10 Giant Countries that are actually much smaller

The Geographical Inflation of the North and South

Due to the prevalence of the traditional Mercator projection in classrooms, our intuition regarding country sizes is highly distorted. Nations located near the poles appear massive, while tropical countries seem tiny. Here is a list of 10 countries whose size on flat maps is the most deceptive:

1. Greenland: Appears the size of Africa (30M km²), but in reality covers only 2.1M km². View details: Greenland profile.
2. Russia: Looks larger than Africa and North America combined. In reality, it covers 17.1 million km² – impressive, but still nearly half the size of Africa!
3. Canada: Appears as a giant occupying a third of the map. In reality, it covers 9.9 million km² (only slightly larger than the US).
4. Sweden: Looks larger than Spain or France. In reality (450k km²), it is smaller than Spain.
5. Norway: Appears as long as the entire US. In reality, its land area (385k km²) is close to Poland's size.
6. Iceland: Gives the impression of being half the size of Europe. In reality, it covers a modest 103k km².
7. Antarctica: Stretched infinitely along the bottom of the map. In reality, it covers about 14 million km².
8. Chile: Looks like a giant spanning thousands of miles. In reality, it covers 756k km².
9. Argentina: Visually as large as half of Europe. In reality, it covers 2.78 million km².
10. Svalbard: This Arctic archipelago looks the size of Germany on Mercator maps. In reality, it covers a mere 62k km².

The Mathematical Reason

All these territories share a common trait: high latitude. The Mercator projection projects the sphere onto a cylinder tangent to the equator. The map scale increases as you move away from the tangent line. At the equator, the scale factor is 1; at 60 degrees latitude, it is 2 (inflating areas 4-fold); and at 80 degrees, it is 6 (inflating areas 36-fold!).

Test These Anomalies Live

See for yourself how these polar giants shrink when brought to the equator. Select any of them in our country catalog and click on dynamic comparison links, such as USA vs Russia size comparison, to see their true scale relationship.