Greenland Trivia
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48 free Greenland trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Greenland is the world's biggest island, its least densely populated country and, lately, front-page news, and this quiz covers all of it. It starts with the map: which kingdom it belongs to, which continent it sits on, the 1.2 km border with Canada, the ice sheet that covers four-fifths of it and the mountain and northernmost speck of land at its extremes. Then it goes back through the Saqqaq and Thule peoples, Erik the Red's optimistic naming, the Norse who farmed there for 400 years and vanished, Hans Egede's mission and the founding of Nuuk. From there it covers the modern story: the wartime US occupation and 'Bluie' bases, the $100 million offer of 1946, Thule, Camp Century and the missiles hidden in the ice, the 1968 B-52 crash, home rule in 1979, leaving the EEC, self-rule in 2009 and the Trump-era Greenland crisis. There are questions on the language, the flag, the parliament, cryolite and rare earths, shrimp, the 500-year-old shark, the football team that cannot join FIFA and the day it rained on the summit. Easy questions suit anyone who can find it on a globe; the expert tier asks about Sermersooq and Paul-Emile Victor's three islands. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Greenland, its history, places and wildlife, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Besides Denmark proper and Greenland, what is the third constituent part of the Danish kingdom?
The Faroe Islands
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.
Q 02What is Greenland's capital and largest city?
Nuuk
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.
Q 03Geographically, Greenland is part of which continent?
North America
Politically it was tied to Norway from 986 and later to Denmark, but it sits east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
Q 04Since 2022 Greenland has shared a land border with Canada across which tiny island in Nares Strait?
Hans Island
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.
Q 05Which Norse explorer, exiled from Iceland, gave Greenland its name in the hope of attracting settlers?
Erik the Red
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.
Q 06What is Greenland's name in the Greenlandic language?
Kalaallit Nunaat
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.
Q 07On Mercator world maps, Greenland looks about as large as which continent, which is really some 14 times bigger?
Africa
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.
Q 08Norse settlers may have abandoned Greenland in the 1400s partly because the market for which export collapsed?
Walrus ivory
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.
Q 09The ancestors of today's Greenlandic Inuit spread across the Arctic from which homeland about a thousand years ago?
Alaska
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.
Q 10Which Dano-Norwegian missionary arrived in Greenland in 1721 and founded what became its capital?
Hans Egede
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'.
Q 11Under the 1814 Treaty of Kiel, Denmark kept Greenland but ceded Norway to which country?
Sweden
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.
Q 12English took the name of which boat from the Inuit of Greenland, by way of Danish?
Kayak
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.
Q 13The US recognised Denmark's Greenland claim when it bought which territory in 1917?
The Virgin Islands
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.
Q 21What is Greenland's parliament called?
Inatsisartut
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.
Q 22Which word for a hooded jacket did English borrow from Greenlandic?
Anorak
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.
Q 23Which animal appears on Greenland's coat of arms?
A polar bear
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.
Q 14What was the code name of the secret US plan to hide missile sites under the Greenland ice cap?
Project Iceworm
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.
Q 15Camp Century, the US Army base dug into Greenland's ice sheet in 1959, was powered by what?
A nuclear reactor
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.
Q 16In January 1968 a US B-52 carrying four nuclear bombs crashed on the sea ice near which Greenland air base?
Thule
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.
Q 17The US base in northwest Greenland that watches for missile launches belongs to which branch of the military?
The Space Force
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.
Q 18Greenland's national day, the date its self-rule began in 2009, is timed to which natural event?
The summer solstice
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.
Q 19Greenland left the European Economic Community in 1985 chiefly to escape its common policy on what?
Fishing
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.
Q 20Under Greenland's 2009 self-rule act, which powers stay with Denmark?
Foreign affairs and defence
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.
Q 24With about 56,000 people, Greenland holds which world record?
Least densely populated country
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.
Q 25Which Norwegian explorer led the first crossing of Greenland's ice sheet in 1888, travelling on skis?
Fridtjof Nansen
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.
Q 26If Greenland's entire ice sheet melted, global sea level would rise by about how much?
7 metres
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.
Q 27Alfred Wegener, who died on Greenland's ice sheet in 1930, is remembered for proposing which scientific idea?
Continental drift
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.
Q 28Where in Greenland was the Northern Hemisphere's record low of −69.6 °C measured?
Near the summit of the Greenland ice sheet
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.
Q 29Kaffeklubben Island, a speck off Greenland's Arctic Ocean coast, holds which world record?
Northernmost island
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.
Q 30Northeast Greenland is home to the world's largest what?
National park
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.