Greenland and Iceland aren’t really “switched” on purpose, but their names do seem backwards. Iceland is surprisingly green, with mild summers and rolling grasslands, while Greenland is about 80% covered in ice. The explanation is simpler and more human than most people expect: both names came from Vikings who named places based on what they personally saw and felt at the time.
How Iceland Got Its Name
Iceland went through three names before the one that stuck. The first Norse explorer to reach it, a Viking named Naddador, called it Snæland, meaning “snow land,” because it was snowing when he arrived. The next visitor, a Swedish Viking named Garðar Svavarosson, modestly renamed it Garðarshólmur, or “Garðar’s Isle.”
Then came Flóki Vilgerðarson, a Norwegian Viking nicknamed Hrafna-Flóki (“Raven Flóki”) because he navigated by releasing ravens and sailing the direction they flew. Flóki’s time in Iceland was miserable. His daughter drowned on the voyage over, and all his livestock starved during the long winter. Depressed and frustrated, he climbed a mountain in the Westfjords, looked out at a fjord choked with icebergs, and named the place “Iceland.” It was less a geographic survey than the verdict of a man having the worst year of his life.
The name reflected a real moment, but not the full picture. When Norse settlers first arrived around the 9th century, birch forest and woodland covered 25 to 40 percent of Iceland’s land area. Today only about 2 percent is covered by trees, largely thanks to centuries of deforestation, but the country still has extensive grasslands, moss-covered lava fields, and a climate far milder than the name suggests.
Why Iceland Is Warmer Than You’d Think
Iceland sits just below the Arctic Circle, which sounds brutally cold, but its climate is tempered by the Gulf Stream. This massive ocean current originates off the coast of Florida and flows north until it splits above the 45th parallel into the North Atlantic Drift. One branch heads toward Europe, the other flows along Iceland’s southeast coast, keeping the western side of the island several degrees warmer than its latitude would normally allow. Reykjavík’s average January temperature hovers around freezing, roughly the same as New York City.
A strong Gulf Stream also pushes back cold Arctic currents that flow down from the north, raising temperatures across the whole island. When the Gulf Stream weakens, those Arctic flows creep in and Iceland gets noticeably colder. So the country’s climate is in a constant tug-of-war between warm Atlantic water and cold Arctic air, and for most of recorded history, the warm side has won enough to keep the island far greener than its name implies.
Erik the Red’s Marketing Scheme
Greenland’s name has a more deliberate origin. In the late 10th century, a Norse chieftain named Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland for killing several men. He sailed west and spent three years exploring the southwestern coast of a massive, largely ice-covered island. When his exile ended and he returned to Iceland, he needed to recruit settlers to join him in building a colony there.
His solution was branding. As the Icelandic sagas put it in a single blunt sentence: Erik called the land “Greenland” because “people would be attracted to go there if it had a favorable name.” He knew a successful settlement needed bodies, and “Greenland” sounded a lot more inviting than what the place actually looked like. It worked. Erik returned with a fleet of 25 ships, though only 14 made it, and established the first Norse settlement on the island.
This is often called the first known example of misleading advertising, and it’s not entirely wrong. But Erik wasn’t lying about everything. The southwestern coast where he settled does have green fjords and patches of usable land during summer months. Norse settlers introduced farming practices there and raised cattle, sheep, and goats. They also traded walrus ivory over long distances. These settlements survived for nearly 500 years, from roughly 985 CE until the mid-1400s, when cooling temperatures and other pressures finally drove the Norse out.
Was Greenland Ever Actually Green?
The Norse arrived during a period of relatively warm climate across the North Atlantic, sometimes called the Medieval Warm Period. Greenland’s coastal margins were somewhat more hospitable then, with enough grass and scrubland to support small-scale herding. Research on lake sediments near Norse ruins in western Greenland shows evidence of land clearing, controlled fires, and herbaceous vegetation spreading between 1000 and 1200 CE. Fungal spores in the sediment confirm the presence of grazing animals, though the evidence suggests the farming was modest, not lush pastoral countryside.
As conditions worsened, the western settlers shifted toward hunting caribou and fishing rather than relying on their dwindling livestock. The settlements didn’t collapse overnight, but the margin for survival was always razor-thin. Greenland was never “green” in the way Iceland is green. Even during the warmest centuries of Norse habitation, the interior was covered by a massive ice sheet, just as it is today.
The Names Today
Modern Greenland is losing ice faster than at any point in recorded history. The ice sheet and its surrounding glaciers shed roughly 300 billion metric tons of ice per year, enough to measurably change sea levels. Satellite measurements from 2012 to 2017 show the ice sheet’s surface dropping in elevation along most of its margins. Greenland is, paradoxically, becoming slightly greener at its edges as ice retreats and vegetation creeps into newly exposed ground, but it remains overwhelmingly white.
Iceland, meanwhile, has been working to reverse centuries of deforestation. Its birch forests hit a low point around the mid-20th century, covering less than 1 percent of the island. Reforestation efforts by the Icelandic Forest Service have pushed tree coverage back up to about 2 percent, still modest but trending in the right direction. The country’s volcanic landscapes, hot springs, and green valleys continue to surprise visitors who expected a frozen wasteland based on the name alone.
So the “switch” isn’t really a switch. Iceland was named by a depressed Viking staring at icebergs after losing everything. Greenland was named by an exiled Viking running a recruitment campaign. Neither man was trying to create a geographic paradox. They were just dealing with their circumstances, and the names stuck for a thousand years.