this is a ...disturbing topic, care to shed some background? any time of violence or abuse is not tolerated here or in person
Why is Greenland called Greenland, when it's white and covered with ice?
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Umm...why????? 😊
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It used to be green.
Over 80 percent of Greenland is covered in ice, but its grass was probably greener back in the summer of A.D. 982, when Erik the Red first landed in the southwest of the island.
The current names come from the Vikings. Norse custom was to name a thing as they saw it. For instance, when he saw wild grapes (blackberries, probably) growing on the shore, Erik the Red’s son, Leif Eríksson, named a portion of Canada “Vinland.”
Ice core and mollusk shell data suggests that from A.D. 800 to 1300, southern Greenland was much warmer than it is today. This means that when the Vikings first arrived, the Greenland name would make sense.
Due to climate change temperatures are rising, ice caps are melting and in a century or two Greenland will better resemble the name it was given a thousand years ago.
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the guys who discovered greenland did a shit tonne of meth
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why is Iceland called Iceland, when it is full of geysers and hot springs?
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@sir-devil
The legends say Naddador was the first Norse explorer to reach Iceland, and he named the country Snæland or “snow land” because it was snowing.So @Ragnar-Lothbrok 's fellow vikings did the same thing again they saw ice and called it iceland.
thanks to the Gulf Stream, Iceland’s sea surface temperatures can be about 10ºF (6ºC) warmer than Greenland. The milder climate means summers are intensely green throughout Iceland, even though 11 percent of that country is still covered with permanent ice cap.
The rapidly melting Greenland ice sheet has resulted in cold temperatures in the North Atlantic, which has significantly slowed the Gulf Stream. Should the trend continue, Iceland will likely suffer much colder temperatures and the name will be accurate in a century or two.
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I heard it was simply advertising, to help sell the idea of the new land to the people they hoped would colonise it. Can't remember where I heard that though
