royal achievement (12. 151)

Ascended to the throne one year ago after the abdication of his mother, Margrethe II, King Frederik X. has changed the coat of arms of the monarchy, last lightly adjusted in 1972, that better reflects the composition of the Danish realms from a historical and heraldic perspective, giving formerly colonies and present autonomous regions of Greenland and the Faroe Islands equally billing with their own fields (quartered shield with the update per dexter, represented by a polar bear and ram respectively—the escutcheon supported by a pair of woodwoses, vildmænd, a symbol for the patron protector Silvanus of the woodlands). Decreed in late December, the change signals (see also) that Greenland is not for sale after repeated overtures by the incoming Trump administration and internal calls for the territory’s independence, which with the US involvement has not always worked out well (see previously here, here and here), and the de-mothballing of American military installations in Iceland.