Nunavut
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50 free Nunavut trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Nunavut is the youngest piece of Canada's map and by far the biggest, a territory of tundra, sea ice and scattered islands where a few dozen small communities are spread across an area the size of a large country. No trains run here and the neighbours are a long flight away, which makes everyday life in Nunavut unlike anywhere else in Canada. This quiz covers the facts people most often look up about Nunavut, Canada: the capital and the other main communities, how the territory came to exist, its flag and official symbols, Inuit language and traditions, the explorers who came looking for a route through the ice, and the geographic records hidden in the far north. It suits students, teachers, travellers planning a northern trip and anyone who enjoys Canadian geography. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a handful of fun facts about Nunavut whatever your score.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Canada and Denmark spent decades leaving each other bottles of liquor on which islet off Nunavut?
Hans Island
Hans Island was the prize of the so-called Whisky War, in which Canadians left whisky and Danes left schnapps. The two countries agreed in 2022 to split the island roughly in half.
Q 02Nunavut's licence plates are famous for being cut into the shape of which Arctic animal?
Polar bear
A polar bear has shaped licence plates in Canada's North since 1970, and Nunavut kept the design when it became a territory. After a spell of rectangular plates, the bear shape returned in 2025.
Q 03What does the name Nunavut mean in the language of the Inuit, who make up most of its people?
Our land
Our land is the meaning of Nunavut, and the territory's motto builds on it: Nunavut Sannginivut, or 'our land, our strength'.
Q 04Which city, whose name means 'place of many fish', is the capital of Nunavut?
Iqaluit
Iqaluit is Canada's smallest capital by population, with only 7,429 residents at the 2021 census. Voters picked it as capital in 1995, four years before the territory existed.
Q 05The amauti, a parka worn by Inuit women in Nunavut, has a built-in pouch for carrying what?
A baby
A baby rides in the pouch, called the amaut, just below the hood and against the mother's back until about two years of age.
Q 06St. Jude's Anglican Cathedral in the capital of Nunavut is famously built in the shape of what?
An igloo
An igloo is the shape of the white cathedral, which opened in 2012 after an arson fire destroyed the first igloo-shaped church on the site.
Q 07Which British ship, whose timbers became the Oval Office desk, gave its name to a Nunavut hamlet?
HMS Resolute
HMS Resolute was abandoned in Arctic ice in 1854, found adrift by an American whaler and returned to Queen Victoria. The hamlet of Resolute, founded in 1953, carries its name.
Q 08Nunavut has only about 40,000 people, yet its land mass is almost as large as which country?
Mexico
Mexico is only a little larger than Nunavut's 1.8 million square kilometres of land, yet Mexico is home to about 130 million people.
Q 09Which animal, known to Inuit as the qimmiq, did Nunavut adopt as its official animal in 2000?
A sled dog
A sled dog, the Canadian Inuit Dog, became Nunavut's animal symbol on May 1, 2000. Inuit worked the dogs as sled teams and as hunters able to track a seal's breathing hole from far away.
Q 10Nunavut's Tanya Tagaq is famous for which vocal art, traditionally a contest between two women?
Throat singing
Throat singing, or katajjaq, is a duet in which each singer tries to outlast the other. Tagaq, who is from Cambridge Bay, broke with tradition by performing it solo.
Q 11Whose doomed 1845 Arctic expedition left three crewmen buried on Nunavut's Beechey Island?
John Franklin
John Franklin lost both of his ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and all 129 men in the ice. The wrecks lay undiscovered off Nunavut until 2014 and 2016.
Q 12Until Nunavut split from the Northwest Territories in 1999, it was governed from which capital city?
Yellowknife
Yellowknife had been capital of the undivided Northwest Territories since 1967. A 1982 plebiscite backed division, and the new territory finally began on April 1, 1999.
Q 13Which island, the largest in Canada and fifth-largest on Earth, holds the capital of Nunavut?
Baffin
Q 21Which Elizabethan explorer shipped tons of worthless Nunavut ore to England, thinking it was gold?
Martin Frobisher
Martin Frobisher carried about 1,350 tons of ore back to England before it was found to be worthless. His 1576 account is also the earliest written record of the region.
