Greenland Emoji & Symbols

The Greenland flag emoji 🇬🇱 is not a single picture in Unicode. It is two regional indicator letters, G and L, Greenland's ISO country code, which phones and apps draw together as the flag; most country and territory flags, Greenland's among them, became emoji in 2015. Where flags are not supported, notably Windows' own emoji font, the reader sees the letters GL instead. The text is the same either way, so it still shows as a flag on a phone.

The flag is called Erfalasorput, "our flag", in Greenlandic. It was designed by the Greenlandic artist Thue Christiansen and first raised on 21 June 1985. Its two horizontal bands, white over red, carry a circle split the other way, red over white. The Greenland flag meaning reflects the landscape: the white band is the ice sheet, the red band the ocean, the red semicircle the sun sinking into it (the designer's 1995 brochure reads it as the fjords), and the white semicircle the icebergs and pack ice. Red and white are also Denmark's colours. It is the only flag of the Nordic countries and territories without a Nordic cross, which makes 🇬🇱 easy to tell apart from 🇩🇰, 🇫🇴 and 🇮🇸. Without the emoji, people paste its colours as ❤️🤍 or 🔴⚪.

The flag is everywhere on 21 June, Greenland's National Day (Ullortuneq, "the longest day"), chosen because it is the day of the most sun. Towns hold morning ceremonies, people wear the national costume, and 🇬🇱☀️🎉 is the post of the day.

Greenland symbols: ice, the polar bear and the Arctic sea

🧊 Ice and 🏔️ Snow-Capped Mountain are the truest Greenland symbols. The ice sheet covers about four fifths of the world's largest island, up to around 3 km thick, and its glaciers calve the icebergs that drift down the coasts. The most famous place to see them is the Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004, where the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier, one of the fastest-moving in the world, fills the fjord with bergs the size of city blocks. 🧊🏔️🌊 is the combo for it, and ❄️🥶 for the cold.

🐻‍❄️ Polar Bear is Greenland's national animal and stands on its coat of arms, a white bear on a blue shield. The sea gives the rest: 🐋 and 🐳 for humpback, fin and bowhead whales, 🫍 for orcas, 🦭 for the ringed and harp seals that Greenlanders have hunted for thousands of years, and 🦈 for the Greenland shark, a slow giant of the deep cold water. There is no walrus or narwhal emoji, both of which live here; 🦭 and 🐋 stand in. On land, 🐂 is the closest emoji to the musk ox, 🦌 the caribou (reindeer), 🦊 the Arctic fox, 🐇 the Arctic hare and 🐺 the Arctic wolf of the far north. 🦉 is the snowy owl, 🦅 the white-tailed eagle, 🦆 the eider.

The sky has its own emoji. North of the Arctic Circle the sun does not set for weeks in summer ☀️, and in the far north it does not rise in winter 🌙. From autumn to spring the northern lights fill the dark; there is no aurora emoji, so people use 🌌 or 🌃 for them.

Kayaks, sleds and colourful houses: everyday Greenland emoji

🛶 Canoe is the nearest emoji to the qajaq, the Inuit kayak, which Greenlanders used to hunt seals for centuries; the English word kayak comes from it, and anorak from the Greenlandic annoraaq 🧥. Kayak skills are still honoured, with championships of rolls and races. 🛷 Sled with 🐕 Dog is the dog sled, still used for hunting and travel in the north and the east, where the Greenland sled dog is kept as its own breed.

No roads link Greenland's towns, so people travel by sea and air: 🛥️ small boats in every harbour, 🚢 and 🛳️ for the coastal ships and cruise visits, and the bright red planes and helicopters of Air Greenland, ✈️ and 🚁, which reach even small settlements. 🏘️ Houses is for the towns: wooden houses painted red, yellow, blue and green stand on bare rock above the water, from the capital, Nuuk, to Ilulissat. ⛪ is the old wooden churches, and 🛖 Hut the traditional turf-and-stone winter house.

