The world runs on rock · Current events

The Ice Greenland's rare earths

At the southern tip of Greenland, between two fjords, lies a body of rock layered like a cake: black, red, white, again and again. The red layers hold rare earths, the metals of magnets. Washington, Beijing and Brussels all want a say in what happens to them.

Scroll to fly in

Over the ice

An island under a sheet of ice

The Greenland ice sheet covers about 1.7 million km², around 80% of the island, and is about 1.5 km thick on average.¹ What can be mined lies on the rocky fringe the ice leaves bare, most of it along the coast.

The ice-free south

Near the town of Narsaq

Greenland's two best-known rare-earth deposits, Tanbreez and Kvanefjeld, both sit in the Ilímaussaq complex near Narsaq in the far south. It formed about 1,160 million years ago, when magma unusually rich in sodium and rare elements cooled slowly under the ground.^2,3

Cut open

A roof, a dark middle, a layered floor

As the magma cooled, crystals sorted themselves. Light crystals floated up to form a roof; the last, fine-grained melt set as dark lujavrite, which hosts the uranium-bearing Kvanefjeld deposit; heavy crystals settled at the bottom as kakortokite, the rock of Tanbreez.^2,3

Kakortokite

29 layers, black, red and white

The kakortokite is built of 29 repeated units. Each grades from a black layer rich in the mineral arfvedsonite, through a red layer rich in eudialyte, to a white layer of feldspar and nepheline.² Geologists still argue over how such regular layers formed.

blackredwhite

The red layer

Eudialyte

Eudialyte is a red silicate that carries rare earths along with zirconium, niobium, hafnium and tantalum.³ But no one has yet processed eudialyte ore at full commercial scale.⁷

REEZrNbHfTa

Snow-covered mountains rising from a dark, open fjord in south-west Greenland — A fjord in south-west Greenland, April 2011. NASA/GSFC/Michael Studinger.

A wall of white glacier ice breaking into a fjord crowded with icebergs — The calving front of Jakobshavn Glacier, April 2012. NASA/GSFC/Jefferson Beck.

Satellite view of swirls of sea ice and icebergs off Greenland's south-east coast, with red-tinted mountain rock — Ice off the south-east coast, May 2001, in false colour. USGS/NASA Landsat 7.

Why there's no mine yet

Rock is the easy part

Greenland has no operating rare-earth mine. The obstacles are infrastructure, labour and capital: a mine needs ports, power and people, which much of the coast lacks.⁴ The whole country has only about 93 miles of road.⁵ Photos: NASA and USGS, public domain.

1 · On the map

Greenland has the world's eighth-largest rare-earth reserves, about 1.5 million tonnes.^5,4 Both big deposits lie in the same body of rock near Narsaq.³

2 · Who refines

China mines 69% of the world's rare earths and did 91% of the refining in 2024.¹⁰ That is why a deposit outside China matters, and why who owns it matters too: China's Shenghe Resources holds a 6.5% stake in Energy Transition Minerals, the company behind Kvanefjeld.⁴

3 · Two projects, two paths

Dec 2021Greenland bans mining of ore with more than 100 ppm uranium, which in effect stops Kvanefjeld.⁶ Its owner went to arbitration in 2022; it is still unresolved.⁴
Jun 2025The US Export-Import Bank sends Critical Metals a letter of interest for a US$120 million loan for Tanbreez.⁸
May 2026Critical Metals gets approval to buy 70% of 60° North Greenland ApS, and plans a Saudi joint venture to refine part of its output.⁹
Sep 2026A US–Denmark–Greenland agreement widens US military access, at Pituffik, Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig, and limits investment from outside NATO and the EU in resource extraction.⁵
29 Sep 2026Greenland approves Tanbreez's mining and closure plans, valid to 2050. Operating permits and financing are still needed.^7,6
2028–29The company's target for first ore. A target, not a promise.⁷

Why "critical"

From a red layer to a magnet

The rare earths in eudialyte include neodymium and dysprosium, the elements of the magnets in wind turbines, electric cars and drones. The zirconium, niobium, hafnium and tantalum alongside them are on critical lists too. Whether Greenland becomes a source depends less on its rock than on roads, power, money and politics. We take no side here: these are the facts as published.

REERare earthsChina 69% ZrZirconiumAustralia 33% NbNiobiumBrazil 93% TaTantalumDR Congo 52% UUraniumKvanefjeld

That ends the current-events series: The Drone War, SpaceX, The Deep and The Ice. For how the magnets work, see The Magnet, or go back to all the stories.

Sources

Shares of world output are from USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 via our minerals data; other figures are cited where they appear. The 3D scene is a schematic illustration, not to scale and not any company's model. Photos: NASA and USGS, public domain.