Victoria Island (Russia)
| Victoria Island | ||
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| Waters | Arctic Ocean | |
| Geographical location | 80 ° 9 ′ 0 ″ N , 36 ° 46 ′ 0 ″ E | |
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| length | 6.5 km | |
| width | 3.3 km | |
| surface | 10.8 km² | |
| Highest elevation | 105 m | |
| Residents | uninhabited | |
| main place |
Cape Knipowitsch (historical) |
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The Victoria Island ( Russian Остров Виктория ; Ostrow Wiktorija ) is a small island in the Arctic Ocean between the Norwegian Svalbard Archipelago and the Russian archipelago of Franz Josef Land . Together with Franz-Joseph-Land, it forms the island territory of the same name, which belongs to the Arkhangelsk Oblast .
geography
Victoria Island is the westernmost of the Russian Arctic Islands. It is 160 km away from Alexandraland , the westernmost island of Franz Josef Lands, and 61 km from Kvitøya , the easternmost island of Svalbard. Victoria Island has an area of 10.8 km² and is almost completely covered by an ice cap , the highest point of which is 105 m above sea level. In the 1990s, only ten hectares of land on the northern tip of the island were not glaciated . Since then, the ice has retreated and released a narrow beach on the northwest coast. The area of the ice cap in 2010 was only 6.1 km².
history
On July 20, 1898, the island was discovered by the Norwegians Johannes Nilsen and Ludvig Bernard Sebulonsen . The following day, PW Nilsen, captain of the steamer Victoria , which belonged to the English adventurer Arnold Pike, sighted the island and named it after the ship.
From 1929 to 1932, ownership of Victoria Island was disputed between Norway and the Soviet Union . The Soviet Union has claimed the sector between its coast and the North Pole, including Franz Josef Lands and Victoria Island, since 1926. Norway had protested against this and tried, for its part, to create facts. A first attempt to take possession of Victoria Island and parts of Franz Josef Land failed in 1929 due to the adverse ice conditions. In contrast, succeeded the Soviet icebreaker Sedov , the Hooker Island to reach where Otto Schmidt raised the Soviet flag on 29 July 1929 and the foundation for a research station put. In return, Norway sent the expedition ship Bratvaag in 1930 . The expedition leader Gunnar Horn took possession of the entire Victoria Island on August 8 for the ship's owner Harald M. Leite, but when the Soviet Union annexed the island on August 29, 1932, the Norwegian government resigned itself to it.
During the Cold War , a permanently manned military weather and radio station was maintained on Victoria at Cape Knipowitsch (northernmost point of the island). The station was abandoned in 1994. The station buildings can still be seen on satellite images.
Time zone
The time zone is CET +1 hour (for the actual Franz-Joseph-Land CET +2 hours).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Andrey F. Glazovskiy: Russian Arctic , chap. 2.7 in: Jacek Jania, Jon Ove Hagen (eds.): Mass Balance of Arctic Glaciers (PDF; 132 kB), IASC Report No. 5, Sosnowiec-Oslo 1996.
- ↑ Victoria Ice Cap (Victoria Island) , GLIMS Glacier Database, 2010
- ↑ Ian Gjertz, Berit Mørkved: Norwegian Arctic expansionism, Victoria Iceland (Russia) and the Bratvaag Expedition (PDF; 604 KB). In: Arctic . Volume 51, 1998, pp. 330-335 (English)
- ↑ Victoria Island on the website www.franz-josef-land.info