I was glad to see Emily Mills address Ron Johnson's most recent whopper, in which he claimed that "There's a reason Greenland is called Greenland...it was actually green at one point."
Thankfully, others were quick to point out what he so thoroughly missed: Greenland was likely so named by one of the first Viking settlers, Erik the Red, in a plot to get more people to settle there. It was not some verdant paradise, as Johnson seems to imagine.
Having taken two (TWO!!) courses on Scandinavian history during my time at UW, I can attest that the history of the name is widely debated. Even wikipedia acknowledges that. However, no respectable historian has yet to step up and propose that the real reason was that the island was "a lot greener" at the time. As the Icelandic chick from Mighty Ducks 2 said, "Greenland has lots of ice, and Iceland is very nice." That has always been the case.
