Written By John Bradley
The Greenlanders call their own country Inuit Nunaat or Kalaallit Nunaat, meaning Land of the People or Land of the Greenlanders, respectively.
Greenland is a vast country with big contrasts and it is the worlds largest island. One of the fun facts about Greenland is that even though it is the worlds largest island, it also has one of the smallest populations.
Greenland is the world’s largest island, with a size of 2.175.600 square kilometers. That area is larger than the following countries combined: France, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and Belgium.
From north to south Greenland is 2,670 kilometres. From east to west, there is 1,050 kilometres. The closest country is Canada only 26 kilometres away Greenland’s highest point is Gunnbjorn’s Mountain, 3,733 metres.
It is an interesting thought that Greenlands southernmost point lies on the same latitude as Oslo in Norway, while the westernmost point lies on the same longitude as New York.
Approximately 80% of Greenland is permanently covered in ice. The Ice Sheet is covering the middle of the huge island and it is the world’s largest glacier, it is several kilometers thick and, in some places, it is so heavy that it has pushed part of the mainland below sea level. The Greenlandic Ice Sheet holds approximately 7% of all the fresh water reserves on Earth.
Greenland spans three time zones when you include the Thule Air Base. As visitors or tourists, most of the time you only need to relate to one time zone as central Greenland is using GMT-3 (Greenwich Mean Time minus 3 hours). Thereby being four hours behind CET (Central European Time) and two hours ahead of EST (Eastern Standard Time, e.g. Toronto).
Only about 56,500 people live here and most residents were born in Greenland. About 11% of the population comes from Denmark and other countries. The population growth is stagnant.
Where do the Greenlanders live? They live along the coasts. The ice-free areas are about 410,500 square kilometres. This corresponds to the size of Norway.
