The vast island, with a population of just 57,000, has been caught up in a geopolitical race for dominance in the Arctic, where melting ice caps are making its resources more accessible and opening new shipping routes. Both Russia and China have intensified military activity in the region.

“People want change … We want more business to finance our welfare,” said Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Demokraatit’s leader and a former minister of industry and minerals.

“We don’t want independence tomorrow, we want a good foundation,” Nielsen told reporters in Nuuk.

He will now hold talks with other parties to try and form a governing coalition.

The ruling Inuit Ataqatigiit party and its partner Siumut, which also seek a slow path towards independence, won a combined 36% of votes, down from 66.1% in 2021.

“We respect the election outcome,” Prime Minister Mute Egede of the Inuit Ataqatigiit said in a Facebook post, adding that he would listen to any proposals in upcoming coalition talks.

Greenland is a former Danish colony and has been a territory since 1953. It gained some autonomy in 1979 when its first parliament was formed, but Copenhagen still controls foreign affairs, defence and monetary policy and provides just under $1 billion a year to the economy.

In 2009, it won the right to declare full independence through a referendum, even though it has not done so out of concern living standards would drop without Denmark’s economic support.

“I strongly believe that we will very soon start to live a life more based on who we are, based on our culture, based on our own language, and start to make regulations based on us, not based on Denmark,” said Qupanuk Olsen, candidate for the main pro-independence party Naleraq.

Inge Olsvig Brandt, a candidate for the ruling Inuit Ataqatigiit party, said:

“We don’t need the independence right now. We have too many things to work on. I think we have to work with ourselves, our history, and we are going to have a lot of healing work with us before we can take the next step.”

Voting had been extended by half an hour at some of the 72 polling stations across the Arctic island, where some 40,500 people were eligible to cast their ballot, although the final turnout was not immediately available.-Agencies