Greenland is an autonomously operating territory of Denmark that is nearly 20 times the size of Denmark proper, though the

whole of the Kingdom of Denmark includes Greenland and the Faroe Islands, alongside the original

European country. So although these are three different entities, they're also part of the same

larger Kingdom of Denmark entity. And both Greenland and

the Faroe Islands have representatives within the Danish Parliament to demonstrate that.

Greenland is geographically part of North America. It's on the same continental plate as the United

States, Mexico, and Canada, and is located just east of the northernmost portion

of Canada, the Canadian Arctic archipelago. But Greenland is culturally a mix of Scandinavian

European culture and Inuit culture, due to its history and present with both cultural influences.

Way back in the day, for at least 4,500 years,

but potentially even longer than that, various groups of Arctic-dwelling people have inhabited

Greenland, probably having crossed over from Canada. In the 10th century, though, Norsemen,

that is, Vikings, established settlements in the southern portion of Greenland,

and they actually didn't have to go far, having already set up shop midway between Europe and Greenland

on the island of Iceland previously. It was this group of Norsemen, who, led by Leif Erickson,

became the first known European people to reach North America,

and they did so about 500 years before Columbus made it to the Caribbean. The Inuit people

arrived a few hundred years later, in the 13th century, from Canada, much like their cultural

precursors, who did the same thousands of years earlier. The Inuit established their own

settlements, separate from the Norsemen, but the Kingdom of Norway laid claim to the entire

island in 1262, and the Norse colonies thereabouts developed and grew until the very late 15th

century, when the Black Death Plague sent Norway spiraling into decline, along with the rest of Europe,

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