The Mercator projection, a map projection of the earth onto a cylinder, is known to greatly distort areas near the poles.

Greenland takes as much area on the map as Africa, when in fact Africa’s area is approximately 14 times greater than Greenland.

To test the above, I’ve overlaid Greenland (blue) on Africa (red) based on the standard Mercator projection map compared to the actual geographical size.

Greenland, in fact, is smaller than India for example, but much bigger than most other countries.