King Karl Land

King Karl Land
	Satellite image
Waters	Arctic Ocean
archipelago	Svalbard
Geographical location	78 ° 55 ' N , 28 ° 35' E Coordinates: 78 ° 55 ' N , 28 ° 35' E
Number of islands	approx. 10
Main island	Kongsøya
Total land area	350 km²
Residents	uninhabited
	Map of the King Karl Land

König-Karl-Land ( Norwegian : Kong Karls Land ) is the name of a small uninhabited archipelago in the Barents Sea southeast of the island of Nordostland and northeast of the island of Edgeøya in the Svalbard archipelago belonging to Norway .

geography

To the west, the 90 km wide Olga Strait separates the Edgeøya and Barentsøya archipelagos . In the north, across the Erik Eriksenstretet, lies the island of Nordostland .

The group consists of three larger and several smaller islands. The larger islands are from west to east: Svenskøya (136 km²), Kongsøya (191 km²) and Abeløya (13 km²). Smaller islands are Helgolandøya (1.7 km²), Tirpitzøya (1.65 km²), Lyckholmøya and Röhssøya .

There are wide coastal plains on all the islands in King Karl Land; the small, eastern island of Abeløya is completely flat. On Svenskoeya and Kongsøya there are a few flat mountains with wide summit plateaus between 200 and 300 m high. The highest point is Retziusfjellet on Kongsøya with 320 m. König-Karl-Land is practically unglaciated. Only on Kongsøya there are some permanent patches of firn.

climate

As on the entire Svalbard Archipelago, the climate is high arctic due to the high geographical latitude. While the West Spitsbergen Current (the last northern branch of the warm Gulf Stream ) on the west coast of Svalbard still brings relatively high temperatures and a lot of precipitation for arctic conditions, the cold East Spitsbergen Current King Karl Land with its cold water and ice masses has a firm grip on the climate. Even in summer, the islands cannot always be reached due to the ice conditions.

geology

The islands are mainly made up of flat sediments ( sandstone , siltstone and claystone ) from the Upper Triassic to the Lower Cretaceous and from basaltic intrusions . As a local peculiarity in the Lower Cretaceous there was not only intrusions but also volcanism on the surface, so that tuff and various flow structures can be found.

Flora and fauna

The tundra on the islands consists of barren polar desert , in which mosses and lichens can survive better than flowering plants . Ivory gulls and kittiwakes are quite common, the great biological importance of the islands lies in the very high density of polar bear nurseries . In winter there is sometimes one birth cave after the other. König-Karl-Land is therefore of great importance for the population of polar bears.

history

King Karl Land was probably first sighted and called Wiches Land in the early 17th century . However, this discovery was soon forgotten. In the middle of the 19th century the islands were frequently sighted from the west and in 1859 the Norwegian Erik Eriksen landed on Svenskøya for the first time. In 1870 Theodor Heuglin named the archipelago after King Charles I of Württemberg . The first map of the archipelago is from Henrik Mohn , professor of meteorology in Christiania . A research trip of the Bremen Geographical Society led by the zoologist Willy Kükenthal tried several times to reach the archipelago in 1889 and produced the first map on which some of the islands are listed.

In 1898 the islands were visited by the German scientific Heligoland expedition led by zoologists Fritz Römer and Fritz Schaudinn , which had been organized by Theodor Lerner . Immediately after the Heligoland expedition , Swedish researchers led by Alfred Gabriel Nathorst visited König-Karl-Land with the ship Antarctic and stayed there from August 4th to 17th, 1898 to document the islands geologically, biologically and topographically. Lerner and Nathorst also looked in vain for the lost balloon expedition of Salomon August Andrée . In September 1899 the buoy that Andrée and his two companions wanted to drop on their flight over the North Pole in 1897 was found on the north coast of Kongsøya (the last camp of the men with their remains was not discovered on Kvitøya until 1930 ).

In 1908, six trappers overwintered on Svenskøya once . Since they could not be picked up in the summer of 1909 due to adverse ice conditions, they had to pull a rowboat across the ice - leaving their catch behind - until they reached open water.

The Northeast Svalbard Nature Reserve

König-Karl-Land is part of the Northeast Svalbard Nature Reserve, founded in 1973 . There is a year-round ban on entering the islands or approaching them within 500 m of water or in the air. The Sysselmann can issue special permits. However, this is only done in exceptional cases.

Web links

Kong Karl's Land . In: The Place Names of Svalbard (first edition 1942). Norsk Polarinstitutt , Oslo 2001, ISBN 82-90307-82-9 (English, Norwegian).
Map of the region

Remarks

↑ The ban on entering and approaching applies only to the islands of the König-Karl-Land, but otherwise not in the Northeast Svalbard nature reserve. Status: December 2010

Individual evidence

↑ Martin Conway: No Man's Land. A History of Spitsbergen from its discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country , University Press, Cambridge 1906, S. 104 (English)

↑ A. Hoel: The discovery of King Karl Land (PDF; 176 kB). In: Polarforschung 6, Heft 2, 1936, pp. 4-5

^ Kong Karls Land . In: The Place Names of Svalbard (first edition 1942). Norsk Polarinstitutt , Oslo 2001, ISBN 82-90307-82-9 (English, Norwegian).

↑ William Barr: The Helgoland Expedition to Svalbard: The German Expedition in the Northern Arctic Ocean, 1898 ( Memento of the original from August 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2 archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Arctic 41, No. 3, 1988, pp. 203-214

↑ Römer and Schaudinn report on it in their work Fauna Arctica. A compilation of the Arctic animal forms with special consideration of the Svalbard area based on the results of the German expedition to the northern Arctic Ocean in 1898 . Gustav Fischer, Jena 1900.

^ Gösta H. Liljequist: High Latitudes. A History of Swedish Polar Travels and Research , Streiffert, Stockholm 1993. ISBN 91-7886-102-0 (English)

↑ Gustav Rossnes: Norsk Overvintringsfangst på Svalbard 1895–1940 (PDF; 7.7 MB), Norsk Polarinstitutt, Meddelelser No. 127, Oslo 1993, p. 188

↑ Ordinances on larger protected areas in Svalbard of April 4, 2014 (Norwegian), accessed on January 23, 2016

[9] The ban on entering and approaching applies only to the islands of the König-Karl-Land, but otherwise not in the Northeast Svalbard nature reserve. Status: December 2010

[1] Martin Conway: No Man's Land. A History of Spitsbergen from its discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country , University Press, Cambridge 1906, S. 104 (English)

[2] A. Hoel: The discovery of King Karl Land (PDF; 176 kB). In: Polarforschung 6, Heft 2, 1936, pp. 4-5

[3] Kong Karls Land . In: The Place Names of Svalbard (first edition 1942). Norsk Polarinstitutt , Oslo 2001, ISBN 82-90307-82-9 (English, Norwegian).