Map Projections Explained: Why Greenland Looks Huge (And What Mercator Gets Wrong)

Pull up a world map. The kind you've seen in classrooms and textbooks your entire life. Take a look at Greenland, sitting above North America like a white slab of ice that rivals the entire African continent in size.

Now here's the problem: Greenland is about 2.166 million square kilometers. Africa is 30.37 million square kilometers. Africa is roughly 14 times larger. They're not even close.

So why does every map you've ever seen tell you otherwise?

The Mercator projection: a 500-year-old compromise

In 1569, a Flemish cartographer named Gerardus Mercator published a new world map. He wasn't trying to show countries at their correct size. He was solving a specific problem for sailors: how to draw a flat map where a straight line represents a constant compass bearing.

That's called a rhumb line, and it was revolutionary for ocean navigation. A captain could draw a straight line between two ports on a Mercator map, read the angle, set the compass, and sail. Before Mercator, plotting a route across open ocean required complex calculations that most sailors couldn't perform.

The tradeoff? To keep compass bearings accurate, Mercator had to stretch the map horizontally near the poles. And to prevent continents from looking warped, he stretched it vertically by the same amount. The farther from the equator you go, the more everything inflates.

At the equator, distortion is minimal. At 60° latitude (around southern Greenland), areas are exaggerated by about 400%. At 70° latitude (northern Greenland), the exaggeration hits roughly 550%. At the poles themselves, the projection breaks down entirely — you'd need an infinitely tall map.

How big is Greenland, really?

Here are some comparisons that show just how misleading the Mercator projection can be:

Greenland vs. Africa: On a Mercator map, Greenland looks about the same size as Africa. In reality, you could fit Greenland inside Africa more than 14 times. Africa is larger than the United States, China, India, and most of Western Europe combined.

Russia vs. Africa: Russia sprawls across the top of a Mercator map like it covers half the planet. Its actual area is 17.1 million km², just over half the size of Africa (30.37 million km²). On the map, Russia looks two to three times bigger.

Alaska vs. Brazil: Alaska appears comparable to Brazil on a Mercator map. Brazil is actually about five times larger: 8.5 million km² compared to Alaska's 1.7 million km².

Scandinavia vs. India: The Nordic countries appear to dwarf India on Mercator maps. India (3.29 million km²) is actually larger than Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark put together (about 1.32 million km²).

These distortions aren't random. There's a clear pattern: countries in the Northern Hemisphere, which are typically farther from the equator, appear inflated. Countries near the equator, particularly in Africa and South America, appear shrunken by comparison. The Mercator projection doesn't add landmass to the north. It stretches everything at high latitudes. The equatorial regions stay at roughly their true scale.

Why this matters more than you think

You might be wondering whether map distortion actually matters outside a geography classroom. Researchers say it does.

A study published in Cartography and Geographic Information Science examined how people develop "cognitive maps" — the mental images we carry around of the world. The researchers found that repeated exposure to Mercator-style maps distorts people's understanding of relative country sizes. Most adults significantly overestimate how large northern countries are and underestimate the size of equatorial landmasses. This is sometimes called the "Mercator effect."

Barbara Tversky's research on cognitive maps, published in Geoforum, found that our mental representations of geography are full of systematic distortions. We straighten curved boundaries, align misaligned features, and misjudge relative sizes based on the maps we've seen most often.

In 2017, Boston Public Schools brought this issue into the spotlight. The district became the first in the United States to adopt the Gall-Peters projection for social studies classrooms. Teachers reported that when students saw an equal-area map for the first time, many were genuinely shocked at how large Africa actually is. The district said the change was meant to present a less Eurocentric view of the world.

"Maybe we should think about what we're telling children about the world when the first map they see makes Europe look the same size as South America," said one BPS curriculum director in a Guardian report.

So why do we still use Mercator maps everywhere?

If Mercator distorts sizes so badly, why hasn't the world moved on?

Navigation still needs it. The Mercator projection still preserves compass bearings, which remains valuable for nautical and aviation charts. No other projection makes straight-line navigation as simple.

Web maps are built on it. Google Maps, Apple Maps, OpenStreetMap, and nearly every digital mapping platform use a variant called Web Mercator. The projection's mathematical properties make it straightforward to slice into square tiles that load quickly at different zoom levels. When you're zoomed into a city, distortion is negligible. It only becomes a problem at the global scale.

