48 Fun Facts About Greenland

Besides Denmark proper and Greenland, what is the third constituent part of the Danish kingdom?

The Faroe Islands voted narrowly to leave Denmark in 1946, but the king dissolved their parliament and the islands settled for home rule two years later.

What is Greenland's capital and largest city?

Nuuk was Godthåb to the Danes for more than two centuries, until home rule arrived in 1979 and Greenlanders put their own names back on the map.

Geographically, Greenland is part of which continent?

Politically it was tied to Norway from 986 and later to Denmark, but it sits east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

Since 2022 Greenland has shared a land border with Canada across which tiny island in Nares Strait?

Hans Island. For decades Canadians and Danes took turns planting flags and leaving bottles of whisky or schnapps there, until a 2022 deal split the rock between them.

Which Norse explorer, exiled from Iceland, gave Greenland its name in the hope of attracting settlers?

Erik the Red was banished from Iceland for manslaughter, spent his exile exploring the unknown coast to the west, then sailed home to recruit colonists for it.

What is Greenland's name in the Greenlandic language?

Kalaallit Nunaat means 'land of the Kalaallit', though strictly that name belongs to West Greenlanders: the Inuit of the far north and the east call themselves by other names.

On Mercator world maps, Greenland looks about as large as which continent, which is really some 14 times bigger?

Africa. The Mercator projection stretches everything near the poles, so Greenland, in truth about the size of Saudi Arabia, swells to rival a whole continent.

Norse settlers may have abandoned Greenland in the 1400s partly because the market for which export collapsed?

Walrus ivory was the colony's richest trade good until better elephant ivory reached Europe; a cooling climate and plague among its customers tightened the squeeze.

The ancestors of today's Greenlandic Inuit spread across the Arctic from which homeland about a thousand years ago?

Alaska. From there whale hunters swept east within a few centuries by dog sled and large skin boat, displacing the Dorset people who already lived in the Arctic.

Which Dano-Norwegian missionary arrived in Greenland in 1721 and founded what became its capital?

Hans Egede sailed to find the lost Norse settlers and bring them back to the church, found no survivors, and stayed to preach to the Inuit, founding Godthåb, 'Good Hope'.

Under the 1814 Treaty of Kiel, Denmark kept Greenland but ceded Norway to which country?

Sweden took Norway, but Norway's old Atlantic dependencies, Greenland among them, were left out of the handover and stayed with Denmark, which is why the island is Danish today.

English took the name of which boat from the Inuit of Greenland, by way of Danish?

Kayak comes from the Greenlandic qajaq. Hunters there laced themselves into the skin boat so snugly that after a capsize they could roll it upright without letting water in.

The US recognised Denmark's Greenland claim when it bought which territory in 1917?

The Virgin Islands were the Danish West Indies until that sale. In 1946 Washington came back with an offer for Greenland itself, and Denmark turned it down.

What was the code name of the secret US plan to hide missile sites under the Greenland ice cap?

Project Iceworm would have shuttled 600 missiles through thousands of kilometres of tunnels, but engineers found the moving ice would crush them and the plan was dropped.

Camp Century, the US Army base dug into Greenland's ice sheet in 1959, was powered by what?

A nuclear reactor powered the 'city under the ice'. When the Army left it took the reactor away but buried the radioactive waste, which melting ice may one day expose.

In January 1968 a US B-52 carrying four nuclear bombs crashed on the sea ice near which Greenland air base?

Thule. The crash scattered radioactive debris across the ice and caused a scandal in Denmark, which had banned nuclear weapons on its soil while quietly tolerating them in Greenland.

The US base in northwest Greenland that watches for missile launches belongs to which branch of the military?

The Space Force runs it, and in 2023 gave the base the Greenlandic name Pituffik, after the settlement whose people were moved away when it was built.

Greenland's national day, the date its self-rule began in 2009, is timed to which natural event?

The summer solstice, the longest and brightest day of the Arctic year, has been the national day since 1985. The flag first flew on it, and in 2009 self-rule began on it too.

Greenland left the European Economic Community in 1985 chiefly to escape its common policy on what?

Fishing. Greenland had been taken into the bloc with Denmark in 1973 although about 70% of its own voters said no, and once it had home rule it voted to leave and run its own waters.

Under Greenland's 2009 self-rule act, which powers stay with Denmark?

Foreign affairs and defence stay with Copenhagen, as do citizenship and the supreme court. In return the 2009 act recognised Greenlanders as a people with the right to choose independence.

What is Greenland's parliament called?

Inatsisartut means 'those who make the law'. Under home rule Danes called it the Landsting, but since self-rule in 2009 the Greenlandic name has been used in Danish as well.

Which word for a hooded jacket did English borrow from Greenlandic?

Anorak is a Greenlandic word for a hooded pullover first made of skin or fur. Its near-twin parka came from the opposite end of the Arctic, reaching English through Aleut and Russian.

Which animal appears on Greenland's coat of arms?

A polar bear. On Greenland's own version it raises its left paw, not the right that heraldry favours, because Inuit tradition holds that a polar bear fights left-handed.

With about 56,000 people, Greenland holds which world record?

Least densely populated country, though it is a self-governing part of the Danish kingdom, not a sovereign state. Ice covers most of the island, so nearly everyone lives along the coast.

