© RIA Novosti. Anna Yudina
New strait divides Notrbrook island in two parts.
The Russian Navy has confirmed the presence of a new island in the Arctic, which would increase the number of islands in the Franz Josef Land archipelago to 192. The report was published in the Russian news service
RIONOVOSTI.
The archipelago - named after an Austrian emperor - is among the last true frontiers. Even Google maps can't zoom in close. The ice-covered islands resemble a white smattering of freckles near the Norwegian island of Svalbard below the North Pole.
Fjords and sounds surround the islands, with water depths exceeding 250 meters. The waters are covered in sea ice for 9 months a year. More than 85 percent of the islands are made up of glaciers. A forbidding place, to be sure.
It is a remoteness that men (and a few women) attempted to conquer in the early days of Arctic exploration. Franz Josef Land was officially discovered in 1873, and became a base for a number of expeditions.
The British explorer Frederick George Johnson traveled to Franz Josef Land beginning in 1894 and arrived on the Northbrook Island, the southernmost of the archipelago. He settled at so-called Camp Flora, with the goal of exploring the archipelago and collecting rocks and fossils. His collections revealed to the British Geological Society that the islands were of volcanic origin (as opposed to continental).
In 1896, Johnson suddenly saw a man not of his party on the island: "a tall man, wearing a soft felt hat, loosely made, voluminous clothes and long shaggy hair and beard, all reeking with black grease."
