Franz Josef Land

The Franz Joseph Land or Fridtjof Nansen Archipelago (Russian: Земля Франца Иосифа, transcribable as Zemlyá Frantsa Iósifa) is a Russian archipelago located in the Arctic Ocean, northwest of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago and east of the Norwegian archipelago of the Svalbard Islands. Franz Josef Land comprises 191 ice-covered islands with an area of 16,134 km², the vast majority uninhabited except for some military and scientific bases, but with an absolute absence of local population.

Administratively, all the islands of the archipelago belong to Archangel Oblast.

The archipelago was officially discovered in 1873 by the Austro-Hungarian Expedition to the North Pole, led by polar explorers Payer and Weyprecht, who named them after Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I. As the expedition was not official, but paid for by private funds, these islands have never been part of Austria. In 1926 the islands were annexed by the Soviet Union and only received a few inhabitants who were part of scientific or military expeditions. Access by boat is only possible for a few weeks in the summer and requires a special permit.

History

Hypothesis about its existence

Although the archipelago was officially discovered in the second half of the XIX century, several scientists and geographers anticipated its existence. Mikhail Lomonosov, in his work entitled Brief description of the different crossings in the northern seas and demonstration of the possibility of reaching the East Indies by crossing the Siberian Ocean (1763), suggested the presence of islands at east of Spitsbergen.

Also in 1865, the Russian naval leader, pioneer of the North Ocean and later Russian admiral, Baron N. G. Shilling (1828-1910), in his article «Considerations on a new route in the North Polar Sea», published in the « Marine Collection", based on an analysis of ice movement in the western part of the Arctic Ocean, suggested the existence of an unknown land, located further north than Spitsbergen.

And in the late 1860s, the Russian meteorologist A.I. Voyeikov (1842-1916) raised the question of organizing a large expedition to explore the polar seas. That idea was warmly supported by the geographer and naturalist Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921). Observations on the ice of the Barents Sea led him to the conclusion that:

Between Svalbard and New Zembla there is still land to be discovered, which extends north beyond Svalbard and keeps the ice behind itself... The possible existence of such an archipelago was indicated in its excellent, but little known report on the currents in the Arctic Ocean, by the Russian naval officer Baron Schilling.

In 1871, a detailed plan for the expedition was drawn up, but the government refused to provide funds and it was not carried out.

Discovery

The map of Payer de 1874 de la Tierra de Francisco José

The archipelago was possibly first discovered by Norwegian sealers Nils Fredrik Rønnbeck and Aidijärvi aboard the schooner Spidsbergen in 1865, which according to scant reports sailed east of Svalbard until he came to a new land, which they noted as "Nordøst-Spitsbergen" (northwest of Spitsbergen, the name used at the time for the entire Svalbard archipelago). It is not known if they landed and the new islands were soon forgotten.

The archipelago was discovered on August 30, 1873 by the Austro-Hungarian Expedition to the North Pole, led by Karl Weyprecht and Julius von Payer, when their steam-powered schooner, the Tegetthoff got stuck in the ice while trying to find the Northern Sea Route. After exploring the southern islands, they decided to name it after the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria.

The expedition aimed to test the hypothesis of the German geographer August Petermann (1822-1878) about the existence of a warm north polar sea and a large polar continent. The expedition was financed by Johann Nepomuk, Count Wilczek (1837-1922), chamberlain of the Austrian court, and Ödon, Count Zichy (1811-1894). The schooner set out in 1872 to open the Northeast Passage, was icebound northwest of Novaya Zemlya in August, and then gradually drifted westward; a year later, on August 30, 1873, she was brought to the shores of an unknown land, which was later recognized by Weyprecht and Payer as far north as possible and along its outer waters to the south.

Payer made it to 82°5' N (in April 1874) and succeeded in making a map of this vast archipelago, which appeared to early explorers to consist of a series of large islands. Austrian travelers were given a newly discovered land named after the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I. In Russia, both in imperial and Soviet times, the question of renaming the archipelago was raised: first by the Romanov Land, and then, after 1917, Kropotkin Land or Nansen Land, but those proposals were not carried out, and the land still has its own original name.

On May 20, 1874, the crew of the Tegethof was forced to abandon ship and sail across the ice to the shores of Novaya Zemlya, where they rendezvoused with Russian Pomor traders who they helped them in the return of the expedition.

