The
Worlds Largest Island
When you look at a standard Mercator projection map of the world, Greenland looks absolutely gigantic. That's because the projection magnifies the polar regions by stretching them out horizontally. Go look at a globe to get an idea of how big Greenland really is. OK, it's still gigantic.
Most of Greenland is covered with a mile thick icecap. The ice cap is so heavy that the center of the island has been pressed down way below sea level. It is now melting at an increased rate, and it may be completely gone in a couple hundred years, The volume of water involved will raise the ocean levels worldwide by about 24 feet. Add to this the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet and most costal cities will be hiring Dutch engineers to build dikes.
Greenland was first inhabited by Inuit peoples coming across from the Canadian arctic. Norsemen tried to establish colonies in the 10th century, but they failed due to famine. European colonization happened again in the 18th century, with the island finally belonging to the Danes. It now has limited autonomy and is reestablishing the use of the Greenlandic Inuit language. English and Danish are also spoken. Place names reflect the native culture. In Greenlandic, the island is called Kalaallit Nunaat (which translates to the somewhat circular "Land of the Greenlanders").
When we first came upon Greenland we had a fantastic day cruising through the fjords of Prince Christian Sound. The next days we visited Qaqortoq and Nuuk. We returned to Iceland by rounding Cape Farewell at the southern tip of the island.
