NUUK, Greenland, March 25, (AP): Lisa Sólrun Christiansen gets up at 4 am most days and gets to work knitting thick wool sweaters coveted by buyers around the world for their warmth and colorful patterns celebrating Greenland’s traditional Inuit culture. Her morning routine includes a quick check of the news, but these days the ritual shatters her peace because of all the stories about US President Donald Trump’s designs on her homeland.

"I get overwhelmed,’’ Christiansen said earlier this month as she looked out to sea, where impossibly blue icebergs floated just offshore. The daughter of Inuit and Danish parents, Christiansen, 57, cherishes Greenland. It is a source of immense family pride that her father, an artist and teacher, designed the red-and-white Greenlandic flag. "On his deathbed he talked a lot about the flag, and he said that the flag is not his, it’s the people’s,” she said.

"And there’s one sentence I keep thinking about. He said, ‘I hope the flag will unite the Greenlandic people.’’’ Greenlanders are increasingly worried that their homeland, a self-governing region of Denmark, has become a pawn in the competition between the US, Russia and China as global warming opens up access to the Arctic.

They fear Trump’s aim to take control of Greenland, which holds rich mineral deposits and straddles strategic air and sea routes, may block their path toward independence. Those fears were heightened Sunday when Usha Vance, the wife of US Vice President JD Vance, announced she would visit Greenland later this week to attend the national dogsled race.

Separately, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright will visit a US military base in northern Greenland. The announcement inflamed tensions sparked earlier this month when Trump reiterated his desire to annex Greenland just two days after Greenlanders elected a new parliament opposed to becoming part of the US. Trump even made a veiled reference to the possibility of military pressure, noting the US bases in Greenland and musing that "maybe you’ll see more and more soldiers go there.”