Research

Weyprecht and Payer explored the southern part of the archipelago in 1873, and in the spring of 1874 crossed it from south to north on sledges. The first map was made. Since the sea was covered with ice during the voyage, the expedition could not find a large number of straits, since the archipelago seemed to be made up of several large islands.

In 1879, a Dutch expedition under the command of De Bruyne approached the shores of the archipelago on the ship Willem Barents, which discovered Hooker Island.

In 1881 and 1882, respectively, the Scottish explorer Benjamin Leigh Smith visited the archipelago on the ship Eira. During the first voyage, islands of Northbrook, Bruce, Jorge Land and Alexandra Land were discovered, rich collections. On the second voyage, the ship was crushed by ice near Cape Flora (Northbrook Island), and a crew of 25 was forced to winter on the island. In the summer, the boat expedition sailed south and was rescued by the ships that searched for them.

In 1895-1897, a large and well-equipped British expedition, the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition led by Frederick George Jackson, worked in Franz Joseph Land. The expedition arrived on the ship Barlovento at Cape Flora, where it equipped its main base. In those three years they carried out important work to improve the maps, with geological, botanical, zoological, and meteorological investigations in the southern, central, and southwestern areas of the archipelago. It was found to consist of a much greater number of smaller islands than originally indicated on Payer's map. During the preparation of the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition to Franz Joseph Land in 1895, the first Russian, the carpenter Varakin de Archangel, also visited (in this city the expedition was equipped and took with it a collapsible Russian hut).

Knowing nothing of the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition, Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen approached the archipelago from the north in 1895, returning from their famous voyage, the Fram Expedition, during which they attempted to conquer the North Pole. Nansen established that the archipelago had no continuation to the northeast, except for small islets, and the expedition on the ship Fram, in which Nansen and Johansen had previously embarked, which was drifting in the ice, found that the continental shelf ends to the north of the archipelago and the depths of the sea began. The two Norwegians spent the winter on Jackson Island from mid-August 1895 in a hut made of stones, then in the summer they went south and in June 1896 they found themselves on Northbrook Island with the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition wintering there., with which they later returned to their homeland. The new island, discovered by Nansen in the north of the archipelago, which he mistook for two separate islands, was dubbed Eve and Liv after his wife and daughter. The islands were claimed by Norway for some time, at which time they were given the name "Fridtjof Nansen Land", which can be found on old maps.

In 1898, American adventurer and journalist Walter Wellman went to Franz Joseph Land with a view to reaching the pole. The main base of the expedition was located on the island of Galla. Two Norwegians, members of this American-Norwegian expedition, passed through Wilczek Island. One of them, a member of the Nansen Bernt Bentsen expedition, died during the wintering period. In the spring of 1899 he only managed to reach 82°N on the ice, on the eastern side of Rudolf Island, which Payer had also visited. Another part of the expedition, led by Baldwin, surveyed unknown parts of the south-eastern outskirts of the archipelago, which, as it turned out, does not go very far to the east; finally, in summer he managed to visit the middle part of the archipelago. On the way back, the expedition met another Italian, the Duke of Abruzzo, who very easily managed to get through at the end of July 1898 by ship to Rudolf Island and even visit its northern coast, and who turned out to be much less extensive than Payer had expected. They wintered roughly near the place Payer arrived in 1874 on sleighs. From here, in the spring of 1900, a dog sled journey north across the ice was undertaken, under the command of Captain Umberto Cagni. He managed to reach 86 ° 33 & # 39; N, then the northernmost point reached. That voyage eventually clarified that Peterman's land to the north of Rudolph Island and King Oscar's land to the northwest, which appeared on Payer's map, did not exist, and in general there was no land of any significant size beyond until the pole. At the same time, the lowest temperature was recorded here, -52 °C. In September 1900, the Abruzzo expedition on the ship Stella Polare returned to the Norwegian coast, although three of its members disappeared in the archipelago.

At the same time, the industrial development of the archipelago began. In 1897-1898, Scottish trader T. Robertson visited Franz Joseph Land, capturing around 600 walruses and 14 polar bears.

In the summer of 1901, the southern and southwestern coasts of the archipelago were explored by the first Russian expedition on the icebreaker Yermak under the command of Vice Admiral Stepan Makarov. Some sources claim that it was she who first raised the Russian flag here. The Yermak became the first Russian ship off the coast of Franz Joseph Land, the crew consisted of 99 people, including a scientific group. Stops and landings were made at Cape Flora on Northbrook Island and on Hochsteter Island. Collections of plants, fossils and soil were collected, warm Gulf Stream waters were discovered near the southern tip of the archipelago, flowing in horizons below 80-100 m. An attempt to break through to the eastern shores of the archipelago, due to heavy ice conditions, was not crowned with success.

