk Olsen, a Greenlandic social media influencer who recently resigned from Greenland’s Parliament. “This story is being forced on us because they’re so afraid that we will become independent or a state under the United States.”
The contraception scandal goes back to the 1960s, when the Danish government began a decades-long campaign to control the growth of Greenland’s population. Danish doctors invited Greenlandic women and girls for checkups and implanted intrauterine birth control devices in them.
In many cases, the women and girls were not told what was being done and found out only years later, when they started having health complications. Some of the patients were as young as 12, and some were left infertile for life.
Many of the women did not speak about this for decades, feeling shame for the trauma inflicted on them. It was only a few years ago, after a few older women stepped forward, that the full contours of the contraception campaign were publicly revealed.
Ms. Frederiksen offered an official apology last month, saying, “On behalf of Denmark, I would like to say sorry,” and earlier this month, researchers released a scathing, 347-page report detailing what happened.
The event on Wednesday, held in Nuuk’s cultural center, was supposed to go further. The intention was for Ms. Frederiksen to apologize face-to-face to survivors and emphasize to the wider Greenlandic community that the Danish government accepts responsibility. Just before the trip, she announced the formation of a new compensation fund, though the amount victims will ultimately receive has yet to be determined.
Naja Lyberth, who was 13 when an intrauterine device was implanted in her, addressed the crowd of several hundred people. She thanked the Danish prime minister and said the apology was important.
But, she added: “We need answers. Where should the women go with their traumas? Who will help them if they need medical treatment? Where should their partners or their children turn for support? It has been exhausting for us.”
The Greenlandic government also apologized, taking responsibility for continuing the birth control campaign in the 1990s, even after Denmark granted Greenland a wide degree of autonomy.
At the end of the ceremony, Ms. Frederiksen and Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, walked up to a long line of survivors, hugging each one. Some shook with sobs.
Amarok S. Petersen, an artist and the woman who had turned her back in protest, questioned the genuineness of the apology, calling it “dirty.”
“If you refuse to say sorry for years, and only do it later when business and politics are involved, then it is not sincere,” she said.
Ms. Olsen, the social media influencer, said that if Danish doctors hadn’t interfered, Greenland would have many more people than the 57,000 it has today, living on the fringes of an icebound island three times the size of Texas.
“We would be 100,000 people now,” she said. “I would have had so many more cousins. I would have been so much richer in family.”
Outside the hall stood a small memorial of flowers, candles and painted stones. One was decorated with little red hearts and said, “For the children we never had.”