Do the land areas around the North and South Poles appear smaller or larger in size than they really are?

It is a fun fact that most countries around the North & South pole simply appear to be larger than other equatorial countries on the map.

It is due to a form of distortion named the Mercator Projector. Back in the day, it was tough to draw a map of a 3D world on a piece of paper.

Since explorers only had compass and pole star navigation at hand, they had to draw maps that could be carried around easily.

These maps were not accurate, and to change this, Dutch navigator Gerardus Mercator came up with a solution in 1569. He drew a map that was an accurate representation of the countries.

However, the size of the countries away from the equator became distorted as he was drawing countries in respect to their distance from the equator.

Because of this, the landmass around the North pole (like Greenland) and South Pole (Antarctica), look much larger on a map than they actually are.

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In the Mercator projection, the areas around the poles appear much larger than they are in proportion to areas around the equator.

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