Green Iceland and Icy Greenland

Iceland and Greenland are two such neighbouring islands which are opposite of what their names suggest. Iceland is the world's 18th largest island, and Europe's second largest island following Great Britain. Greenland is the largest island in the world and has second largest ice sheet. The total area of Greenland is 2,166,085 km out of which 1755,617 km (81%) is covered by Greenland ice sheet. Greenland posses one-twentieth of the world's ice and one-quarter of the earth's surface ice.

Iceland

Iceland

Iceland got its name from the visitor, the Norwegian Viking Flóki Vilgerðarson. The Landnámabók (source of information about Icelandic history) makes it clear that Flóki chose the uninviting name ísland ("ice land") for the view of a distant fjord full of sea-ice that he glimpsed from a tall mountain. Flóki settled for one winter at Barðaströnd. It was a cold winter, and when he spotted some drift ice in the fjords he gave the island its current name, Ísland (Iceland). Iceland is now famous for its natural scenery with volcanic craters, lava flows, hot springs and geysers, glaciers and stunning waterfalls.

Greenland

Greenland

The name Greenland comes from Scandinavian settlers. The real story behind the name is given in Erik the Red's Saga, based on oral tradition and written down in the early thirteenth century in Iceland. In the Icelandic sagas, it is said that Norwegian-born Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland for murder. He was banished from Iceland for three years. He used the time to explore the rumoured lands to the west. When his term of banishment expired, he returned to Iceland to invite his neighbours and friends to settle the new country with him. He purposely chose the pleasant name Grænland ("green land") to attract settlers. Greenland was also called Gruntland ("Ground-land") and Engronelant (or Engroneland) on early maps. Whether green is an erroneous transcription of grunt ("ground"), which refers to shallow bays, or vice versa, is not known. The southern portion of Greenland (not covered by glacier) is indeed very green in the summer and was likely to have been even greener in Erik's time, and the northern part of Greenland is occupied by the Inuit (Eskimos).