Which Norwegian explorer led the first crossing of Greenland's ice sheet in 1888, travelling on skis?

Fridtjof Nansen landed on the empty east coast on purpose: with no way back, his party of six could only ski on towards the settlements in the west.

If Greenland's entire ice sheet melted, global sea level would rise by about how much?

7 metres, or about 24 feet, because the ice lies up to 3 km thick over four-fifths of the island. Only Antarctica holds more.

Alfred Wegener, who died on Greenland's ice sheet in 1930, is remembered for proposing which scientific idea?

Continental drift. Wegener died on his fourth Greenland expedition with the idea widely rejected; it was vindicated in the 1960s as part of plate tectonics.

Where in Greenland was the Northern Hemisphere's record low of −69.6 °C measured?

Near the summit of the Greenland ice sheet, more than 3,200 m up. No one was there to feel it: an automatic weather station logged the reading three days before Christmas 1991.

Kaffeklubben Island, a speck off Greenland's Arctic Ocean coast, holds which world record?

Northernmost island on Earth, at least of the permanent kind: gravel banks farther out come and go. A Danish explorer named it in the 1920s after the coffee club at Copenhagen's geological museum.

Northeast Greenland is home to the world's largest what?

National park. It is bigger than all but about thirty of the world's countries, yet almost nobody may go in: a few local hunters, soldiers on patrol and visiting scientists.

Which UNESCO-listed fjord in west Greenland holds the Northern Hemisphere's most productive glacier?

Ilulissat Icefjord. Its glacier sheds a tenth of all Greenland's icebergs, more than any other outside Antarctica, which is how the town at its mouth came by a name meaning 'icebergs'.

The Greenland shark holds what record among vertebrates?

Longest lifespan: radiocarbon in its eye lenses shows a Greenland shark can live for around 400 years, growing so slowly that females are not ready to breed until they are about 150.

Greenland's red-and-white flag is the only national flag in the Nordic world without which feature?

A cross. Greenland chose a red disc like a sun sinking into white ice instead, and the design beat a green-and-white cross flag by just 14 votes to 11.

Which rare mineral, used in smelting aluminium, was mined for over a century at Ivittuut in Greenland?

Cryolite. Ivittuut held the only deposit big enough to mine, so when Denmark fell in 1940 the Allies' first worry in Greenland was keeping that one mine out of German hands.

The Kvanefjeld deposit in southern Greenland is one of the world's largest accumulations of what?

Rare earth oxides. The ore also carries uranium, and the plan to mine it decided Greenland's 2021 election: voters backed the party that promised to stop the mine.

Royal Greenland, a company owned by Greenland's government, is the world's largest supplier of which seafood?

Cold-water shrimp. The firm began as the Danish crown's trading monopoly over its colony and now belongs to the Greenlanders themselves.

Which airport was Greenland's main international gateway until the capital's new runway opened in 2024?

Kangerlussuaq began in 1941 as a US military airfield at the head of a long fjord, so for decades travellers bound for the capital had to land there first and change planes.

Which American explorer sledged across northern Greenland in 1892 and found evidence that it is an island?

Robert Peary sledged some 2,000 km over the ice cap to the far northeast and reached a great fjord on the Fourth of July, which he named Independence Fjord.

Greenland is the world's largest island; which island north of Australia ranks second?

New Guinea is little more than a third of Greenland's size. Australia dwarfs them both, but by tradition it counts as the smallest continent, which leaves Greenland the title.

Which American statesman, known for another Arctic purchase, weighed buying Greenland in the 1860s?

William Seward had a report drawn up on buying Greenland and Iceland soon after his purchase from Russia, but he never made Denmark an offer.

Which Danish prime minister firmly turned down Donald Trump's first-term attempt to buy Greenland?

Mette Frederiksen called the idea 'absurd' and said Greenland was not for sale, at which Trump called off a planned visit to Denmark.

Which currency do people use in Greenland?

The Danish krone. Under the self-rule law, currency is one of the few fields Greenland can never take over from Copenhagen, however many other powers it assumes.

What did the Norse settlers of Greenland call the Inuit and other native peoples they met?

Skrælings. Nobody is sure what the word first meant, but it stuck: the Greenlanders' own name for themselves is thought to descend from it.

Which source generates most of Greenland's electricity?

Hydropower. Its plants supply the larger towns, while the smaller towns and villages run on their own diesel generators.

Why did Germany land secret teams on Greenland's east coast during the Second World War?

To run weather stations. Europe's weather takes shape over the seas off Greenland, so forecasts from there were worth the risk, until a small sledge patrol hunted the stations down.

In August 2021, what fell on the highest part of Greenland's ice cap for the first time on record?

Rain. It fell for several hours at a research station some 3,200 m up, where records since 1989 showed only snow, then froze into a crust of ice on the surface.

Denmark's elite dog-sled patrol in northeast Greenland is named after which star?

Sirius is the Dog Star, the brightest in the Great Dog. The patrol took the name in 1953, and its two-man teams still spend months at a time crossing the empty northeast by sled.

What did ice-penetrating radar discover beneath Greenland's ice sheet in 2013, stretching at least 750 km?

A canyon longer than Arizona's Grand Canyon and up to 800 m deep. A river carved it millions of years ago, before the ice sheet formed and buried it.