Greenland's geography

Kalaallit Nunaat, the "land of the Greenlandic people", occupies an area of 2,166,086 square kilometres, making it the largest island in the world. The northernmost point of Greenland, Cape Morris Jesup, is only 740 km from then North Pole.

The southernmost point is Cape Farewell, which lies at about the same latitude as Oslo, Norway. Only 410,449 square kilometres, an area the size of the British Isles, is free of ice. The rest is covered with the great masses of inland ice, rising from sea level to a height of 3,000 metres. From north to south, Greenland extends over 2,670 kilometres and the enormous east - west distances in the north of the country place it in four time zones.

Greenland has an arctic climate, but the vast size of the country means that the climate varies greatly from north to south and from east to west. In the south, July is the warmest month, with average temperatures of 8-9 C. In the coldest month, temperatures drop to -10-15 C.

In the north, temperatures average -30 C during the winter and in summer it rarely reaches 4-5 C. One of the most spectacular effects of the cold is the formation of ice. In areas where inland glaciers reach the fjords and the coast, the most productive glaciers boast speeds of over 30 metres a day.