H023
On most world maps, Greenland looks as big as Africa. How big is it really?
The same two shapes, drawn two ways. Africa stays the same size in both.
On a Mercator world map
The map on most classroom walls and phones
At their true sizes
Equal-area map, same scale for both
Africa ≈ 11.7 million sq mi (30.3 million km²) · Greenland ≈ 836,000 sq mi (2.17 million km²)
A Mercator map draws Greenland slightly bigger than Africa. In reality, Africa is 14 times bigger. Mercator keeps compass directions true for navigation by stretching land more the farther it sits from the equator. Africa straddles the equator and barely stretches; Greenland, mostly above 60° N, is stretched more than any other large landmass.
Every flat map has to distort something: size, shape, distance, or direction. Before you compare sizes on a map, ask what that map was built to keep true.
Try it somewhere else
On a Mercator map, Russia looks about 2½ times the size of Africa.
Which is actually bigger, and what would you check before trusting the map?
Why does Mercator stretch Greenland so much?
Mercator widens every line of latitude to the same length as the equator, then stretches it north–south by the same amount to keep shapes and directions right. The result grows areas by a factor that climbs quickly toward the poles: about 1.3 times at 30°, 4 times at 60°, 10 times at 72° N (the middle of Greenland), and more than 30 times at Greenland’s northern tip.
Most of Africa lies between 35° N and 35° S, where the stretch stays under 1.5 times. That difference in stretching is what turns a 14-to-1 size gap into a map where Greenland looks bigger.
Greenland looks bigger than the Lower 48 too. Is it?
No. On a Mercator map, Greenland covers about two and a half times the map area of the contiguous United States. In reality, the Lower 48 is about 3,120,000 sq mi (8.08 million km²), big enough to hold about 3.7 Greenlands.
How big is Greenland compared with Africa’s largest countries?
Greenland lands almost exactly in the middle. On a Mercator map, Greenland covers about 12 times Algeria’s map area. At true size, Algeria and DR Congo are each larger than Greenland, and Sudan and Libya are only modestly smaller.
| Country | True area | Compared with Greenland |
|---|---|---|
| Algeria | 919,595 sq mi (2.38M km²) | +10% |
| DR Congo | 905,355 sq mi (2.34M km²) | +8% |
| Greenland | 836,331 sq mi (2.17M km²) | — |
| Sudan | 718,723 sq mi (1.86M km²) | −14% |
| Libya | 679,362 sq mi (1.76M km²) | −19% |
How the maps were drawn
Both panels use the same Natural Earth outlines. The left panel draws them with the Mercator projection; the right panel gives each shape its own equal-area projection at one shared scale, so their areas compare directly. The two panels are sized so that Africa matches, which lets Greenland’s change in size show on its own. Shapes were moved side by side; rotating or moving a shape does not change its area.
Related exhibits
Sources: CIA World Factbook areas (Africa ≈ 30.3 million km², Greenland ≈ 2.17 million km², ratio ≈ 14; contiguous U.S. ≈ 8.08 million km²; African country areas in the dropdown). Map areas measured from Natural Earth 1:50m outlines drawn with D3 in Mercator and azimuthal equal-area projections.