An outpost in the remote part of Greenland was built in the 1960s. Now, under a new US defence agreement signed this week, the outpost at Mestersvig could soon become a key American military foothold in the Arctic. At a windswept gravel airstrip in eastern Greenland, a small Danish military detachment has quietly kept watch for decades.
Mestersvig sits 149 miles from the nearest settlement population 330, at the edge of an uninhabited national park larger than Germany and France combined. The place is covered in darkness during winter, with average temperatures of around minus 10 degrees Celsius 14 degrees Fahrenheit.
