Sverdrup Islands
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the island in the Kara Sea called "Sverdrup Island" see Sverdrup Island (Kara Sea).
| Sverdrup Islands | |
|---|---|
| Geography | |
| Location | Northern Canada |
| Coordinates | Coordinates: |
| Archipelago | Queen Elizabeth Islands Canadian Arctic Archipelago |
| Administration | |
 Canada |
|
| Territory |  Nunavut |
| Qikiqtaaluk Region | |
| Demographics | |
| Population | Uninhabited |
From left to right: Ellef Ringnes, Amund Ringnes, and Axel Heiberg islands
The Sverdrup Islands is an archipelago of the northern Queen Elizabeth Islands, in Nunavut, Canada. The islands lie west of Ellesmere Island at around 82° north and 95° west.
The main islands of the group are Axel Heiberg Island, Amund Ringnes Island, and Ellef Ringnes Island, and the archipelago also includes a number of smaller islands in the surrounding waters. The group is named after Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup, who explored and mapped them from 1898 to 1902 with the vessel Fram, although some were previously inhabited by Inuit people. The only habitation is on Ellef Ringnes Island.
[edit] The Fram 1898-1902 Arctic expedition
In June 1898, Fram left Norway. Sverdrup’s intention was to take her through the channels separating Greenland and Ellesmere Island, to the northern coast of Greenland. But impenetrable ice thwarted his plans, and he instead wintered the vessel on the eastern coast of Ellesmere Island at a harbour, which he named Fram Haven. During that winter and spring, Sverdrup and his men explored Bache Peninsula and central Ellesmere Island, and one sledge party reached the island’s western coast.
The next summer, ice again blocked Sverdrup’s way north, and he was forced to abandon his original plan. Instead, he decided to focus his research on Ellesmere Island and the seas around it. He took Fram south, then west into Jones Sound where he passed three consecutive winters, the first at Harbour Fjord and the next two at Goose Fjord.
From these bases, Sverdrup and his party explored and mapped most of the west coast of Ellesmere Island and a group of islands now known collectively as the Sverdrup Islands. Arctic historian William Barr has called this “one of the most impressive feats of polar exploration ever achieved”. This accounts for the liberal dose of Norwegian names on islands of the Canadian Arctic, for the islands included Axel Heiberg, Amund Ringnes, and Ellef Ringnes and King Christian, as well as Cornwall and Graham Islands.
The naming of the major three island was in honor of his sponsors: Axel Heiberg, Amund Ringnes and Ellef Ringnes, all belonging to the Norwegian brewery of Ringnes. It is not known whether the sponsorship was restricted to hard cash or also included "liquid means".
[edit] The Norwegian claim
When Sverdrup returned to Norway in 1902, he informed King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway that he had taken possession of all the lands he had discovered in the name of Norway. But Norway was not up to aggressively pursuing its claim for ownership of the High Arctic at the time, as it was still striving to gain its own independence from Sweden. Canada took little interest in the claims until the 1920s, when it finally woke up to the fact that another nation professed ownership of much of what it considered its own, albeit neglected, Arctic.
Sovereignty of the Sverdrup Islands remained a concern for the Canadians until 1930 when the dispute was settled amicably, through negotiation. Sverdrup’s maps were the key to the settlement. A biographer of Sverdrup wrote: “Without them, Ottawa would have remained ignorant, for who knows how long, of the simple fact that the islands were there, in need of ‘saving’ for Canada. If Sverdrup had not discovered the islands when he did, they would almost certainly have been found and claimed by explorers of a country much better able than Norway to follow up the matter.” Sverdrup had for years been pushing the Norwegian government to press his claim.
On November 11, 1930, a deal was made between the Norwegian government, the British government (which had just given Norway sovereignty over Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic), the Canadian government, and Sverdrup himself. As a part, the Norwegian government formally relinquished its claim to the land explored by Sverdrup, and at the same time, Canada paid Sverdrup a lump sum of $67,000, supposedly for his original maps and journals. The real reason, of course, was so Norway would not challenge Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic archipelego - Canada simply bought the islands back.
Fifteen days after the settlement was announced, Otto Sverdrup died.
The diaries still exist. They were returned to Sverdrup's family and are now in the Manuscript Department of the University of Oslo Library. The maps, however, seem to have been lost. There were, it seems, a comprehensive set of maps at least similar to the ones printed in Sverdrup's 1903 book Nyt Land, and presumably more detailed originals as well, though this is not certain.
[edit] External links
- University of Guelph Ringnes Islands
- Nunatsiaq News - Canada secures High Arctic sovereignty
- Official site of the Fram Museum (Frammuseet)
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