There’s a battle looming for control of the north pole, with the US, Russia, Canada and Norway all thinking they have a right to it. They are chasing potential oil and gas, but could distant Denmark have a reason that’s closer to home?

Why does Denmark think it can lay claim to the north pole?

How do you carve up a big block of ice? Argumentatively, seems to be the answer. Denmark is the latest country to lay claim to the north pole, jostling with the US, Canada, Russia and Norway for a huge chunk of the Arctic Ocean.

What was once dismissed as a frozen wasteland is now a lucrative prize: the US Geological Survey estimates there is about 22% of the world’s undiscovered but recoverable oil and natural gas in the Arctic. Global warming could also open up previously inaccessible shipping routes.

A swath of the Arctic including the north pole currently lies beyond every nation’s 200 nautical-mile limit, which, under the UN Convention on the Laws of the Sea, can form a coastal country’s “exclusive economic zone”. So nations are making claims to the UN to extend their territories, although Russia infuriated its rivals in 2007 by placing a rust-proof titanium flag on the ocean floor beneath the Arctic.

Denmark’s bid for 895,000 sq km of the Arctic Ocean sounds particularly audacious given that this is 20 times the size of Denmark (or 43 times the size of Wales – the country, not the ocean-loving mammal) and the country lies on the same latitude as Britain – more than 2,000 miles from the north pole.

But Denmark’s interest is derived from its autonomous territory, Greenland, and Danish geologists say Greenland’s continental shelf naturally continues to form the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain range which traverses the pole.

According to Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen, assistant professor at the University of Southern Denmark, the economic dimension of this dispute is overstated because this part of the vast Arctic “probably has no resources whatsoever”. Instead, he says, the Danish move is to shore up its popularity in independence-seeking Greenland, where the claim is “very, very popular”.

“All geological estimates indicate that this particular area has neither oil nor gas – it’s just about lines on a map,” he says. “For the Greenlanders, it’s more about a feeling of nationhood, and being part of the Arctic. It’s the same for Russia – it’s symbolism.”

Thorkild Kjærgaard, head of history and culture at the University of Greenland, agrees that the claim is designed to show the benefits of the union with Denmark: Greenland could never make such a claim on its own.

However, Denmark’s foreign ministry admits its claim overlaps with those made by Norway, Canada and Russia, and Kjærgaard cannot imagine a Danish flag rising over the north pole. “It is most unlikely Russia will accept it. Nobody expects it to turn out like that, but Copenhagen wants to demonstrate that they support any Greenlandic claim.”

Santa and his reindeer won’t need to apply for Danish or Russian passports any time soon: a UN committee is not expected to pronounce on the scientific validity of rival claims for 10 years. After that, competing nations must reach bilateral agreements over how to carve up the north pole.