Why is greenland never included in the list of countries in north america?
May 8, 2011 | 
Author Question by rachel: Why is greenland never included in the list of countries in north america?
Best answer:
Answer by greensock
Because it’s not in North America?
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
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Because it’s Danish
A better question is why isn’t Greenland considered a continent when it is larger than Australia.
Greenland is a territory of Denmark
It belongs to Denmark, and it’s not considered to be in North America.
It is on my map … http://www.aneki.com/North_America_Map.html
http://geography.about.com/library/maps/blrnorthamerica.htm
Geography lesson for today … Greenland IS in North America.
Greenland is part of North America. Why it isn’t usually listed is also a mystery to me. My only theory would be it’s small population-wise and it’s pretty far away from the rest of North America.
The idea that it belongs to Denmark and is, therefore, not a part of North America is baseless. So when India was a colony of England, it wasn’t part of Asia? Which continent an area belongs to is based on geographical location, not who owns it.
A continent is a large contiguous chunk of land. Depending on where you are taught (in the world) you will have learned that there are between 4 and 7 continents.
In most of these models Greenland is part of the North American continent (islands get grouped together with the nearby continents as if they just broke off yesterday). I think depending on which model you use Greenland may be part of a different grouping.
Please also note that due to map distortion (projecting a 3-d sphere onto a 2-d flat surface) greenland is shown as disproportionately large… compare it to countries near the equator and check the land-size. The smaller size (about a quarter the size of australia) may be part of why it is generally overlooked. A little bigger and it might be it’s own continent
Hope this helps.