Q 22In 1831 James Clark Ross became the first to reach which spot, on Nunavut's Boothia Peninsula?
North Magnetic Pole
The North Magnetic Pole is where a compass needle would point straight down. It has since drifted out of Nunavut and is moving across the Arctic Ocean toward Siberia.
Q 23Which language, written mostly in syllabics, is the mother tongue of most people in Nunavut?
Inuktitut
Baffin Island covers more than 500,000 square kilometres but had only 13,039 residents at the 2021 census, most of them in the capital.
Q 14Which Nunavut outpost, 817 km from the North Pole, is the northernmost inhabited place on Earth?
Alert
Alert has no permanent residents, but military and scientific staff have kept it continuously inhabited since April 1950. It is named after HMS Alert, a ship that wintered nearby in 1875–76.
Q 15Which Inuit symbol stands in red at the centre of the flag of Nunavut, beside a blue star?
Inuksuk
Inuksuk is the word for the stone markers Inuit built to guide travellers and mark sacred sites. The flag's blue star is Niqirtsuituq, the North Star.
Q 16Nunavut is even more sparsely populated than which neighbouring island of about the same area?
Greenland
Greenland has about 57,000 people to Nunavut's roughly 40,000, on a similar area. That leaves Nunavut the least densely populated major region on Earth outside Antarctica.
Q 17Which explorer spent two winters at Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, while first sailing the Northwest Passage?
Roald Amundsen
Roald Amundsen named the harbour after his ship, the Gjøa. The Arctic skills he learned there from the local Netsilik Inuit later helped him reach the South Pole.
Q 18Nunavut's creation was the first major change to Canada's map since which province joined in 1949?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland, renamed Newfoundland and Labrador in 2001, was the last province to join Canada. Nunavut's borders were drawn in 1993, six years before the territory began.
Q 19Which sea mammal stands opposite a caribou as a supporter on the coat of arms of Nunavut?
Narwhal
Narwhal and caribou stand for the food and resources of sea and land. In Nunavut waters, narwhals have been filmed using their tusks to stun small fish.
Q 20The Belcher Islands, home to Nunavut's southernmost community, lie in which huge body of water?
Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay touches Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, yet the Belchers and most other islands in it belong to Nunavut. Most Belcher islanders live in the hamlet of Sanikiluaq.
Inuktitut was the mother tongue of about 63% of respondents in the 2016 census. It shares official status in Nunavut with Inuinnaqtun, English and French.
Q 24Barbeau Peak, the highest point in Nunavut, rises on which island, the northernmost in Canada?
Ellesmere
Ellesmere is Canada's third-largest island, and its northern tip, Cape Columbia, is less than 800 km from the North Pole. Barbeau Peak stands 2,616 metres high.
Q 25Scientists rehearse Mars missions on which Nunavut island, the largest uninhabited one on Earth?
Devon
Devon Island has no permanent residents, and its Haughton impact crater looks so much like Mars that NASA's Haughton–Mars Project spends its summers there.
Q 26Which Nunavut peak, named for a Norse god, features the greatest vertical drop on Earth?
Mount Thor
Mount Thor has a cliff that drops about 1,200 metres and overhangs at an average of 15 degrees past vertical. Glaciers carved it along the Akshayuk Pass.
Q 27Canada's four-corners point joins Nunavut, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories and which province?
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan's corner is marked by a one-metre aluminium obelisk whose cap threatens five years in prison for removing it. The spot is hundreds of kilometres from any road.
Q 28Akimiski Island belongs to Nunavut even though it lies in which bay between Ontario and Quebec?
James Bay
James Bay's largest island, uninhabited Akimiski, sits close to the Ontario shore, yet it is administered as part of Nunavut's Qikiqtaaluk Region far to the north.
Q 29Nunavut's legislature governs by consensus because members are elected without belonging to what?
Political parties
Political parties are absent from Nunavut's assembly, so every member is elected as an individual. About two weeks after an election, the members themselves choose the premier and cabinet.
Q 30Which Nunavut hamlet, founded in 1953 by relocated Inuit, is Canada's northernmost civilian community?
Grise Fiord
Grise Fiord began when Ottawa moved eight Inuit families from Inukjuak, Quebec, promising homes and game that they did not find. The government formally apologised in 2010.