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Greenland is the world's largest island, yet almost nobody visits it — these 15 facts show exactly what the place actually looks like
Greenland occupies an unusual place in the global imagination. Most people can point to it on a map. Most can also confirm, correctly, that it's the world's largest island. Beyond that single fact, the details tend to run out fast. Fewer travelers visit Greenland in an entire year than pass through a single well-known landmark in a single week. The island's ice sheet, fjords, and small coastal towns rarely come up in conversation the way its name does.
The basic facts explain both why so few people go there and why the place looks the way it does in the photographs that do circulate. Almost all of Greenland's interior sits under one of only two ice sheets left on Earth. Its towns cluster in isolated pockets along the coast, linked to each other by plane, boat, or helicopter rather than by road. The island has no railways and no highway system connecting one settlement to the next. Its capital holds about 20,000 residents, making it one of the smallest national capitals anywhere in the world. Reaching the island has historically meant multiple flights and a serious budget. New airports, and for the first time a direct route from the U.S., have begun to change that math.