It's what people expect. After 500 years, the Mercator layout feels "right" to most people. North is up. Continents are where we expect them. A different projection can feel disorienting, even if it's more accurate.

Google acknowledged the problem in 2018 when it updated Google Maps on desktop to show a 3D globe when users zoom all the way out. At street level, the Web Mercator tiles remain. But at the global view, Greenland finally shrinks to its actual size.

Map projections worth knowing about

Every flat map of the Earth involves compromise. You can preserve area, shape, distance, or direction — but not all four at once. Here are some projections that handle the tradeoffs differently:

The Gall-Peters projection

This equal-area cylindrical projection shows every country at its correct relative size. Africa looks as big as it should. Greenland shrinks dramatically. The catch: landmasses near the poles get squashed vertically and stretched horizontally, making familiar shapes look oddly elongated. It was popularized by Arno Peters in the 1970s (though James Gall first described it in 1855) and became a symbol of the "map wars" debate over cartographic equity.

The Robinson projection

Created by Arthur Robinson in 1963, this projection was specifically designed to "look right." It doesn't perfectly preserve area or shape, but it minimizes both distortions across the whole map. National Geographic used it as their standard world map from 1988 to 1998. It's probably the best option if you want a wall map that gives a reasonable impression of the world.

The Equal Earth projection

Introduced in 2018 by Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson, and Bernhard Jenny, the Equal Earth projection is the newest on this list. It preserves area (like Gall-Peters) while keeping shapes looking natural (unlike Gall-Peters). It was designed as a direct response to the drawbacks of both Mercator and Peters projections, and it's gaining adoption in textbooks and atlases.

The AuthaGraph projection

Designed by Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa, this projection folds the globe into a tetrahedron, then unfolds it flat. The result is a map where area ratios are nearly correct and no single continent is dramatically distorted. It won Japan's Good Design Grand Award in 2016. The downside: north isn't consistently at the top, which can be disorienting.

How to see the true size of countries yourself

Want to compare country sizes without Mercator distortion? A few tools make it easy:

thetruesize.com: This interactive tool lets you drag country outlines to different positions on the Mercator map. Move Greenland to the equator and watch it shrink. Drag Africa north and watch it grow. It's the fastest way to understand how latitude affects perceived size.

Fizzy Learning - Geography: Our free geography app covers 700+ geographic items with interactive quizzes and study modes. It's a hands-on way to build your knowledge of where countries actually are and how they relate to each other.

Globe view in Google Maps: On desktop, just zoom all the way out. The map transitions from flat Mercator to a 3D globe, correcting the size distortions automatically.

The bottom line on map projections

Every world map is a compromise. The Mercator projection solved a real problem for 16th-century sailors, and its mathematical properties keep it useful for digital mapping today. But it was never meant to represent country sizes accurately.

Understanding map projections doesn't mean throwing out every Mercator map you own. It means knowing what you're looking at. When someone shows you a flat map and Greenland towers over Africa, you'll know the map is doing the distorting — not the planet.

The world is round. Maps are flat. Something has to give. The question is just what you're willing to sacrifice.

Sources

1. Mercator, G. (1569). Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata. Referenced via Britannica: Mercator projection | Definition, Uses, & Limitations

2. Kessler, F. C., & Battersby, S. E. (2023). "Cognition and perception of map projections: a literature review." Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 50(6). doi:10.1080/15230406.2023.2195683

3. Tversky, B. (1992). "Distortions in cognitive maps." Geoforum, 23(2), 131–138. ScienceDirect

4. Battersby, S. E. (2017). "Shapes on a plane: evaluating the impact of projection distortion on spatial binning." Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 44(5). USGS Publication

5. Rosenberg, M. (2026). "Why Does Greenland Look So Big on Some Maps?" Britannica. britannica.com

6. Kaplan, S. (2017). "Boston public schools map switch aims to amend 500 years of distortion." The Guardian. theguardian.com

7. Šavrič, B., Patterson, T., & Jenny, B. (2018). "The Equal Earth Map Projection." International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 33(3), 454–465.

8. Google Maps Globe Mode (2018). "Google Maps now depicts the Earth as a globe." The Verge. theverge.com

9. NPR (2026). "How large is Greenland, really? Your map may be deceiving you." npr.org

10. USGS (2014). "Implications of Web Mercator and Its Use in Online Mapping." usgs.gov