Things you should know about Greenland

1. It's not very green, but it is very cold. Actually, there should be a harsher word for average winter temps between 21°F (-6°C) and -31°F (-35°C).
2. After WWII, the U.S. established an air base on Greenland's west coast, and in 1968 a U.S. B-52 bomber, loaded with four nuclear weapons, crashed near the base. Though the U.S. government claimed to have cleaned them all up, it turns out one weapon was never found and has resulted in high level radioactivity in the area--not to mention the fact that the construction of the base in the first place meant an Inuit population was kicked off of its traditional hunting grounds. The U.S. can be a jerk.
3. The weather in Greenland directly affects and therefore can predict weather in Western Europe.
4. The viking who first settled on Greenland, Eric the Red, did so because he was kicked out of first Norway then Iceland for murder. Bad temper. Oh, and then his granddaughter, Freydis, convinced another ship to accompany hers to the timbered area of Canada her father, Leif, had discovered only to have her crew kill the entire other ship's crew once they got there so that she could take all the profit. Nice people, those Vikings.
5. Much of the land in Greenland's interior is actually pushed under sea level by the weight of the ice that covers most of the country.
6. When Norwegian missionary Pastor Egede translated the Lord's Prayer into Greenlandic, he had to change "Give us this day our daily bread" to "Give us this day our daily meat."
7. The huge number of fjords along the edges of Greenland extend the island's coastline to more than twice that of the continental United States.
8. June 21--that's right, the Ligairi wedding anniversary--is a national holiday in Greenland, since it's the longest day of the year and the sun never goes down.

I'm already obsessed with Iceland, but I'm thinking that I'm going to have to do a whole Arctic tour now. I love my job.