Original MapBench study · 2026-10-14
Which Countries Have the Northernmost Geographic Centroids?
We calculate spherical centroids from generalized country polygons and rank the highest centroid latitudes.
What the ranking shows
Spherical geographic centroids are calculated from each country polygon and sorted by latitude.
Greenland has the northernmost centroid in this geometry dataset at about 73.15°N.
| Rank | Country | Centroid latitude | Centroid longitude | Latitude span |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Greenland | 73.15° | -41.96° | 23.61° |
| 2 | Norway | 66.65° | 12.83° | 22.58° |
| 3 | Russia | 66.07° | 95.79° | 40.10° |
| 4 | Iceland | 65.08° | -18.77° | 3.03° |
| 5 | Finland | 64.26° | 26.14° | 10.32° |
| 6 | Sweden | 62.42° | 16.11° | 13.74° |
| 7 | Canada | 60.48° | -96.40° | 41.56° |
| 8 | Estonia | 58.64° | 25.83° | 2.14° |
| 9 | Latvia | 56.82° | 24.84° | 2.36° |
| 10 | Denmark | 56.06° | 9.89° | 2.93° |
| 11 | Lithuania | 55.28° | 23.89° | 2.47° |
| 12 | United Kingdom | 53.81° | -2.76° | 8.67° |
| 13 | Belarus | 53.50° | 27.96° | 4.85° |
| 14 | Ireland | 53.17° | -8.02° | 3.46° |
| 15 | Netherlands | 52.29° | 5.50° | 2.71° |
| 16 | Poland | 52.13° | 19.34° | 5.82° |
| 17 | Germany | 51.08° | 10.27° | 7.68° |
| 18 | Belgium | 50.65° | 4.59° | 1.94° |
| 19 | Czechia | 49.78° | 15.34° | 2.56° |
| 20 | Luxembourg | 49.76° | 5.97° | 0.69° |
Method
d3-geo's spherical centroid is used; this is a geometry centroid, not a population centre, capital or balancing point.
Important caveat
These country rankings use generalized world-atlas/Natural Earth geometry intended for small-scale mapping. Polygon area, bounds and centroid can differ from official national statistics because coastlines, islands, disputed boundaries and geometry detail are represented differently.
Use these results as a reproducible comparison of one consistent public world geometry dataset, not as a replacement for official land-area or legal-boundary figures.
Reproduce the measurements
Use MapBench tools and the downloadable dataset to check individual values or reproduce the ranking.