Sannikov Land

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Sannikov Land (Russian: Земля Санникова) was a phantom island in the Arctic Ocean. Its supposed existence became somewhat of a myth in 19th century Russia.

Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom claimed to have seen it during their 1808-1810 cartographic expedition to the New Siberian Islands. Yakov Sannikov was the first one to report the sighting of a "new land" north of Kotelny Island in 1811 (hence, the name "Sannikov Land").

In 1886 and 1893, another Russian explorer Eduard Toll reported observing the elusive land. Despite the intensified search, it was established finally during the first half of the 20th century that the Sannikov Land does not exist.

Some scholars, judging from other successes of Sannikov, believe that the Sannikov Land indeed existed, but was destroyed by water and disappeared from the face of the ocean like many other islands, formed either of fossilized ice or of permafrost. This process of disappearing of Arctic islands, e.g., of the New Siberian Islands archipelago continues. However, today it is mostly regarded as a form of pseudohistory.

The legend of the Sannikov Land may have served as a source of inspiration for the Syberia series of adventure games.

[edit] Novel

Russian geologist and science fiction writer Vladimir Obruchev fictionalized this phantom island in his novel The Sannikov Land (1926). In the story, the island provided the last escape for a tribe of Onkilon (in fact, this was one of the older names for Yuit), pushed away from the mainland by other Siberian peoples. The (fictional) Onkilon were thought to be extinct, and were discovered by a small expedition looking for the island and eventually stranded at it.

Obruchev, inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, provided a reasonable justification of the possibility of the described things and events. The island turned out to be a crater of a volcano and a warm place, heated by the volcano. It also hosted a tribe of neanderthals (called "Vampoo") and mammoths. In the end of the story the volcano erupts and destroys the land.

1973, a science fiction movie called The Sannikov Land was released in the Soviet Union.