How big is Greenland?
Greenland encloses approximately 2,154,808 km² in this site’s Natural Earth boundary dataset. Greenland is a large Arctic island whose outline becomes exceptionally prominent on Mercator maps. Its boundary-derived area is substantial, but the familiar world-map image is a poor way to compare it with lower-latitude places.
- Map-derived area
- 2,154,808 km²
- Area order
- 12 of 241 mapped places
- Representative latitude
- 74.3° N
- Mercator area scale at that point
- 13.7× its equatorial scale
What the map shows
Its representative map anchor is far north. Mercator expands local area strongly there, so move Greenland toward India or the equator and watch the projected outline contract. The number beside it does not change.
The Mercator factor above is calculated at one representative point. It changes across the country and describes map enlargement, not a change in its real area. See Greenland at its original position, then open the equal-area view.
Greenland compared with India
India is 1.46× the area of Greenland in this dataset. The bars below encode area as length, with the larger area spanning the full line.
Read the full comparison or place the outlines together on the map.
Places nearby in the area order
The entries immediately above and below Greenland in the same mapped dataset are shown here. A different source or an official land-area ranking can put close places in another order.
What this area figure includes
Natural Earth maps Greenland as a separate feature from Denmark. That makes it selectable here; it does not make this table a list of sovereign states. Small islands and coastline detail are limited by the 1:50m source geometry.
The area is calculated from the original Natural Earth 1:50m Admin 0 countries polygon. It is a consistent estimate for this map, not a certified land or total-area statistic. Read the area definitions before using the figure in research or teaching.