Posted by For a few centuries now we divide the world in to continents and islands. There is no exact definition though what criteria’s must be met in order to qualify as a continent. It is widely accepted that the world is divided in to seven continents. Ranked by size we have Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe and Australia. All other landmasses are considered islands. Based on this categorisation the largest island in the world is Greenland.
With an area of 2.1 million square kilometres Greenland is by far the largest island in the world.
It is almost three times the size of New Guinea which is ranked second with an area of around 780,000 square kilometres. Third place in this list of the biggest islands in the world takes Borneo with 748,000 square kilometres. The most populous island of the world is the Indonesian island Java. 135 million people live on Java. That is seven times more than the population of the continent Australia.
If one doesn’t distinguish between islands and continents Afro-Eurasia would be the biggest landmass in earth surrounded by water. It covers an area of almost 85 million square kilometres. In this ranking the Americas come second, Antarctica third and Australia fourth.
Tory Island and Achill Island are interesting islands in Ireland.