Pendulum Islands

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pendulum Islands
Map of the Pendulum Islands from 1874
Map of the Pendulum Islands from 1874
Waters Greenland Sea
Geographical location 74 ° 37 ′  N , 18 ° 41 ′  W Coordinates: 74 ° 37 ′  N , 18 ° 41 ′  W
Pendulum Islands (Greenland)
Pendulum Islands
Number of islands 4th
Main island Sabine Ø
Total land area 216 km²
Residents uninhabited

The Pendulum Islands ( Danish Pendulum Øer ) are an uninhabited group of islands off the east coast of Greenland in the Greenland Sea . Administratively, they belonged to the province of Tunu ("East Greenland") until the end of 2008 , and since 2009 to the non-parish area of the Northeast Greenland National Park .

geography

The archipelago of Sabine Ø (Sabine Island), Lille Pendulum (Small Pendulum Island), Bass Rock and Hvalrosø (Walrus Island) is located northeast of the Wollaston Forland peninsula and forms the southern boundary of Hochstetter Bay. It is separated from the mainland by the Clavering Strait. Between the two main islands, Sabine Ø and Lille Pendulum, runs the Pendulum Road, in which there are other small rocky islands.

The surface of the islands is dominated by rocks, with basaltic rocks predominating. The plant cover is sparse and larger land mammals such as musk ox are rare. Marine mammals and sea ​​birds , on the other hand, benefit from the Sirius Water Polynja , which usually extends from the island of Shannon, 30 km north, to Hvalrosø. There are large colonies of birds, especially on Hvalrosø.

history

The Pendulum Islands had been settled for several thousand years, first by Paleo-Eskimos of the Independence I and later by Inuit of the Dorset and Thule cultures . Dwellings that can be assigned to the Thule culture have been found on the two main islands and on Hvalrosø. When the first Europeans set foot on the islands, they were already deserted.

The discovery and naming of the archipelago by Europeans dates back to August 1823. Edward Sabine carried out gravity field measurements with the seconds pendulum on the observatory peninsula (Observatoriehalvø) in the southeast of Sabine Island , while Captain Douglas Clavering mapped the islands on the HMS Griper .

From 1869–1870 the Second German North Pole Expedition , led by Carl Koldewey , spent the winter with the screw steamer Germania in the Germania harbor on Sabine Island. From here the expedition participants, above all Julius Payer , undertook long boat trips and dog sledding trips to explore and map the adjacent coasts.

In 1899, at the suggestion of Fridtjof Nansen , the Swedish government sent the expedition ship Antarctic to East Greenland. The aim of the expedition, led by Alfred Gabriel Nathorst , was the search for Salomon August Andrée , who had tried to reach the North Pole with a hydrogen balloon with two companions in 1897 and has been missing since then. On July 6, the Antarctic anchored off Lille Pendulum, but found no evidence on the island that Andrée was here. The next step was Hvalrosø and a large depot was set up for Otto Sverdrup's second Fram expedition, which had started in 1898 to circumnavigate Greenland. Then Sabine Island was also visited.

In 1901 a depot hut was built on Bass Rock for the Baldwin-Ziegler North Pole Expedition . After the expedition failed, the depot was refreshed again in 1905 so that it could now be used by the Fiala-Ziegler expedition, which did not reach the place either. The food and coal supplies stored on Bass Rock ultimately ensured the survival of Ejnar Mikkelsen and Iver Iversen (1884–1968), who were looking for the missing leader of the Danmark expedition, Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen , on Shannon in 1910/11 and 1911 / 12 hibernated on Bass Rock.

In 1926, the Cambridge-East Greenland expedition led by James Wordie visited Sabine Ø and repeated Sabine's pendulum experiments from 1823.

In 1942 a German Wehrmacht unit landed in the Hansa Bay on the east coast of Sabine Ø as part of the “ Holzauge company ” . Here she operated a weather station , but was discovered on March 11, 1943 by a Danish sledge patrol and involved in a battle. American B-24 bombers destroyed the station on May 25, 1943.

As part of the GeoArk project, an interdisciplinary research project of the Danish National Museum and the Institute for Geography and Geology at the University of Copenhagen , archaeological field research was carried out several times between 2003 and 2009 in Germaniahafen and on Hvalrosø under the direction of Bjarne Grønnow (* 1956) . The focus was on the excavation and research of sites of the Thule culture.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The second German North Pole voyage in 1869 and 1870 under the leadership of Captain Koldewey . Association for the German North Pole Trip in Bremen, second volume: Scientific results , Brockhaus, Leipzig 1875, p. 488
  2. ^ A b Mariane Hardenberg: In search of Thule children: Construction of playing houses as a means of socializing children . In: Geografisk Tidsskrift - Danish Journal of Geography 110 (2), 2010, pp. 201–214 ( PDF; 2.7 MB ( Memento from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ))
  3. ↑ JBT Pedersen, LH Kaufmann, A. Kroon, BH Jakobsen: The Northeast Greenland Sirius Water Polynya dynamics and variability inferred from satellite imagery. ( Memento of February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Danish Journal of Geography 110, No. 2, 2010, pp. 131–142 (PDF; 3.5 MB; English).
  4. ↑ The GeoArk 2008 expedition to North East Greenland on the National Museum of Denmark website, accessed April 25, 2014
  5. ↑ The second German North Pole voyage in 1869 and 1870 under the leadership of Captain Koldewey . Association for the German North Pole Trip in Bremen, Volume 1, Brockhaus, Leipzig 1874, p. 616ff
  6. ^ William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia , Vol. 2, ABC-CLIO, 2003, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 . P. 451 (English)
  7. ↑ Anthony K. Higgins: Exploration history of northern East Greenland (PDF; 2.9 MB). In: Exploration history and place names of northern East Greenland (= Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin 21, 2010), ISBN 978-87-7871-292-9 . P. 26 (English)
  8. ↑ J. Georgi : Captain Ejnar Mikkelsen † (PDF; 137 kB). In: Polarforschung 14, 1971, p. 173 f.
  9. ↑ Spencer Apollonio: Lands that hold one spellbound: a story of East Greenland . University of Calgary Press, 2008, p. 134, accessed February 25, 2012
  10. ↑ Ejnar Mikkelsen: An Arctic Robinson . FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1913
  11. ↑ Anthony K. Higgins: Exploration history of northern East Greenland (PDF; 2.9 MB). In: Exploration history and place names of northern East Greenland (= Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin 21, 2010), ISBN 978-87-7871-292-9 . P. 34 (English)
  12. ↑ Hansa Bugt . In: Anthony K. Higgins: Exploration history and place names of northern East Greenland. (= Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin 21, 2010). Copenhagen 2010, ISBN 978-87-7871-292-9 (English), accessed December 28, 2013
  13. ↑ The GeoArk Project 2003–2009 on the National Museum of Denmark website, accessed April 25, 2014