The road south from Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, runs out at the tip of a blizzard-scoured peninsula stretching into the Labrador Sea. Icebergs drift beyond the sea ice toward the open ocean, carved off the glacier some 100 kilometers away at the head of the Nuup Kangerlua fjord.

Interest in buying Greenland has "popped up from time to time in American politics," Tom Høyem, Denmark's former minister to Greenland, told ABC News in an interview.