Greenland is nearly 80 percent ice caps and glaciers.
But in Greenlandic, the island is known as "the Land of the People." Who are those people?
The first people to live in Greenland were the early Inuit, who traversed the frozen strait between the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and what is now Qaannaq, Greenland, about 5,000 years ago.
At least six different Inuit cultures are believed to have made the journey, the most recent having arrived about 1100 CE.
The first Europeans to colonize Greenland arrived from Iceland and Norway about 986, led by the Norwegian explorer Erik the Red.
In order to convince more Norse settlers that the island was a fertile place to live, he called it "Greenland" — a name that couldn't be further from the truth.
The Norse colonies never grew to have more than 3,000 inhabitants.
By 1500, they had mysteriously disappeared.
Although no one knows for certain, experts think many died or left the island in part because the climate became cooler.
In 1721, Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede made a second attempt to colonize Greenland.
