The existence of this Arctic archipelago, almost the size of Switzerland, was unknown until 1913, making it the last large archipelago on Earth to be explored.
In the Arctic Ocean, just north of the Siberian mainland, lies the archipelago of Severnaya Zemlya, whose name means “Northern Land” in Russian. Located between the Kara and Laptev seas, it is separated from Russia’s Taymyr Peninsula by the narrow Vilkitsky Strait, only around 55–80 kilometres wide.
Severnaya Zemlya covers a remarkable 37,000 square kilometres, making it comparable in area to a sizable European country. It consists of four large islands surrounded by dozens of smaller ones, with glaciers covering almost half of its land area.
Until 1913, the world did not simply lack an accurate map of Severnaya Zemlya. The existence of this vast area of land was unknown.
The last great blank
The remarkably late date of its discovery becomes even more striking when placed in historical perspective. Europeans had encountered remote Easter Island in the Pacific in 1722, the Antarctic continent was first sighted in 1820, and in 1911 Roald Amundsen and his team became the first people to reach the South Pole. By the early 20th century, the world had already been extensively mapped, with the continents, major islands and most coastlines known.
Even the surrounding Arctic had been explored much earlier. Svalbard had been encountered by Willem Barents’ expedition in 1596, while the Russian Arctic archipelagos of Novaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands and Franz Josef Land had become known over a period stretching from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Yet Severnaya Zemlya, lying just across a narrow strait from mainland Russia, remained unnoticed.
Part of the explanation lies in the difficulty of exploring this part of the High Arctic. Heavy sea ice, fog and a very short navigation season repeatedly hampered exploration of the region. Some expeditions came remarkably close. Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld sailed near the still-unknown archipelago during the first successful navigation of the Northeast Passage in 1878, but did not see it. In 1882, Danish explorer Andreas Peter Hovgaard set out specifically to investigate whether land existed north of the Taymyr Peninsula, but thick ice prevented his expedition from reaching the area. Other expeditions later travelled through the wider region without discovering the land.
That finally changed in 1913, when the Russian Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition, aboard the icebreaking ships Taimyr and Vaigach, sailed north of Cape Chelyuskin on the Taymyr Peninsula, the northernmost point of mainland Eurasia. Under the leadership of Boris Vilkitsky, the expedition encountered previously unknown land. The newly discovered territory was first named Emperor Nicholas II Land, before eventually acquiring its present name, Severnaya Zemlya, in 1926.
But the discovery did not immediately reveal its true geography. The expedition mapped only part of the coastline and believed the newly discovered territory to be a single large landmass.
Mapping the unknown
Only in 1930 did four Soviet explorers establish a base on Severnaya Zemlya and begin systematically surveying it. Over the following two years, they travelled across the territory by dog sled, mapping its coastlines and filling in one of the last major blanks on the world map. Their work finally revealed that Severnaya Zemlya was in fact an archipelago dominated by four large islands.
The Soviet Union subsequently established several polar stations there as it expanded scientific work and navigation along the Northern Sea Route. Meteorological, geological and glaciological observations were carried out across the archipelago.
More than a century after its discovery, Severnaya Zemlya still has no towns or permanent civilian population. Human presence remains very limited, although scientific and state activities have continued on the islands.
The story of Severnaya Zemlya is part of a much broader history of the difficulties of Arctic exploration. The first verified arrival at the North Pole came only in 1926, when Roald Amundsen, Umberto Nobile, Lincoln Ellsworth and their crew flew over it aboard the airship Norge, a story Polar Journal recently explored.
Just over a century ago, this vast group of glacier-covered islands was still absent from maps. Severnaya Zemlya is another reminder of just how formidable a barrier sea ice, severe weather and geography once made the High Arctic, even when much of the rest of the world had already been charted.
Dr. Yana Kirichenko, PolarJournal