In 1901-1902 the American Baldwin-Ziegler expedition wintered in Franz Joseph Land, and was followed in 1903-1905 by the Ziegler-Fiala expedition, which had to try to walk on ice at the Pole North. The shipwreck of the ship forced the members of the Ziegler expedition to spend two years in isolation in the archipelago before being rescued.

In 1913-1914, Georgi Sedov's expedition on the schooner Mikhail Suvorin (San Foka) wintered in Tikhaya Bay near Hooker Island. In an attempt to reach the Pole, Sedov died on February 20, 1914, near Cape Auk on Rudolf Island, where he was supposedly buried (the accompanying sailors were misguided on the maps and the burial place was subsequently not found.). On March 1, 1914, the first mechanic of the schooner, J. Sanders, was buried on the shore of Tikhaya Bay, dead of scurvy.

In 1914, the Russian navigator Valerian Albanov and a crew member, Alexander Konrad, the only survivors of Georgy Brusilov's disastrous expedition (1912-1914), would have reached Cape Flora on Northbrook Island, where they knew that Nansen had left provisions and had built a cabin on his previous arctic expedition. Albanov and Konrad were rescued in time by Georgy Sedov's ship Saint Foka, while they were preparing for winter. His plight was narrated in the publication of Albanov's diary appearing as In the Land of the White Death (1917).

The claim of sovereignty

With the introduction of large steamships, from the last decade of the XIX century, a long series of expeditions to Seal hunting was done on the islands, with more than 80% of them coming from Norway. In the late 1920s, both the Soviet Union and Norway took possession of the islands. The Norwegians called them the "Fridtjof Nansen Land" islands. The Soviet Union claimed a sector in the Arctic region that included Franz Joseph Land and nearby Victoria Island in a decree of April 15, 1926. Norway was notified on May 6 and officially protested on December 19, contesting the claim. soviet

In the following years, the Norwegian authorities placed great emphasis on the recovery of Victoria Island and Franz Joseph Land. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not want to take any action to settle the official claims, but did not object to private initiatives. In 1929, consul Lars Christensen of Sandefjord, a magnate whose whaling expeditions had led to the annexation of Bouvet Island and Pedro I Island in Antarctica, financed a two-ship expedition, S/S Torsnes and M/C Hvalrossen. Following departure from Tromsø, the crew were given detailed instructions to erect a manned wireless station and leave a wintering crew on Franz Joseph Land, and also to claim Victoria Island in Christensen's name. The goal was to get legal support from the archipelago before the Soviets did. The expedition never reached Franz Joseph Land due to harsh ice conditions, and pending better conditions, they were overtaken by the Soviet icebreaker Georgij Sedov.

On July 29, 1929 Professor Otto Schmidt of the Sedov Expedition planted the Soviet flag in Tikaya Bay on Hooker Island and declared Franz Joseph Land a part of the Soviet Union. Norway did not officially reply to the Soviet annexation of Franz Joseph Land, but continued its efforts with regard to Victoria Island. The controversy over Victoria Island ended when the Soviets annexed the island in September 1932.

In July 1931 the Graf Zeppelin traveled from Berlin to Hooker Island via Leningrad (St. Petersburg). There she left 300 kg of commemorative mail and met the icebreaker Malygin . After traveling east following the 81ºN parallel to Severnaya Zemliá, she returned to Hooker Island and mapped the archipelago, reaching Rudolf Island.

During the Cold War years, the polar regions became strategic locations. The islands were declared one of many national security zones in the Arctic from the 1930s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and foreigners were not allowed access. An airport was built at Graham Bell for use as a base for Russian bombers, and training missions were often flown between Franz Joseph Land, the mainland, and Novaya Zemlya. Although the islands were a militarily sensitive area, a cruise ship was allowed to visit them in 1971.

In 2005, Austrian geographer Christoph Höbenreich led a commemorative expedition to the Payer-Weyprecht expedition in Franz Joseph Land. The Austro-Russian team followed in the footsteps of Julius Payer's historic exploration on skis and pulka sleds (Swedish for short transport sleds pulled by skiers or dogs).

The Russian Orthodox Church, through an announcement in 2005 by Bishop Tikhon of Archangel, ratified by the Bishop of Kholmogori in August 2007, revealed its intention to build the world's northernmost church on the Franz Joseph Archipelago, off the that they will call Saint Nicholas.

