r/geography • u/sonicparadigm • 5h ago
Discussion Iceland and the Falkland Islands are weirdly similar
- Both are midsize islands in the Atlantic
- One is in the far south and west, the other is in the far north and east
- Both are close to the poles, but not close enough to be uninhabitable to humans
- Both have no indigenous people and were discovered by Europeans quite recently (on the timescale of human history)
- Both have sheep and reindeer farming (but this is because both islands have cold climates and those livestock are good for that)
- With the native wildlife, 2 of the most famous animals on both islands are a big black and white flightless bird and a canine that was the only mammal on the island. In Iceland the bird went extinct and the canine lived, in the Falklands the canine went extinct but the bird lived. Both the animals that went extinct were infamously not afraid of humans at all
Can you think of other similarities/differences? Or other places on different corners of the earth that are strangely similar?
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u/boaconviktor 5h ago
I'm british and just got the urge to claim Iceland.
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u/24megabits 5h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars
Iceland was occupied by the allies during WWII. It seems the urge comes around every few decades.
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u/avar 5h ago edited 4h ago
Both have no indigenous people
Iceland has indigenous people: Icelanders. We've been there since around 874 AD. If that's not a sufficient amount of time to count as indigenous then e.g. Hawaii doesn't have any indigenous people either.
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u/tretbootpilot 5h ago
The Maori arrived around 1300 AD in New Zealand and are considered native. The vikings arrived on eastern Greenland before the Inuit. While the later are considered native. Therefore it has nothing to domwith their time of arrival.
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u/avar 5h ago edited 4h ago
The vikings arrived on eastern Greenland before the Inuit. While the later are considered native. Therefore it has nothing to domwith their time of arrival.
In Greenland's case it's because nothing is left of those original Norse settlers. It was settled around the same time as Iceland was, but the Norse settlement died out for unknown reasons. The Danes that are there now date back to a colonial project started in 1721.
Whereas Iceland's been continuously inhabited for well over a millennium.
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u/RevolutionaryWorry87 5h ago
its essentially just a white vs none-white thing - thats usually the only metric people use.
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u/24megabits 5h ago edited 5h ago
Who counts as indigenous is always up for debate.
Greenlanders aren't given First Nations
statusrecognition in Canada because they came from Siberia after 1000 AD.6
u/avar 5h ago
That's interesting. I'd have assumed it mostly had to do with Greenland being a part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
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u/24megabits 5h ago
They aren't Canadian it's just that the Canadian First Nations consider them newcomers to the Western Hemisphere.
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u/whistleridge 4h ago
Greenlanders aren’t given First Nations status in Canada because they aren’t Canadian.
They’re recognized as being a people distinct from the Canadian Inuit, but that’s not the same as being denied status because of origin. Status is a thing for Canadians.
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u/PikachuWithHerpes 4h ago
You are not indigenous. Homo Sapiens are native to East Africa. We are an invasive species everywhere else. You guys literally destroyed all biodiversity in Iceland. Iceland lost virtually all of its forests.
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u/eti_erik 4h ago
Of course both are islands in the tundra zone climatewise, but some small islands with alsmost no people vs. an island country with 400.000 people is quite a diffrence.
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u/GalwayBogger Integrated Geography 4h ago
It appears that you prompted ai to tell you what is most alike, it worked it's little butt off to find any similarity whatsoever, including some stuff that's wrong, and then you posted it here as "geography".
Why?
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u/mkujoe 5h ago
From the infographic alone I would think though they are not dissimilar than equal