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The history of Greenland is a history of life under extreme Arctic conditions: currently, an ice sheet covers about eighty percent of the island, restricting human activity largely to the coasts. The first humans are thought to have arrived in Greenland around 2500 BCE.
Iceland continues to remain outside the European Union. Iceland is very remote, and so has been spared the ravages of European wars but has been affected by other external events, such as the Black Death and the Protestant Reformation imposed by Denmark. Iceland's history has also been marked by a number of natural disasters.
Greenland had been a protected and very isolated society until 1940. [63] Greenland was a colony, and it was believed that this society would be subjected to exploitation or even eradication if the country was opened up. Therefore, a strict monopoly on Greenlandic trade was maintained, although it was abolished in 1950. [64]
Iceland is closer to continental Europe than to mainland North America, although it is closest to Greenland (290 kilometres; 155 nautical miles), an island of North America. Iceland is generally included in Europe for geographical, historical, political, cultural, linguistic and practical reasons.
Erik the Red (c. 950–1003 AD), a Norse explorer, is best known for settling Greenland. Banished from Iceland for manslaughter, he sailed west around 982 AD, exploring and naming Greenland to attract settlers. After three years of scouting the land, he returned to Iceland and led a fleet of 25 ships, bringing Norse settlers to Greenland in 985 AD.
978: Snæbjörn galti Hólmsteinsson becomes the first Norseman to intentionally navigate to Greenland. 982: The Norwegian-Icelandic viking known as Eric the Red is banished from Iceland. He sails off and sights the island. He decides to name it Greenland to make the island appear more attractive. 986: Norse Settlement of Greenland begins.
Pele Broberg, Greenland's former foreign minister and now chairman of the political party Naleraq, cites Iceland, which left the Danish kingdom in 1944 as an example. "Iceland still sends medical ...
He that year considered the idea of United States annexation of both Greenland and Iceland an idea "worthy of serious consideration". [75] Robert J. Walker, like Seward an advocate of American expansionism, submitted to Seward a report by the United States Coast Survey that the secretary of state had requested on the two islands.