Why does the Mercator projection make Greenland look much larger than it is?

The Mercator projection makes Greenland appear disproportionately large because of how it mathematically represents the Earth's surface on a flat plane. In this cylindrical projection, meridians are depicted as equally spaced vertical lines, while parallels of latitude are horizontal lines that are spaced increasingly farther apart as they move away from the Equator.12

This increasing spacing is necessary to maintain constant compass bearings, which makes the projection highly valuable for navigation charts. However, this process causes significant scale distortion in higher latitudes. Because Greenland is located far from the Equator, its area is stretched significantly compared to landmasses near the center of the map. While it appears larger than South America on a standard Mercator world map, in reality, Greenland is smaller than the Arabian Peninsula.123