The name suggests a warm place full of trees and land covered in grass. Greenland is not actually like that. It is a large island in the north, near Canada, and it's one of the biggest countries in land, but the smallest by population. This could have something to do with how cold it can get there, because you have to be very tough to handle the climate.
Even though Greenland is about one-fourth of the size of the United States, Greenland only has about 57,000 people. That is the size of a big college or university in the United States. A lot of the country is just too cold for people to live there, especially in the north, so they find the warmer parts which are in the west.
A large percentage of Greenlanders are Inuit. This is a tribe of people who have been in Greenland for a long time, and about 8,000 people are Danish people from Denmark, which is a small country in Europe. Many Greenlanders, about 15,000, live in the capital, Nuuk. This is so small that you can run into the prime minister of Greenland at the supermarket.
Most of Greenland, around 80 percent, is covered in ice, so most people live on the western coast, which is the warmest part, although it's not that warm. For most of the year, Greenland is a very cold place. In winter, most of northern Greenland is in the dark and doesn't see the sun. In the summer, it's the opposite. There are 24 hours of sunlight.
Native Greenlanders have been living in Greenland for thousands of years. They are related to the people of the north, like Native Americans in Canada and Alaska. Scientists think they may have sailed in boats from north Canada many centuries ago and started living there. They may also have been able to walk across the ice. There were also the Vikings from Denmark who sailed from that small country and landed in Greenland. These people shared the island with the people from Canada.
The Tribune