Greenland is the world’s largest island that is not considered a continent.
Greenland covers about 2.17 million square kilometers and is geographically part of North America. Approximately 80 percent of its surface is covered by the Greenland ice sheet, one of Earth’s two major ice sheets. The island lies between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and northwest of Iceland.
Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, with extensive self-government introduced in 1979 and expanded in 2009. Its capital is Nuuk, on the southwest coast. The island was settled by Inuit peoples over many centuries, while Norse settlements were established under Erik the Red around the end of the 10th century. Australia is sometimes called an island, but it is conventionally classified as a continent; that is why Greenland holds the largest-island record in standard geographic usage.