Sverdrup Islands
| Sverdrup Islands | ||
|---|---|---|
 Left to right: Ellef Ringnes Island, Amund Ringnes Island, and Axel Heiberg Island |
||
| Waters | Arctic Ocean | |
| archipelago | Queen Elizabeth Islands | |
| Geographical location | 78 ° 30 ′ N , 95 ° 0 ′ W | |
|
||
| Number of islands | 7 main islands | |
| Main island | Axel Heiberg Island | |
| Total land area | 66,000 km² | |
| Residents | uninhabited | |
The Sverdrup Islands are a group of islands in the northern Queen Elizabeth Islands in Nunavut , Canada . The islands are located west of Ellesmere Island at about 82 ° north and 95 ° west. The main islands of the group are Axel Heiberg Island , Amund Ringnes Island and Ellef Ringnes Island , Cornwall Island , Meighen Island , King Christian Island and Stor Island .
A number of smaller islands in the surrounding waters also belong to the group named after the Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup , who explored and mapped them from 1898 to 1902 with the ship Fram . Some of the islands were formerly inhabited by Inuit . Today the Axel-Heiberg-Insel is the only one with an at least seasonal research station, the McGill Arctic Research Station with a summer crew of eight to twelve people. From 1948 to 1978, the Isachsen research station was permanently manned on Ellef-Ringnes-Insel . Today Isachsen is an automatic weather station.
Main islands
| island | Elevation | Height m |
Area km² |
Rank Canada |
Rank world |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Axel Heiberg Island | Outlook Peak | 2211 | 43178 | 7th | 32 |
| Ellef Ringnes Island | Isachsen Dome | 260 | 11295 | 16 | 69 |
| Amund Ringnes Island | unnamed | 265 | 5255 | 25th | 111 |
| Cornwall Island | Mount Nicolay | 360 | 2358 | 31 | 184 |
| Meighen Island | Meighen Icecap | 268 | 955 | 50 | 337 |
| King Christian Island | King Christian Mountain | 165 | 645 | 60 | 420 |
| Stor Island | ... | 560 | 313 | 87 | ... |
| Sverdrup Islands | Outlook Peak | 2211 | 66000 | - | - |
The Arctic expedition on the Fram from 1898 to 1902
In June 1898 the Fram left Norway. Sverdrup's intention was to lead them through the Nares Strait , which separates Greenland from Ellesmere Island . His plan was thwarted by impenetrable ice, instead he wintered with the ship in a natural harbor on the east coast of Ellesmere Island, which he called Fram Haven. During that winter and spring, Sverdrup and his men explored the Bache Peninsula and central Ellesmere Island. A sled team also reached the west coast.
The next summer the ice again blocked Sverdrup's path north. He was forced to abandon his original plan. He decided to focus his research on Ellesmere Island and the waters around it. He took the Fram south and then west into Jones Sound , where he spent three winters in a row, the first in Harbor Fiord and the two following in Goose Fiord.
From these bases, Sverdrup and his men explored and mapped most of the west coast of Ellesmere Island and discovered the group of islands now known as the Sverdrup Islands. The arctic historian William Barr calls this "one of the most impressive accomplishments that has ever been achieved in polar research" . This is also the reason for the large number of Norwegian names that can be found in the Canadian Arctic.
The naming of the three main islands was done in honor of the sponsors: Axel Heiberg , Amund Ringnes and Ellef Ringnes were the owners of the Norwegian brewery Ringnes .
The Norwegian requirement
When Sverdrup returned to Norway in 1902, he informed King Oskar II of Sweden and Norway that he had taken possession of all the land he had discovered for Norway. But Norway at the time was not very interested in taking ownership of the arctic areas as it was still fighting for independence from Sweden. Canada initially reacted relatively uninterestedly to the demands until it finally realized in the 1920s that another nation was claiming a large portion of what it considered to be its own.
The affiliation of the Sverdrup Islands remained a concern for Canada until the conflict was amicably settled through negotiations in 1930. The key to the deal was Sverdrup's cards. One biographer of Sverdrup wrote: “Without them, Ottawa would have remained ignorant, who knows for how long ... If Sverdrup had not discovered the islands when he did, they would most likely have been found and claimed by researchers in a country which would have been in a much better position than Norway to pursue the matter. ” Sverdrup had for years urged the Norwegian government to press ahead with his demand.
On November 11, 1930, a deal was made between the Norwegian government, the British government (which had just ceded Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic to Norway ), the Canadian government and Sverdrup itself. As part of that treaty, Norway formally relinquished its territorial claims on the land Sverdrup had discovered, while Canada paid Sverdrup a sum of $ 67,000, ostensibly for its original maps and records. The real reason, of course, was that Norway would not challenge Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic - Canada simply bought the islands back.
Otto Sverdrup died fifteen days after the contract was signed.
Sverdrup's diaries still exist today. They were returned to his family and are now in the manuscript department of the University of Oslo . However, the cards appear to have been lost. Apparently they were a cohesive set of cards, similar to those printed in Sverdrup's book Nyt Land in 1903 . However, they were probably more detailed.
literature
- William Barr: Otto Sverdrup (1854-1930) . In: Arctic 37, 1984, p. 72 f. ( PDF file ; 409 kB; English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Barr, p. 73
- ↑ Kenn Harper: Nov. 11, 1930 - Canada secures High Arctic sovereignty ( Memento of the original from September 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The 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: Nunatsiaq News , November 11, 2005, accessed February 7, 2012
