Waving the flags of Denmark and Greenland, the protesters formed a sea of red and white outside Copenhagen city hall on Saturday, chanting “Kalaallit Nunaat” – the Arctic island’s name in Greenlandic.
Rallies were also organised throughout the day in the Danish cities of Aarhus, Aalborg and Odense, as well as in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk.
“I am very grateful for the huge support we as Greenlanders receive … We are also sending a message to the world that you all must wake up,” said Julie Rademacher, chair of Uagut, an organisation for Greenlanders in Denmark.
“Greenland and the Greenlanders have involuntarily become the front in the fight for democracy and human rights,” she added.
The demonstrations come a day after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on any country that did not go along with his push to seize control of Greenland – a move the US president has said is critical for his country’s interests.
“We may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland because we need Greenland for national security,” Trump said on Thursday
While Greenland and Denmark have rejected the idea of the island being “owned” by the US, efforts to get the US administration to change its stance have so far appeared to fail.
The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland left a meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, DC, this week, saying that they “didn’t manage to change the American position”.
“It’s clear that the president has this wish of conquering over Greenland,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters.
According to the latest poll published in January of last year, 85 percent of Greenlanders oppose the territory joining the US, while only 6 percent were in favour.
Reporting from Nuuk, the Greenlandic capital, Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands said Saturday’s rally is expected to be a large one.
“This is … the capital city, but [home to] only about 19-20,000 people. Everyone we spoke to yesterday said that they were going to be coming out and marching today,” Challands said.
“This essentially is Danes and Greenlanders coming together. Everyone here believes that at some point, there should be some form of independence [for Greenland],” he added.
“But for the moment, Denmark and Greenland are saying that their best way out of this crisis is to remain united.”