What is the biggest lie in history?
Iceland and Greenland
To quote the Mighty Ducks 2, "Greenland is covered with ice... And Iceland is very nice."
Been to Iceland and flew over Greenland. Can confirm.
Green is mean, Ice is nice
I think I heard once that somebody intentionally lied while naming them so people wouldn't realize Iceland was the nicer one
Yeah, Erik the Red, father of Leif Erikson.
Underrated actor
He was born to play the part of a savage Viking
I prefer Erik the Viking.
Leif is a remarkable guitarist
That’s just an old one wive’s tale. Iceland is called Iceland because, though it’s greener than Greenland, it’s also very icey
He'd been exiled from his own country and discovered Greenland. He named it something pretty so people would come
Green is ice, ice is green
Exactly
No, it was kind of the opposite. Floki, one of the first people who attempted to settle there, lost all his cattle during a difficult winter and cursed the island with the name as he sailed home.
Edit: instead of downvoting, you can Google this information.
It's a fun theory but Europe was actually warmer when people were colonizing Greenland. It was actually green when they lived there.
While you are correct that it was more hospitable when the Norse settled there, it's important to acknowledge that that was relative, and even at its nicest, Greenland was still a very hard place to live. For some examples, the Norse Greenlanders didn't have local sources of timber for ships (among other things of course) and they relied heavily on walrus ivory trade for basically everything they needed, so once the Norwegian trading ships stopped showing up regularly, that pretty much spelled the end of Norse Greenland. Growing food was incredibly difficult, raising animals was ludicrously expensive, and they relied on trade with Norway and Iceland, and with hunting of reindeer, walrus, seals, and whales for food.
Greenland was, briefly, during the Medieval Warm Period, greener than it is today, to a degree, it was certainly no paradise, and was indeed very cold, barren, and inhospitable.
I guess I didn't realize my comment implied so much. I'm not the most researched on Norse history but am I wrong when I say that human settlement in Greenland was during the warm period in Europe?
Yeah sorry I can rant about this stuff all day!
You are mostly correct there; the Medieval Warm Period is what allowed the Norse settlement of Greenland in the first place, but keep in mind that native populations have lived in Greenland long before the Norse arrived, and long after their settlements collapsed. In any event, the MWP didn't turn Greenland into a lush paradise. It made it easier to sail there from Iceland, and the ice sheets retreated enough to allow for somewhat easier hunting and livestock grazing, but it was still a very inhospitable place to live, even at the warmest points of the MWP. The ecological angle as well as the extensive Norwegian trade and settlement across the North Atlantic made Greenland habitable for the Norse for a time.
(Don’t be sorry and keep on ranting! Stumbling on comments like these are one of the reasons I love reddit - yay history!)