Standing at sunset on the boardwalk that rims the jagged western edge of Nuuk, the Greenlandic capital, I felt simultaneously dwarfed and expanded.

The glassy water of the fjord, the veins of granite that made the snow-capped mountains look like crinkle cookies, the clarity of the northern light: All these combined in their immensity to make me feel paltry, while their beauty sent my spirits soaring. But what struck me most was the profound silence that hung, weighty and dense, as if the universe had slipped a pair of noise-canceling headphones over my ears.

That silence was even more striking because I had arrived in Nuuk at what is most likely the noisiest period in Greenland’s history. For years now, the city has been undergoing a very loud building boom, cranking out housing and more recently, a new airport.

Yet the noise is as much metaphorical as it is literal. Ever since President Trump revived his intentions to claim Greenland for the United States, the country has been at the uncomfortable center of the world’s geopolitical conversations, with a steady stream of parachuting journalists and politicians to prove it. And it’s sure to get noisier, when the first direct commercial flights from the United States begin arriving in June — one reason Greenland is among the Travel section’s 52 Places to Go this year.