Geography

The archipelago of the Earth of Francisco José

Franz Josef Land, located between latitudes 80.0° and 81.9° N, is the northernmost Eurasian island group. The archipelago is only 900 to 1,110 km from the North Pole, closer than any other land mass except Canada's Ellesmere Island and Greenland. The northernmost point is Cape Fligely (Mys Fligeli) in Prince Rudolf Land (ostrov Rudolfa), located at 81°52' no. The largest island is George's Land (Zemlia Georga), which is 115 km long from end to end. The highest point of the archipelago is at Zemlia Viner-Neyshtadt (Wiener-Neustadt Island) and reaches 620 m above sea level.

The archipelago is volcanic, composed of Tertiary and Jurassic basalt and is part of the Great High Arctic Igneous Province. The group of large islands in the middle of the archipelago forms a compact whole, known as Zichy Land, in which the islands are separated from each other by very shallow straits that are frozen most of the year. The northernmost part of the archipelago is shrouded in pack ice throughout the year, although on rare occasions, the ice recedes in late summer. When the ice disappears, there are areas covered by lichens and mosses.

Main Islands

• Land of Alexandra (Zemliá Aleksandry). Nagurskoye80°49′N 47°25′E / 80.817, 47.417) (see Jan Nagórski) is one of the most important weather stations in the archipelago. During the Cold War he probably hosted a radar. It's got a 1,500 m landing track. An Antonov An-72 freighter crashed when he landed in Nagurskoye on 12 December 1996.
• Prince Rodolfo (Ostrov Rudolfa) is the island more north. The bay of Teplitz (81°48′N 57°56′E / 81.800, 57.933) served as a base camp for many polar expeditions at the end of the centuryXIX and early centuriesXX.. Due to its abrupt terrain you can only land on a 300 m snow strip at the top of a glacier in (81°47' N 58°45' E).
• Ostrov Jeysa. Krenkel80°37′N 58°03′E / 80.617, 58.050) is the location of a weather station.
• Hofmann Island (Hofmann Island)Ostrov Gofmana). Place of a snow landing track (81°17′N 60°13′E / 81.283, 60.217).
• Graham Bell Island (Óstrov Greem-Bell). On Graham Bell Island is the largest airport in the archipelago, a key position in the Cold War (81°09′N 64°17′E / 81.150, 64.283). It has a track of 2100 m and Russian freighters and hunts land regularly on it since the 1950s. It has several small adjacent islets, such as Pyerlamutrov (Ostrov Perlamutrovyyy), Trëkhluchevoy (Ostrov Trëkhluchevoy) and Udachnyy (Ostrov Udachnyy).
• Ziegler Island (Óstrov Tsiglera). The location of the Austrian observatory Payer-Weypricht (probably 81°06′N 56°11′E / 81.100, 56.183), which was built at the end of the centuryXIX.
• Northbrook IslandÓstrov Nortbruk). It is the most accessible island and the main base of the polar expeditions of the end of the centuryXIX and early XX. The field (79°57′N 50°05′E / 79.950, 50.083) in Cape Flora is of historical importance, since the explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Frederick George Jackson were found there casually in 1896. In 1904 coal was extracted.
• Jackson IslandÓstrov Dzhéksona). Cape Norway (80°12′N 55°37′E / 80.200, 55.617) was where Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen spent the winter of 1895-96 after their failed attempt to reach the North Pole. There's still a cabin and a wooden pole in the place.
• Hooker Island (Hooker Island)Óstrov Gúkera). The bay of Tijaya (80°20′N 52°47′E / 80.333, 52.783) was the site of a large base for the polar explorers, and the location of a weather station that was used from 1929 to 1963. She was visited by Graf Zeppelin in July 1931 during a geographical expedition. There is a cemetery and two modern buildings. It is also located near the Bay of Tijaya and Skala Rubini (80°18′N 52°50′E / 80.300, 52.833) a large population of marine birds. There are several adjacent islands: Royal Society Island) (Ostrov Korolevskogo Obshchestva), Etheridge (Ostrov Eteridzh), Eaton (Ostrov Iton), Leigh-Smith (Óstrov Li-Smita), May (Ostrov Mey), Newton (Ostrov Niutona and Scott-Keltie (Ostrov Skott-Kyelti).
• Alger Island (Alger Island)Ostrov Aldzher). The winter season of the failed American expedition of Evelyn Baldwin in 1901.
• Land of Wilczek (Zemliá Vílcheka u Óstrov Vílcheka). On this island, in Corporal Geller80°46′N 59°36′E / 80.767, 59.600) was where two members of the 1899 Welle expedition spent the winter while waiting for the rest of their team to return from the Polo. It has the following coastal islands: Klagenfurt island (Ostrov Klagenfurt), island Lamont (Ostrov Lamon), McNult Island (Ostrov Mak-Nul'ta) and island Geddes (Ostrov Geidzh).
• Ostrov Stolichki. This tiny island (81°11′N 58°16′E / 81.183, 58.267) is the location of a smithy.
• Hall Island (Ostrov Galia) was the first island of the archipelago that was discovered, on August 30, 1873. Walter Wellman's expedition built a small camp in Cape Tegetkhof (80°05′N 58°01′E / 80.083, 58.017) in 1898-99. There is a commemorative milestone of the discovery of the archipelago. It has two nearby small islands, Newcomb Island (Ostrov Niucomba) and Bergkhauz (Ostrov Bergkhauz).

