New Arctic Island Discovered

The Russian Navy has confirmed the presence of a new island in the Arctic, which would increase the number of islands in the Franz Josef Land archipelago to 192. The report was published in the Russian news service RIONOVOSTI.

The archipelago – named after an Austrian emperor — is among the last true frontiers. Even Google maps can’t zoom in close. The ice-covered islands resemble a white smattering of freckles near the Norwegian island of Svalbard below the North Pole. Fjords and sounds surround the islands, with water depths exceeding 250 meters. The waters are covered in sea ice for 9 months a year. More than 85 percent of the islands are made up of glaciers. A forbidding place, to be sure.

It is a remoteness that men (and a few women) attempted to conquer in the early days of Arctic exploration. Franz Josef Land was officially discovered in 1873, and became a base for a number of expeditions.

The British explorer Frederick George Johnson traveled to Franz Josef Land beginning in 1894 and arrived on the Northbrook Island, the southernmost of the archipelago. He settled at so-called Camp Flora, with the goal of exploring the archipelago and collecting rocks and fossils. His collections revealed to the British Geological Society that the islands were of volcanic origin (as opposed to continental).

In 1896, Johnson suddenly saw a man not of his party on the island: “a tall man, wearing a soft felt hat, loosely made, voluminous clothes and long shaggy hair and beard, all reeking with black grease.”

It was the famous Norwegian explorer Fridjof Nansen. Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen had embarked in 1893 on an attempt to reach the North Pole.

They had made it farther north than any explorer had in their day, before weather conditions forced a retreat. The men walked for months, fending off polar bears and walruses, and not knowing exactly where they were, before reaching Northbrook Island.

For his part, Nansen, not having heard a human voice for three years, felt his heart beat and blood rush to his brain, as he describes it in his book.

They soon recognized each other and Nansen and Johansen were able to secure passage home with Johnson.

So, Northbrook Island occupies an important place in annals of Arctic exploration.

In 2006, Arctic explorers suggested that Northbrook had split into two, after they found the isthmus connecting its eastern and western halves eroded into the sea.

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