I'm in Keflavik, Iceland in late June, and this field behind me, full of beautiful purpl lupines, doesn't look very icy.

A lot of you have sent us the question, asking why is Iceland green an Greenland, over that way, icy?

Let's find out.

It's true that Iceland can be pretty lush, especially at this time of year.

Only about 10% of the countr is covered with ice year round.

Greenland, on the other hand, is very icy.

About 80% of that country is covered by the Greenland Ice Sheet, which encompasses about 650,000 square miles, or 1.7 million kilometers, about three times the size of Texas.

And if you had to drill dow through all that ice to get to the dirt, you'd be going about two miles deep.

So what's with the mismatched names?

The popular story goes that Viking settlers a thousand years ago, though Iceland looked very appealing, and they wanted to downplay it to other European who might want to settle there, so they could keep it for themselves.

So they gave the cold ic land a greener name, and chose Iceland for this country to make it sound cold and barren.

The truth is likely a little more complicated.

Southern Greenland used to be much warmer than it is today, so it probably was greener when Viking Erik the Red happened upon the southern tip of i and claimed a new name for it.

But by the 14th century, the climate had changed and most of the land is now anything but green.

Iceland, on the other hand, likely got its modern name from another Viking, a guy named Flóki.

The Icelandic sagas say Flóki was having a very rough first year on the island, which had previously been called Snland or "Snow Land," and then Gararshólmur or "Garars Isle.

National Geographic writes that one day, while feeling really sorry for himself, Flóki climbed a big hill and looked out, only to see a fjord full of icebergs.

And he renamed this plac that seemed so desolate to him Iceland.

And that became the name that stuck.

It's worth noting that people who live in Greenland don't use that name for themselves.

The name for this autonomous territory in Greenlandic is Kalaallit Nunaat, land of the Greenlanders, or Inuit Nunaat, land of the people.

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