Eva Island

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Location of the Belaya Zemlya subgroup of the Franz Josef Archipelago. Eva Island is the northernmost of the group.

Eva Island or Eva-Liv Island (Russian: Остров Ева-Лив; Ostrov Yeva-Liv) is the northeasternmost island in Franz Josef Land, Russian Arctic.

Eva Island is roughly rabbit-shaped and its surface is 288 km². The highest point of the island is 381 m.

The area where Eva Island lies was named Hvidtenland (White Land) by Fridtjof Nansen who reached Eva Island's coast on August 5th 1895 during his polar expedition. In his map he drew two islands and he named the largest one to the east Eva Island after his wife Eva Nansen (died in 1907). The "island" to the west, which Nansen reached two days later, was named "Liv Island".

Since the limit of permanent ice crosses Belaya Zemlya, it is often difficult to distinguish between land and sea. However, as the cartography of the Franz Josef Archipelago became more accurate, it became apparent that "Liv Island" was only a peninsula at the western end of Eva Island. Therefore some maps still mention "Eva-Liv Island", a combination of both names.

The heavily glacierized group formed by Eva Island and its two adjacent small islands (Frieden and Adelaide) is still known in Russian as Белая Земля (Belaya Zemlya), also meaning "White Land", thus retaining Fridjof Nansen's original name.

Belaya Zemlya is separated from the main Franz Josef group by a 45 km broad strait known as Proliv Severo Vostochnyy.

This is the point of the Franz Josef Archipelago that Russian navigator Valerian Albanov of the doomed Brusilov expedition was trying to reach when he left the Svyataya Anna with part of the crew. Albanov, however, ended up far to the southwest in Alexandra Land.

[edit] Adjacent Islands

A few miles to the southwest lies small Adelaide Island (Остров Аделаиды), named in honor of Princess Adelheid of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. It is only 2km in length
Frieden Island (Остров Фреден), is a larger oval-shaped island, with a length of 8.2 km. It lies 2.5 km south of Adelaide Island. This island was named after the German word for "Peace".