"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 08/11/17 (Greenland)

I have to thank fellow linguist Kory Stamper. She works for the American dictionary company, Merriam-Webster, and she tells a really good tale. So thic is one that she tells. And it's basically about why Greenland is called Greenland. Because it's not exactly a grassy plain, and it seems a bit of an odd choice. Start with Iceland. The name of Iceland is fairly self-explanatory - a land covered in glaciers. And that was colonised in the ninth century by the Vikings. But there was an ulterior motive there because the Norse settlers didn't want anyone else to come. So they wanted to make it sound as unappealing as possible, as cold and barren as the name suggests. Nonetheless, Norse people - they didn't mind Norse people going there - flocked to the island, daspite the fact it was small and it had very, very little arable land. But bacause it was smal and because there wasn't too much land to g oaround, it led many, many squables between these settlers. And many people were banished from the country for being too argumentative, essentially. And one of those was Eric Thorvaldsson, otherwise known as Eric the Red. He was banished from the country. He haeded west and he landed at a huge landmass which he decided to then go and explore. He spent several winters there and decided he quite liked it, and it would be a good place for him, being in exile, to set up shop, if you like. So he returned home, probably in secret, to Iceland, where everything began, and tried to lure his friends away because he wanted to make a small settlement there. But whereas Iceland was named in order to deter people, Greenland was named for the very opposite reason. He thought, they're never going to come if I tell them exactly whit it is like. It's pretty unappealing and it is pretty cold." So he called it Greenland, because, as a Norse saga goes, "Men will greatly desire to go there if the land has a good name". So nothing to do with the fact that there was anything green there. It was all a marketing exercise.