From Instagram baking to Trump standoff, Mette Frederiksen mixes politics, power and everyday Denmark

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Denmark's acting Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen speaks to journalists after she visited the royal yacht Dannebrog at the Harbor during the royal couple's summer tour to Odense Municipality on June 1, 2026. — AFP pic

COPENHAGEN, June 2 — She has stood up to Donald Trump and flaunts her cooking skills on Instagram: Mette Frederiksen, who will stay on for a third term as Denmark’s prime minister after clinching a coalition deal yesterday mixes high-stakes international politics with Danes’ everyday concerns.

Her Social Democrats posted their lowest election score since 1903 in March but still came out on top, and after months of negotiations the 48-year-old said she had agreed on a left-leaning coalition cabinet with three other parties.

“We have one of the most solid democracies in the world,” she told reporters.

“If we political leaders cannot manage to carry out this task, I don’t know what the Danish people can expect of us. It was an unavoidable mission.”

The party stalwart is seen as the embodiment of Denmark’s modernised social democracy, embracing a strict migration policy in order to defend the country’s cherished welfare state.

“Denmark is a safe community, founded on trust and based on strong values,” her party programme reads.

“We must distinguish between those who can and want to (belong to) Denmark, and those who do not.”

But Frederiksen doesn’t just embody authority.

She loves to show off her cooking skills on Instagram, where she projects an image of an approachable leader who gets up early on Sundays to bake fresh bread for her family.

Frederiksen suffered a staggering blow in municipal elections in November 2025, when her party—traditionally Denmark’s biggest—came in second place and lost nearly half of the municipalities it controlled, including the capital Copenhagen.

But her popularity surged in early 2026 when she stood up to US President Donald Trump over his threats to annex Greenland, a Danish autonomous territory which he says the United States needs to control for national security reasons.

Frederiksen “is a unifying figure in a world full of insecurity, and Danes are quite anxious—there’s Greenland, Ukraine, (and mystery) drones” that flew over the Scandinavian country last year, Elisabet Svane, political analyst at Danish newspaper Politiken, told AFP in March.

Frederiksen seized on the wave of popularity to call snap elections in late February.

No clear successor 

Frederiksen was born into a working class family of longstanding Social Democrats, her father a typographer and mother a pre-school teacher.

She entered parliament in 2001 at the age of 24, and took over as head of the Social Democrats in 2015 when the country’s first woman prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, stepped down after an election defeat.

Frederiksen was a source of inspiration for the hit political television drama Borgen, the show’s creators have said.

The mother of two grown children, she has managed to unite her party without facing any serious challenges.

Despite rumours that she could one day move on to a top job at NATO or the EU after leaving Danish politics, pundits struggle to identify her possible successor.

Known as a workhorse, she won broad praise for her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in Denmark during her first term from 2019 to 2022.

But she faced a barrage of criticism over her handling of the “mink crisis” in November 2020.

Amid a worrying Covid variant outbreak among minks—when Denmark was the largest exporter of their furs—she ordered the culling of around 17 million minks, an order which was later ruled illegal.

“After this crisis, she knew how to bounce back,” Svane said.

Frederiksen has tightened migration policy in order to quell support for the far right, and at the same time advocated stronger international commitments with unwavering support for Ukraine and a massive hike in defence spending.

“She focuses a lot on international challenges, which is very noble, but it’s not going to help you win national elections,” Svane said.

The premier has been praised for standing up to Trump in the Greenland crisis, which also saw her build closer ties with the leaders of the Arctic island, long strained over traumas suffered during Denmark’s colonial past.

“She’s always been very good on Greenland,” said University of Copenhagen political science professor Ole Waever.

“Even before Trump’s annexation ambitions, she spoke about Greenland with more respect and understanding than most politicians have.”

“As far as Greenland is concerned, it’s not a bad idea for her to stay on,” he said. — AFP