Greenland

Greenland is a giant island in the far north.

Ice covers most of the land. Rocky mountains rise by the sea.

Greenland is the largest island in the world, more than three times the size of Texas. It stretches about 2,670 kilometers from north to south, and two-thirds of it lies inside the Arctic Circle.

Greenland runs its own home affairs, but it is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which handles defense and foreign relations together with Greenland's leaders. On January 1, 2026, 56,740 people lived there. The photo shows a glacier flowing down a valley to Franz Josef Fjord in the northeast.

Britannica calls Greenland the world's largest island: about 2,670 km north to south and more than 1,050 km at its widest, with two-thirds inside the Arctic Circle. Its deeply cut coastline, about 39,330 km long, is roughly as long as Earth's circumference at the Equator.

After a 2008 referendum, Greenland became a self-governing overseas administrative division of Denmark on June 21, 2009, managing almost all domestic affairs while Denmark, working with Greenland's leaders, manages foreign relations and defense. The Inatsisartut (parliament) is elected by adults aged 18 and over. Statistics Greenland counted 56,740 residents on January 1, 2026. The currency is the Danish krone. The photo shows a glacier at Franz Josef Fjord.

Nuuk is the capital city.

In the photo, many houses in Nuuk are painted red, blue and yellow.

Nuuk, on the southwest coast, is the capital: about one in three Greenlanders lives there. The photo shows Nuuk's brightly painted houses on rocky hills.

Towns and villages sit along the ice-free coast; the ice sheet covers the middle. Roads only run inside towns, so people travel between places by ship and plane, and on the ice by dogsled and snowmobile. Ilulissat, on the west coast, sits beside Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Nuuk (Godthåb) is the capital; Statistics Greenland reports that 35.8 percent of residents lived in Nuuk on January 1, 2026. Most people live in the island's towns and the rest in villages, all on the ice-free coast.

Roads are limited to short stretches within towns; shipping and air service are the main links, with dogsleds and snowmobiles used on ice-covered ground. Nuuk has the Greenland National Museum and Archives, the Katuaq Cultural Centre and the small university Ilisimatusarfik, founded as the Inuit Institute in 1983. UNESCO's Ilulissat Icefjord lies 250 km north of the Arctic Circle on the west coast.

A huge sheet of ice covers most of Greenland.

Big pieces of ice break off and float away. They are called icebergs.

The Greenland Ice Sheet covers more than four-fifths of the land. It is about 1,500 meters thick on average, and only Antarctica's ice sheet is bigger. The ice slowly flows outward to glaciers, and big chunks break off into the sea as icebergs, like the one in the photo in Baffin Bay.

The highest mountain is Gunnbjørn Fjeld, 3,694 meters. Winters are very cold, especially in the north, and in summer the Sun stays up all night for about two months.

The ice sheet averages about 1,500 m thick, reaches about 3,000 m and covers more than 1,800,000 km². Snow compresses into ice that moves outward to the coastal glaciers. UNESCO describes Sermeq Kujalleq, which reaches the sea at Ilulissat Icefjord, as one of the fastest and most active glaciers in the world, calving over 35 km³ of ice a year, about 10 percent of all Greenland's calf ice. Most of the rock floor beneath the ice is at or slightly below sea level.

Average January temperatures run from about −7 °C in the south to about −34 °C in the north; July averages about 7 °C on the southwest coast. Precipitation falls from more than 1,900 mm in the south to about 50 mm in the north, so large areas count as Arctic desert. In 2012 satellites showed melting on 97 percent of the ice sheet at midyear.

Polar bears live in Greenland.

Musk oxen, reindeer and Arctic foxes live there too. Seals and whales swim in the sea.

Few trees grow in Greenland. The land is mostly tundra, with sedges, cotton grass and lichens. Polar bears, musk oxen, reindeer, Arctic foxes, snow hares, ermines and lemmings live on the land.

Seals and whales swim in the surrounding waters, and cod, halibut and salmon live in the sea. The polar bear in the photo was photographed jumping in Svalbard, Norway.

Vegetation is mainly tundra (sedges, cotton grass, lichens); the ice-free land is almost treeless, though dwarf birch, willow and alder survive in sheltered southern valleys. Land mammals include polar bears, musk oxen, reindeer, Arctic foxes, snow hares, ermines and lemmings.

Seals and whales in the surrounding waters were once the chief source of food, and seals, walruses and whales remain the most important source of meat. Cod, salmon, flounder and halibut are key saltwater fish; rivers hold salmon and Arctic char. Shrimp and halibut are the main exports. The photo shows a polar bear in Svalbard, Norway.

Most people in Greenland are Inuit.

They speak Greenlandic. People enjoy drum dancing and building kayaks.

Most Greenlanders are Inuit. Depending on their region, they call themselves Kalaallit (West Greenlanders), Inugguit (from the far north) or Iit (East Greenlanders). Greenlandic, an Inuit language, is the official language, and about one in ten people speaks Danish as a first language.

Fishing is the main business, especially for shrimp and halibut. Traditional arts are still popular, such as soapstone carving, drum dancing and building kayaks. Football (soccer) is very popular.

The 2009 Act on Greenland Self-Government made Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic) the sole official language; it belongs to the Inuit branch of the Eskimo-Aleut family, alongside the Tunumiit (East Greenlandic) and Inuktun (Polar) dialects. Danish is the native language of roughly 10 percent of people, and English is spoken too. Nearly two-thirds of people are Evangelical Lutherans.

Seal hunting gave way to fishing for cod and shrimp in the early 20th century, and tourism has grown since the 1990s. Farming is possible on about 1 percent of the land, in the south, with hay, vegetables and sheep. Nine years of school are free and compulsory, taught mainly in Greenlandic. Soapstone carving, drum dancing, kayak building and sailing remain popular.