🇩🇰Icebergs and balls: The World’s Shortest Football League is in Greenland
An article about football and extreme geography in Greenland.
Greenland is a land of extremes. It is the world’s largest island but also one of the loneliest. Only 56,000 people live there, scattered across rocky coasts. Most of the land is covered by a permanent ice sheet, making it nearly impossible to build roads or grow grass. In Disko Bay, the sound of a referee’s whistle echoes past massive, slow-moving icebergs…
This is the amazing Greenland—a place where “home advantage” means playing in freezing summer temperatures on a landscape that looks like another planet.
The Arctic Frontier
Geography is the biggest opponent in Greenlandic football. There are no roads between towns. If a team from the capital, Nuuk, wants to play a match in Ilulissat, they must travel by plane or boat. Nature acts as the ultimate referee.
The climate is just as tough. For eight months of the year, the Arctic winter makes outdoor sports impossible. Even in the summer (June to August), temperatures often stay around 6°C. Because the ground is frozen deep underground (permafrost), natural grass won’t grow. For years, players had to compete on “clay” or gravel pitches as hard as rock.
Video source: CNN. Greenland: The football season where you can glimpse whales and icebergs
One Week of Madness
Because the weather window is so small, Greenland hosts the Greenlandic Football Championship or “Isikkamik Arsaalluni Pissartanngorniunneq” (Greenlandic) / “Grønlandsmesterskab i fodbold” (Danish)—arguably the shortest football league on Earth.
Instead of a nine-month season, the final tournament is packed into only one crazy week in August. After regional qualifiers, the top eight teams meet in one host city. To save money, players often sleep on floor mats in local schools or gyms.
They play almost every day, leading to wild results. Scorelines like 10-0 are common because of the gap between top clubs and small-town teams. The powerhouse club is B-67, known as the “Real Madrid of Greenland” with 16 titles, though rivals like N-48 have recently challenged their throne.
The International Dream
Despite their passion, Greenland’s national team lives in “international limbo.” They are not members of FIFA, nor UEFA, nor CONCACAF.
For a long time, Greenland looked toward Europe (UEFA) because of its political ties to Denmark. However, UEFA requires members to be independent nations recognized by the UN. This left Greenland stuck, even though their neighbors, the Faroe Islands, got in before the rules changed in the 1990s.
In 2022, Greenland shifted its focus toward CONCACAF (North and Central America). Geographically, Greenland is part of North America, and CONCACAF is more open to territories like Aruba or Martinique. By early 2025, Greenland’s FA President, Kenneth Kleist, was optimistic that they were “quite close” to joining.
Geopolitical tension in 2025
Then, politics got in the way. In early 2025, a crucial meeting in Miami between Greenland and football officials was thrown into chaos.
The reason? US President Donald Trump renewed his interest in the United States annexing or buying Greenland. This sparked massive geopolitical tension. The meeting was canceled, and talks were moved to London. While Greenlandic officials tried to stay neutral, the shadow of the White House loomed over the sport.
In summer 2025, the dream suffered a massive blow: CONCACAF officially rejected Greenland’s application without a clear explanation. Greenland’s 5,600 registered players were once again left on the outside looking in.
The Legend of Tekle Ghebrelul
One of the most famous figures in Greenlandic football is Tekle Ghebrelul. Originally a refugee and child soldier from the Horn of Africa (Eritrea), he moved to Greenland via Denmark and became a national icon.
Ghebrelul transformed the game. He led B-67 to three titles and managed the national team. However, his story ended in sadness. After he was targeted by a racist post from a rival player, a dispute with the federation led to his firing. Many players threatened to quit the national team in protest, but his legacy of discipline remains the foundation of the modern team.
Tactics and the Future
Right now, the team is in a bit of a transition phase under their coach, Morten Rutkjær. He’s been working hard to turn a group of passionate players into a professional squad, but he has to work with their natural instincts.
Because the winters are so long, most Greenlanders grow up playing futsal (indoor football), which makes them incredibly good at ball handling in tight spots. As Rutkjær puts it, they are “very technical,” but their first instinct is always to just run forward and attack. To balance that out, he’s been drilling them on the “low block”—basically teaching them how to park the bus and defend deep so they don’t get caught out on a big field.
But even with the right tactics, they’re hitting a massive wall when it comes to infrastructure. You can’t exactly host a FIFA match when your pitch is covered in snow half the year.
That’s why everyone is talking about “The Dome.” Even though they’ve finally moved from gravel to artificial turf, they still desperately need a fully covered, heated stadium in Nuuk. A 2,000-seat indoor arena might sound small to some, but for them, it’s the only way they’ll ever be able to play international football year-round without freezing their boots off.
Conclusion: A Nation of Footballers
Despite all the political drama and the rejection from the big leagues, football is still the biggest thing in Greenland. About 10% of the population plays—which is a huge number, maybe the highest in the world—and in these tiny, isolated towns, a match is often the only thing for people to do together.
The game is even part of the culture. The name for the Northern Lights, “Arsarnerit,” literally means “the ones playing football.” It comes from that old story about ancestors playing with a walrus skull (and taking the heads of naughty kids who stayed out too late).
At the end of the day, Greenland doesn’t need a FIFA membership or a fancy trophy to be “official.” They have their own flag, a tough way of playing, and a community that genuinely cares about the sport. I am getting soft hearted here, but for me, that’s more than enough.