Greenland vs. Iceland: should they change names?

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This article was published 19/02/2021 (1689 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the students in Alex Nicholls’s Grade 1 class at École Van Walleghem School noticed an inconsistency in how a pair of islands are named, they decided to do something about it.

What started as a class project looking at where the voyageurs originated and where they travelled, ended up veering onto the topic of how Greenland isn’t all that green and how Iceland isn’t covered in ice.

“They thought that the two islands should change their names, so people wouldn’t be confused,” Nicholls said. “Greenland is largely covered in ice. Iceland is much warmer, despite its name sounding icy and cold.”

The teacher took her students’ curiosity and turned it into a lesson. The 13 French immersion students were learning how to write persuasive letters during the English portion of their school day.

“Everyone wrote letters to the countries, persuading them to change their names,” Nicholls said.

She then took it a step further: she scanned the letters into a file and sent them to the Danish and Icelandic consulates in Canada. Greenland is part of the country of Denmark, while Iceland is an independent country, she noted.

“I’m hoping they’ll respond, that they’ll write back,” she said. “You never know until you try.”

In a hands-up poll of her students, given the choice, most of them would like to live in Iceland. At least, until they realized their friends were willing to give Greenland a go.

“They really are into Nordic culture. It comes from living in Winnipeg, and being used to the snow and cold temperatures,” she said. “They also learned that Greenland would be a great place to go exploring, because it’s so beautiful.”

Students Blair Li and Yixuan Yang thought the names might have been a clever advertising ploy.

“I think the people who named Iceland wanted to trick other people,” Yang said.

“Iceland is warmer than Greenland. Madame told us that Greenland needed more people, so that’s why they gave it that name,” Li said.

“We’re not sure if calling it Iceland would have kept people from wanting to go there or not,” Nicholls said, adding the name debate really caught the attention of her students. “The kids did this all on their own. They wanted to learn more about the two countries.”