Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The Vikings were terrible at naming things. By all accounts, they landed somewhere in Canada or perhaps
northern New England and set up a colony there in around the year 1000. They stayed for two years before
pulling up stakes. They called this colony Vinland. It is not a great spot for growing grapes.
But the naming of Greenland, the world's largest island, was less a mistake than an attempt at propa-
ganda. The notorious Eric the Red was a Viking with a long criminal rap sheet—he was banished from his
native Norway for manslaughter and outlawed at least twice more for killings in Iceland. Sailing from the
Norse colony on Iceland, Eric and his crew came upon Greenland, rich in game, fish, and birds, and similar
in its coastline to his native Norway. While 982 was undoubtedly a warmer period and some of Green-
land's glaciers had receded, Eric's chosen name for the island was still a stretch. Hoping to attract more
settlers, he named the new country Greenland. Some two hundred years later, the Greenland climate grew
colder and the glaciers spread. In addition, the island was visited by plague, the European Black Death,
and by the end of the fourteenth century, the Viking colony on Greenland was history.
Today, ice covers one tenth of the land surface of the planet. But it covers four fifths of Greenland,
sometimes at depths of up to a mile. Only 5 percent of the island is habitable, basically along two coastal
strips where the native population, Inuit with some Danish blood, live off the coastal and deep-sea fishing
industry. After the Vikings died out, the Danes arrived in the 1720s and Greenland became a Danish colony
in 1815. The island was a part of Denmark until 1953. In 1979 it achieved home rule as a self-governing
province, but it officially remains a Danish dependency.
The World's Largest Islands
New Guinea
Lying in the southwest Pacific just below the equator and to the north of Australia, the
world's second-largest island is divided into two parts politically: independent Papua New Guinea, self-
governing since 1973, and Irian Jaya, a province of Indonesia. It is not to be confused with Guinea, a
country on the west coast of Africa; its African neighbor Guinea-Bissau; or the South American country
of Guyana
.
And there are no guinea pigs there. They originally came from South America.
Borneo
The world's third-largest island is the largest of the Malay Archipelago. (
Archipelago
is a word
that has changed meanings. Originally, it meant a sea studded with many small islands, and referred spe-
cifically to the Aegean. Derived from the Greek
archi
, meaning “most important,” and
pelagos
, meaning
“sea,” the word is used more commonly now to refer to a large group of islands clustered together.)
Madagascar
Lying in the Indian Ocean off the coast of southeast Africa, this is an island of extinct
volcanoes; high, rugged mountains; and low, fertile coastal plains.
Baffin
Situated between Greenland and Canada, the island is named for William Baffin, an English ex-
plorer who reached the island and the adjoining bay in 1616.
Sumatra
Lying in the Indian Ocean on the equator, Sumatra is part of Indonesia. It is heavily rain-for-
ested, and rich in oil and other minerals.
Honshu
The largest of the four main Japanese islands, it is Japan's industrial and agricultural center
and contains the country's six major cities as well as Mount Fuji, the volcanic peak that is Japan's highest
mountain (12,388 feet; 3,776 meters).
