The name Greenland was coined by the Norse explorer Erik the Red. Exiled from Iceland for homicide, he landed there in around 982 and settled there a few years later. He chose the name to encourage other settlers, though it was misleading: the Greenland ice sheet, the world’s second-largest body of ice, is more than twice the size of Texas, and covers about 80% of the island.
Conditions were more clement in Erik’s time, but not by much: the Norse settlements eventually collapsed in the mid-15th century, predominantly because of a cooling climate. The island had also been settled by Inuit people migrating from North America, the most recent migration beginning around 1100. Today, its population of 57,000, concentrated largely around the capital Nuuk, is nearly 90% Inuit or part-Inuit; the remaining 11% is largely from Denmark, which retains sovereignty over it.
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