The Mercator projection, a cylindrical map introduced by Geradus Mercator in 1569, distorts the true size of countries on maps, making them appear different to reality.

You'll see how massive nations like Algeria, Brazil, and the Democratic Republic of Congo often get minimized, while northern hemisphere countries are enlarged due to their position on the map ...

How big is Greenland really? There's a nifty website called The True Size Of that allows you to move countries around and see how big they actually are. Greenland is still pretty big.