Why is it called Greenland if it’s covered in ice? “The result of pure commercial marketing”

Greenland, the world’s largest island is a vast expanse of white ice and recent political goings-on have thrust it into the headlines. It’s Donald Trump’s latest obsession as the Leader of the Free World© looks to take it from Denmark’s hands.

In the late 10th century, a Norse explorer named Erik the Red found himself in exile from Iceland, banished for manslaughter. Instead of returning to Norway or pleading his case, he sailed west into the uncertain waters of the North Atlantic.

The story goes that he came upon a massive landmass with icy fjords and scattered patches of summer greenery along its southern shores. Erik spent a few years exploring this territory and, as the sagas record, returned to Iceland to recruit settlers for a new life across the sea.

Erik’s strategy was simple: call the new land something that sounded attractive. He chose “Greenland,” derived from the Old Norse “Grønland,” which does, believe it or not, mean green land. According to historical sources, he believed that promising a verdant landscape would encourage others to make the difficult journey and settle on this remote island.

Simple, effective, Norse marketing.

However, Erik the Canny was using more than just poetic language. At the time, the climate in the North Atlantic experienced a relatively mild phase, known to historians as part of the broader Medieval Warm Period, which made the coastal valleys of southern Greenland greener and more hospitable than the interior ice sheet would suggest. Still, it was largely covered in ice.

Erik’s marketing ploy worked, and two major Norse communities were established that endured for centuries, though they eventually faded as climates cooled and contacts with Europe diminished. Today, Greenland’s indigenous Inuit population and Danish administrative structures carry on in a place where ice remains the defining feature, even if the name hints at something else.

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It’s worth noting that in the island’s native language, the name of the land mass is Kalaallit Nunaat, or “land of the Kalaallit”, so called after the native Kalaallit who inhabit the territory’s western region.

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