Isolated among icebergs, fjords and mountains in remote southern Greenland, Narsaq is a town that does not worry too much about what the outside world thinks, says Ane Egede.
In her home town of about 1,300 people, there is not much in the way of shops, but there are plentiful opportunities to hunt, fish, and pick berries and herbs. “We are very close to the nature,” she says. “The town is clean and a beautiful place to live in. We live a little bit old fashioned. We’re not so materialistically minded.”
But now residents have little choice but to engage with external forces. Close to the world’s second largest rare earth deposit and the sixth largest uranium deposit, the town has been forced into conflict with a mining company thousands of miles away in Australia. If the arbitration investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) case is accepted this summer, its fate is likely to be decided later this year.
First: Ane Egede in her home in Narsaq. She left the town decades ago and returned with her husband in 2020. They firmly believed that the planned mining project was off the table, but there is still no guarantee. Second: Sodalite, which glows under UV light.
The town of Narsaq with the Kvanefjeld plateau in the background. Kvanefjeld is part of the Ilímaussaq complex in southern Greenland and is the second-largest rare earth deposit and the sixth-largest uranium deposit in the world. It is the subject of a legal dispute between mining-license holder Energy Transition Minerals, an Australian mining company, and Denmark and Greenland. The mining license was withdrawn after the 2021 election, when Greenland banned uranium mining.
Inhabitants of Narsaq skinning a seal. The inhabitants of Greenland are still allowed to hunt seals.
It comes at a time of heightened attention on the Arctic island, which is an autonomous territory within the kingdom of Denmark, amid threats by Donald Trump to acquire Greenland for the US. Trump has expressed interest in securing both its security benefits and minerals, and has refused to rule out military or economic force to do so. After one of the most consequential elections of the island’s history on 11 March, the centre-right Democrats are now in the process of trying to form a coalition government after replacing Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) as the ruling party and upending the status quo of Greenland’s politics.
The Kvanefjeld (Kuannersuit in Greenlandic) plateau near Narsaq is part of the more than a billion-year-old Ilímaussaq complex, in which more than 230 mineral varieties are present. The deposit was first discovered in the 1950s and explored over the subsequent decades by Denmark, which ruled Greenland as a colony until 1953 and until 2009 maintained control of its natural resources (today it continues to control its foreign and security policy), for its high uranium content.
In 2007 a mining licence was acquired by the company formerly known as Greenland Minerals, now Energy Transition Minerals (ETM), after which the mineral complex was explored extensively with a new drilling campaign that found that it housed vast amounts of rare earth minerals in addition to uranium.
But after IA came into power, in 2021, Greenland banned uranium mining. The move prompted ETM, which is based in Perth and partly owned by the Chinese government-backed Shenghe Resources, to sue Greenland for getting in the way of its plans – demanding either the right to exploit the deposit or claim up to $11.5bn in compensation.
The wider area is rich in minerals: geologists Anna Szreter, Curtis Rooks and Adrian Finch (from left to right) examining stones on the Motzfeldt plateau, 40 miles north-east of Narsaq, near Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland. The Motzfeldt deposit is currently being explored for its high content in the rare-earth elements niobium and tantalum. The ban on uranium mining does not apply here as the targeted minerals are different from the ones in the Kvanefjeld deposit and sit below the threshold formulated in the Uranium Act. The leading researcher, Professor Finch from the University of St Andrews, has been working in the region for more than 30 years in cooperation with international and local researchers.
First: Ninni Jerimiassen examines a stone on the Motzfeldt plateau. The targeted minerals on the plateau are different from those in Kvanefjeld and the naturally occurring radioactivity sits below the threshold formulated in the Uranium Act. Second: A Geiger counter on the Kvanefjeld plateau shows a dose equivalent of more than 30 microsieverts on the surface.
Ninni Jerimiassen, Curtis Rooks, Adrian Finch and Anna Szreter at their camp on the Motzfeldt plateau. Like the llímaussaq complex, which hosts the Kvanefjeld deposit, the Motzfeldt plateau is part of the Gardar igneous province. Each deposit hosts unique minerals containing rare metals, making it of interest to scientists and the mining industry.
The deposit is so close to Narsaq that Egede can see it from her house. When there is wind, any potentially radioactive mining matter could blow on to the town, she says.
“We’re against [mining] because we have many different wind directions and whenever it does blow into the town how can you breathe?” she says. “And all this is too close to the town.” They eat and fish from the sea near the mountain and there are farmers near the mining area, she adds.
Narsaq’s surrounding nature – including wild herbs and fruit – is a key part of life there. “When it disappears what can we do? We will have nothing left. With nobody hunting anymore, what can we live off?”
An anti-uranium slogan on a farm in Tasiusaq near Qassiarsuk in southern Greenland, where sheep farming is an important economic activity. Farmers were a driving force behind the anti-uranium protests surrounding the planned mine, as they feared that their products would be viewed as damaged by the radioactive dust from the planned open-cast mine.
She is also concerned about Trump’s interest in Greenland, which continues to loom large in global geopolitics. “He has never been here so he has nothing to say about my country,” she says.
People around the world must help to preserve Narsaq and its surroundings, says Egede, who is part of the Urani Naamik (Uranium – No Thanks) movement.
Daniel Mamadou-Blanco, ETM’s managing director, said: “The Kuannersuit project is designed with the absolute best in class environment safety standards, and ETM remains open and flexible on altering the project design in order to fully guarantee the safety of the citizens and the integrity of the environment.”
Egede is one of the many people that the photojournalist Jan Richard Heinicke met and photographed during multiple trips to Greenland. The project started out as an exploration of the European Union’s attempt to tackle its dependence on countries outside Europe for critical resources. But after visiting Narsaq, he decided to focus on Kvanefjeld as “an example of the conflicts surrounding mining projects”.
He adds: “The project is multidimensional and touches a huge variety of topics. It allows a glimpse into the colonial relationship between Denmark and Greenland, how geopolitical questions affect local traditional communities, and it serves a blueprint for other proposed mining projects around the world.”
First: Ice floes in a fjord near Narsarsuaq. Second: Arnannguaq Petersen, a member of the Urani Naamik movement (Uranium – No Thanks) in Narsaq. While she originally supported mining, Petersen has now been active in the anti-uranium group for years after she learned about the effects the mine could have on the local community.
Protesters from the Urani Naamik movement (Uranium – No Thanks) while waiting for the board of Energy Transition Minerals to arrive in Narsaq.
First: Pavia Rohde, manager of the local facilities of Energy Transition Minerals in Narsaq. Second: Drill cores from Kvanefjeld at the warehouse of Energy Transition Minerals in Narsaq under UV light.
A view of the Motzfeldt plateau, where rare earth minerals are present.
Jan Richard Heinicke is a documentary photographer based in Germany. His stories revolve around the constant negotiation between human demands and the ability of nature to provide for them.
• This article was amended on 20 March 2025. Revisions were made to the picture curation and captions to make further clear that the Motzfeldt plateau, while part of the same Gardar igneous province, is at a distance from Narsaq and the reported concerns over the Kvanefjeld uranium project. Exploration in Motzfeldt is into rare earth minerals and is run by a separate company with no connection to the Energy Transition Minerals project in Kvanefjeld. The headline was also amended to better reflect the content of the article.
