A Criminal Find Out The Greenland! And Island's Icebergs

 Is Greenland very green?

Greenland is the world’s largest island and lies mostly within the Arctic Circle. But unlike the name, it is full of ice and is hardly very green anywhere! There are thin patches of soil and grass, heather and small flowering plants. The rest of the ice-free area is barren rock. Near the sea many raised beaches and terraces containing shells of marine molluscs and similar substances indicate that Greenland was raised or the sea had sunk during postglacial times.

In the year 982 Eric Thorvaldsen better known as Eric the Red sailed from Iceland and reached the southwestern coast of Greenland. He had been exiled from his country for three years for murdering a man. He spent all these years exploring this quiet land.

When he returned to Iceland, he told people about this new place and to make it sound attractive he called it Greenland! Many people decided to go to this place and Eric started again in 986 with 25 ships. Only 14 of these reached the destination and a colony was founded on the southwest coast. Many explorers visited Greenland after this. The great ice cap which covers most of the interior of Greenland attracted many scientific expeditions.

Eskimos from the Canadian archipelago had migrated to Greenland even before Eric the Red found it. Many Danish people now live in this country. Both Danish and Eskimo languages are spoken. The total population of Greenland is very small compared to the size of the island. Most of the people live in the southwest coast area which is ice-free.

What are icebergs?

Icebergs are floating masses of ice broken from the end of a glacier or a polar ice sheet. An iceberg can be very big in size – as big as a mountain, as wide as an island- and it may shine like a beautifully shaped castle made of gold and silver. Many big icebergs weigh millions of tons and are many kilometres wide.

Once broken free from a glacier or a polar sheet in the sea, icebergs drift according to the direction of the sea currents. They can be found far away from Polar Regions and are sometimes dangerous to the moving ships.

The part that is seen above the water is only a small portion, about one-ninth of the total mass of the iceberg. As the icebergs float and drift along the ocean to reach warmer water, they begin to melt and break apart. Many are tilted and even overturned because the wave cutting and melting disturb their equilibrium. When they melt completely, they disappear and join the ocean’s water as water only.

If you want to see how only a small part of an iceberg sticks up above the water, put an ice cube into a glass of water. You can see the ice through the transparent glass. Most of the ice cube will remain below the surface of the water, while only a tiny portion will be above the surface.