Greenland, despite its verdant name, is basically a big, old sheet of ice. Some parts of the ice can have a thickness of 3200 metres thick and could be up to 100,000 years old. The difficult terrain, combined with the unpredictable weather, means that people haven't had much motivation to explore the island's interior. Even the parts of the island that aren't covered in ice are only like that because the air is too dry for it to form in the first place. The name "Greenland" is actually more wishful thinking than anything else. The story goes that Erik the Red called it that as some kind of Viking PR stunt to try and encourage people to settle there. It was called Greenland to conjure up images of lush rolling hills, and because Freezingyourkanckersoffland was less catchy. Despite the fact that it's the largest island in the world, we're still discovering bits of it. As recently as 1999, scientists found a whole bunch of island that they had no idea existed up until that point. Most of its population of just 56,000 people (that's about have the amount of people that live in Stratford-upon-Avon) live around the coast.