Other islands

Other islands in the group are the following (there is an article on all of them in the English Wikipedia):

Island Subgroups

The main island subgroups in Franz Josef Land are as follows:

• Land of Zichy (Zemlia Zichy), a large group of islands located in the center of the archipelago separated by straits of shallow waters, which are frozen most of the year, forming a compact set. They are, from north to south, ten large islands:

• Land of Belaya (Zemliá Bélaya), at the western end of the Earth of Francisco José, separated from the main group by the waters of the strait of Severo Vostochnyy. It is a group of three islands covered by glaciers, called for Hvidtenland ("White Land") by Fridtjof Nansen. They are a large island — Eva Island (or Eva-Liv Island) (Ostrov Adelaide, Остров Ева-Lив)—and two small ones: Adelaide Island (Остров Аделаиды) and Frieden Island (sometimes Fryeden) ((Ostrov Fryeden, Остров Фреден), very separate and closer to the archipelago of Svalbard, is the island is the most western of all the Russian islands of the Arctic.
• Victoria Island (Ostrov Viktoriya), an island that is not part of the Land of Francis Joseph geographically, but administratively. Located very separate and closer to the archipelago of Svalbard, this island is the westernmost of all the Russian islands of the Arctic.

Origin of the name of the islands

Very few of the islands of Franz Josef Land have Russian names. Most of the names are of German, British, American, Italian, and in some cases Norwegian origin.

• The Austro-Hungarian expedition to the 1874 North Pole, led by Weyprecht and Payer, named the majority of the islands, using names in honor of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and their aristocratic dynasties, as well as the names of the nobles who had contributed to financing their company. For some reason, unlike what happened in the rest of Russia, the names of the archipelago were preserved during the Soviet era.
• The British expedition of Benjamin Leigh Smith of 1880 named the islands of the south-west part of the archipelago, using British names.* The Fram expedition of Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen named "Hvidtenland" in 1893 (in Russian: Bélaya Zemliá, White Earth). It became evident later that it was a group of three islands.
• The 1895 Jackson-Harmsworth expedition led by the British Fredrick Jackson named some islands in recognition of British explorers and also personalities of the Royal Geographic Society, the sponsors of the expedition.
• The expedition to the Baldwin-Ziegler North Pole of 1901 named certain islands according to American scientists and explorers, sometimes changing an earlier name of the islands, such as La Ronciere Island, which renamed "Is Whitney".
• The 1905 Italian Polar expedition, led by Luis Amadeo de Saboya, Duke of the Abruzos, named the last islands, as the Pontremoli Islands.

Climate

Average temperatures of the air in meteo box, 1916 to 2008 (NASA).

In January the minimum temperature is −30 °C and the highest is −11 °C. In July the minimum is 0 °C with a daily peak of 3 °C. The average annual temperature is −12 °C. In the last 30 years the highest temperature recorded was 7 °C and the minimum −56 °C. Rainfall is common throughout the year, but is most common during the transitional seasons of late spring and fall. Fog is very common at the end of summer.

Wildlife

The natural fauna of the archipelago is made up mostly of walruses, polar foxes and polar bears. Common birds are fulmars and gulls, mainly those of the genus Rissa. Beluga whales are often sighted surfacing on the surface of the surrounding water. Caribou horns have been found on Hooker Island, suggesting that some herds arrived on the archipelago around 1,300 years ago, when the climate was warmer.