NUUK, Greenland – Greenland is ready to talk.

Responding on Monday to the diplomatic earthquake set off last week by President-elect Donald Trump, who mused about taking over the gigantic island in the Arctic Ocean, Greenland’s prime minister said the territory would like to work more closely with the United States on defense and natural resources.

“The reality is we are going to work with the U.S. — yesterday, today and tomorrow,” Prime Minister Múte Egede said at a news conference in Nuuk, Greenland’s tiny, icebound capital.

But he was firm: Greenlanders did not want to become Americans.

“We have to be very smart on how we act,” he said, adding, “The power struggles between the superpowers are rising and are now knocking on our door.”

Trump refused to rule out using economic or military force to wrest back the Panama Canal and to take Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark that he suggested buying during his first term in office. Then, as now, Greenland and Denmark said the island was not for sale. Panama’s leaders, too, rejected the threat.

Egede said Monday that “all of us were shocked” by Trump’s words, which were accentuated by a surprising and somewhat mysterious visit by the president-elect’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to the island on the same day.

The younger Trump did a lightning-fast sightseeing tour, saying he was on private business, and since then, headlines around the world have blared Greenland.

Most of Greenland’s territory is covered in ice, only about 56,000 people live here and, until recently, the island was best known for its icebergs and polar bears. As climate change melts the Arctic ice, this region has been quietly falling into the crosshairs of the world’s powers.

The United States, Russia, European countries, China and others have been eyeing the Arctic’s shipping lanes and the extensive mineral resources that are no longer considered out of reach.

The island has been tied to Denmark for centuries, first as a colony and now as a separate territory that has achieved a large degree of autonomy in recent years. Denmark still controls the island’s foreign affairs and defense policy.

But the surge of interest by international powers dovetails with Greenland’s quest to gain independence, and that itch has only grown stronger. At the same time, many people here are reluctant to completely cut ties with Denmark because of the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies that Denmark provides each year.

In Nuuk, which was a sunny zero degrees Fahrenheit on Monday afternoon, many people were eagerly waiting to hear what the prime minister was going to say.

“Whatever happens, there’s no turning back,” said Aviaq Kleist, the owner of a cafe in the Nuuk Center, the city’s biggest mall, with a couple of dozen shops. She joked that maybe Egede would suddenly declare independence.