Greenland's other emoji are for the outdoors: 🎣 fishing, 🥾 and ⛺ for the Arctic Circle Trail, a hike of about 160 km between Kangerlussuaq and Sisimiut, and 🎿 ⛷️ for skiing, including the Arctic Circle Race, a three-day cross-country ski race near Sisimiut. 🤾 Handball is a popular team sport, and Greenland's men's team has played at the World Handball Championship. ⚽ is the short summer football season.

Kaffemik, suaasat and Christmas stars: food and holiday emoji

☕🍰 Kaffemik is Greenland's great social custom: for a birthday, a confirmation or a child's first day of school, a family opens its home and anyone may drop in for coffee, cakes and often Greenlandic food. 🍲 Pot of Food stands for suaasat, the national dish, a soup of seal, whale, reindeer or seabird meat with onion and rice or barley. 🐋 on a menu can mean mattak, whale skin with a layer of blubber, eaten raw. 🍖 🥩 are reindeer and musk ox meat, 🐟 dried fish and halibut, and 🦐 🦀 the cold-water shrimp and snow crab that are among Greenland's main exports. 🫐 is for the crowberries and blueberries picked on the hillsides in late summer.

Christmas is the brightest time of the dark year. In Danish tradition Santa Claus lives in Greenland 🎅, and Uummannaq has a giant red Santa mailbox 📮 that receives children's letters from around the world. In December nearly every window shows a lit paper star 🌟, often red or orange, next to the 🎄. Culture has its emoji too: 🥁 for the qilaat drum and the drum dance and song, 🎭 for the mask dance uaajeerneq, with its black, red and white face paint, and 🧵 for the fine beadwork of the women's national costume, a wide bead collar worn with high white sealskin boots.

Greenland currency, Danish letters Æ Ø Å and the old Greenlandic alphabet

The Greenland currency is the Danish krone (code DKK). It has no symbol of its own: prices are written with the abbreviation kr., as in kr. 100 or 100 kr. 🪙 and 💰 are the usual money emoji.

Greenland's only official language since 2009, when self-government replaced the home rule of 1979, is Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), an Inuit language in which one long word can carry a whole sentence. Its modern alphabet, set in a 1973 reform, needs no special letters: A E F G I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V, with B C D H W X Y Z kept for loanwords. The country's own name, Kalaallit Nunaat, means "land of the Greenlanders". Danish is the second language of schools and offices, with about 8,000 speakers there by CLDR's estimate, and it brings three letters at the end of the alphabet: Æ æ, Ø ø and Å å. They appear in Danish place names such as Godthåb, the old Danish name of Nuuk, and in loanwords; the whole Danish alphabet is in our Danish collection, and Denmark's emoji are in Denmark Emoji & Symbols.

The old Greenlandic alphabet is what makes this page's letters unusual. From 1851 to 1973 Greenlandic was written in the spelling of the missionary Samuel Kleinschmidt, which used the letter kra ĸ for the sound now written q, and accents on the vowels a, i and u: a circumflex for a long vowel (â î û), an acute for a vowel followed by a doubled consonant (á í ú), and a tilde for both together (ã ĩ ũ). So Nuuk was Nûk, Qaqortoq was ĸaĸortoĸ, and Kalaallit Nunaat was Kalâtdlit Nunât. ĸ has no separately encoded capital; its capital form is written Kʼ (K followed by an apostrophe). You meet these letters in old books, maps and family names, and Unicode's Latin Extended-A block includes ĸ, Ĩ ĩ and Ũ ũ, carried over from the older ISO 8859-4 character set, which covered Greenlandic.

How to type them: on Windows hold Alt and type 0198 Æ, 0230 æ, 0216 Ø, 0248 ø, 0197 Å or 0229 å on the number pad; for ĸ type 0138 then Alt + X in Word. On a Mac with a US layout, Option + ' gives æ, Option + O ø and Option + A å (add Shift for capitals). On a phone, long-press A or O, or add the Danish keyboard. In HTML: æ, ø, å, and ĸ for ĸ, "K Greenlandic". Or copy any of them from the grid above.