Greenland [ e ] is an autonomous territory [ f ] in the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the world's largest island , [ g ] and is the location of the northernmost point of land in the worldβ Kaffeklubben Island off the northern coast is the world's northernmost undisputed point of land ; [ h ] Cape Morris Jesup on the mainland was thought to be so until the s.
Economically, Greenland is heavily reliant on aid from Denmark , amounting to near half of the territory's total public revenue. Though a part of the continent of North America , Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with the European kingdoms of Norway and Denmark for more than a millennium, beginning in The 13th century saw the arrival of Inuit.
Since the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese had been trying to discover the northern passage to Asia, culminating in the oldest cartographic representation of its coast. Later in the early 17th century, Dano-Norwegian explorers reached Greenland again, finding their earlier settlement extinct and reestablishing a permanent Scandinavian presence on the island.
When Denmark and Norway separated in , Greenland was transferred from the Norwegian to the Danish crown. Since the 19th century, Greenland was seen by the Danish kingdom as one of its ancestral lands and part of its national identity , linked to a thousand-year-old Nordic history, unlike its Caribbean and Asian overseas colonies.
In the Greenlandic home rule referendum , Denmark granted home rule to Greenland; in the Greenlandic self-government referendum , Greenlanders voted for the Self-Government Act, which transferred more power from the Danish government to the local Naalakkersuisut Greenlandic government.
