Denmark and its autonomously governed territories Greenland on Monday submitted a claim for about 895,541 square kilometers of the continental shelf north of Greenland, Denmark's Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard said.

Denmark's claim covers about 20 times the size of Denmark itself, including the North Pole.

The southern border of the area is located 200 sea miles from Greenland's northern coast and stretches all the way to the territorial waters of Russia and Norway.

"The submission of our claim on the continental shelf north of Greenland is a historic and important milestone for the Kingdom of Denmark. The purpose of this huge project is to define the outer limits for our continental shelf and thereby ultimately for the Kingdom of Denmark," Lidegaard said in a statement.

The Arctic is home to some four million people, and is thought to contain roughly 30 percent of the world's unproven gas reserves and 10 percent of its unproven oil reserves.

An estimated 97 percent of these resources fall within the exclusive economic zones of the five Arctic states that have a coastline on the Arctic Ocean namely Russia, Canada, the Untied States, Norway and Denmark.

Similar applications were earlier submitted by other Arctic states that also claim different sections of the same territory.

Lidegaard said that Denmark has had very good cooperation with its Arctic neighbors.

"This is not an aggressive action. It is an attempt to honestly and accurately present geological data," he was cited as saying by the Danish newspaper Politiken.

According to the Foreign Ministry, the new area north of Greenland is the fifth claim Denmark submits. As part of the claim submission, experts have collected and processed data from the area north of Greenland since 2002.

In 2011, Denmark launched a 10-year strategy document aiming to protect the Arctic environment, balance natural resources interests with international security issues, and improve maritime safety in the region.