Trump wants to buy not-for-sale Greenland. Denmark's first move? Alter its royal coat of arms

Denmark's king did what any Scandinavian monarch would do when backed into a geopolitical corner after President-elect Donald Trump reiterated his desire to purchase Greenland: changed his royal coat of arms to make the Arctic territory bigger.

For the last month, Trump has repeatedly expressed his commitment to purchasing the world's largest island that is a self-governing Danish territory, saying it's vital for U.S. national security. It's a revival of a call Trump made during his first presidency. Officials in both Denmark and Greenland have made it clear it's not for sale.

In a news conference on Tuesday, Trump nevertheless indicated he's refusing to rule out using "military or economic coercion" to accomplish that goal, though it's not clear how seriously to take such a sharp statement.

That same day, Donald Trump Jr. landed in Greenland for what he described as a "little bit of fun." The president-elect's eldest son did not meet with any local officials. He did publicly stomp around a landscape of snow-capped peaks and fjords with cameras, podcast mics and an entourage of people wearing Make America Great Again hats.

Still, Denmark's newly proclaimed King Frederik X seems to have slyly anticipated some of the new year-brouhaha over Trump's ambitions for Greenland. It is home to just 57,000 people, and mostly covered in ice. But it is also rich in minerals like cobalt and copper, and strategically located at the top of the world for the U.S. military's ballistic missile early-warning system. In late December, by "royal resolution," in an announcement that appears to have gone largely unnoticed until this week the king updated the Danish royal coat of arms.

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A royal coat of arms is the king’s personal coat of arms and, at the same time, a state symbol. As you might expect, for the past several hundred years it has not changed much. It was last adjusted by the king's late mother in 1972.

Until last month, it featured a panel with three crowns that represented a historical but now defunct union between Denmark, Norway and Sweden known as the "Kalmar Union," as well as a polar bear that signified Greenland and a ram to reflect the Faroe Islands, another self-governing Danish territory.

In the amended version, the crowns and the ram in that panel, one of four in the coats of arms, have been dropped in favor of a larger polar bear. In other words, the king made Greenland bigger. (The ram also got its own panel. Trump has not floated any plans for the Faroe Islands, a fish-and-renewable-energy-rich archipelago.)

In the Royal House of Denmark's statement about all this, it said of the new design that "the Faroe Islands and Greenland have each gotten their own field, which strengthens the Realm’s prominence in the royal coat of arms."

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Lars Hovbakke Sorensen, an expert on the Danish royal family, said in an interview with TV 2, the country's national broadcaster, that the alteration to the coats of arms, which has been used on official documents and seals and parts of which date back to the 12th century, made another kind of statement ? a symbolic one.

"It is important to signal from the Danish side that Greenland and the Faroe Islands are part of the Danish realm, and that this is not up for discussion," he said. "This is how you mark it."

On Wednesday Denmark's foreign minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, said Greenland might become independent if its residents wanted that, something that is achievable with a referendum, but it is unlikely to become a U.S. state.

In the wake of Trump's news conference on Tuesday his close ally Elon Musk said on social media that if "the people of Greenland want to be part of America, which I hope they do, they would be most welcome!"

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Musk's post, on his X platform, was viewed about 90 million times as of Wednesday. It's not clear how many of them were from Greenland but someone named Orla Joelsen, whose account on X is filled with photos, news and information about Greenland's capital Nuuk, was at least one of them.

"Hi @elonmusk," Joelsen wrote in reply. "Greenlandic citizen here, I invite you to Greenland. You will see with your own eyes, what the Greenlanders think about your statements that Greenland should belong to the United States. I'll will make sure you get good food so you'll be well fed. The menu will be; Polar bear meat (and) seal meat."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Denmark amends royal coat of arms amid Trump interest in Greenland