“People voted for him because of immigration. People voted for him maybe because of the economy. This wasn’t really brought up,” said Steen Riggs, who for decades ran Elk Horn’s historic Danish Windmill and its gift shop until her retirement a few years ago.
For many families here, Denmark is not an abstract ally but a place where siblings, cousins and grandparents still live — a reality that has made Trump’s threats especially unsettling.
“People are hurt,” Steen Riggs said of her family members overseas. “I don’t want my relatives in Denmark to be scared of us.”
Just a short walk from the windmill, that same tension surfaces more quietly over coffee and pastries at The Kringle Man, a bakery and coffee shop run by James Uren, a longtime Elk Horn resident who describes himself as a card-carrying Republican. Uren’s kringles — flaky, almond-topped Danish pastries — draw locals and tourists alike, but political debate is discouraged.
“We have a rule in my shop,” said Uren, 68. “No politics. That ruins friendships and business as fast as anything.”
Even so, he said Trump’s focus on Greenland has been hard to ignore and hard to understand, including among people who otherwise support him.
“The one comment I heard at the coffee table was, ‘We don’t need to own it. Denmark will give us everything we want,’” Uren said, referring to a 1951 agreement that grants the U.S. latitude to operate military bases in Greenland. “I don’t understand why we need to own the country.”
For longtime residents, that confusion collides with a history in which Denmark and the U.S. were partners, not adversaries — a legacy that shapes how Elk Horn understands itself.
Danish immigration to this part of the country dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when families left Denmark in waves and settled across the Midwest and the Great Plains, drawn by farmland that looked and felt familiar. Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin became hubs of Danish American life, places where immigrants could farm, build churches and preserve customs that connected them to their country of origin.