MOSCOW, September 8. /TASS Correspondents Viktoria Melnikova, Kirill Verigo/. Severnaya Zemlya is the northernmost point of the Krasnoyarsk Region and the Earth's most recent great geographic discovery. Amundsen, Nansen, and Nordenskiold have attempted to discover it, but the luck was with Russian naval officer Boris Vilkitsky. On September 4, 2023, the mysterious archipelago marked the 110th anniversary of its discovery. Its geographical names kept changing, but unchanged has remained the interest in it among geographers, geologists and even paleontologists. The archipelago still keeps surprises, no doubt.
28-year-old captain
The Nganasans, a northern ethnic group living on the Taymyr Peninsula in the Krasnoyarsk Region, have a fairy tale that for several centuries they are telling to kids. The plot is very simple: a brave hunter takes a long journey to get a mysterious, huge beast. The road is not easy and he travels far from home into an unknown land - where ice floes are huge, snowdrifts are blocking, and, most importantly, no human has ever set foot on that mysterious (and in many ways terrible) land. The hunter never finds or defeats the mysterious beast, but there, far from home, tired and exhausted, he sees that very land where no Nganasan has ever been before.
Such a folk story could not have developed from nothing, the Krasnoyarsk Local History Museum's expert Mikhail Chechelev said. "In fact, the existence of Severnaya Zemlya was predicted way ahead of its discovery. The ancient northern peoples, who then inhabited the region, could observe migrating animals. Birds returning from somewhere in the north, or bears going there. Thus, there must be some land, and they have something to eat there. Animals and birds cannot be leaving for nowhere. Later on, for example, Mikhail Lomonosov in his tales about the Pomors, living near Arkhangelsk, mentioned that in the 16th-18th centuries they went from the Kara Sea to the Laptev Sea and could see some lands in the north," he said.
Mysterious lands in the north have always attracted many famous geographers and navigators. Swedish geographer Adolf Nordenskiold in the late 19th century passed near those lands but could not see the archipelago's southern part through fog and ice. Another Arctic explorer, a famous Norwegian traveler, Fridtjof Nansen, also passed by the land. "He was able to walk only 18 km, and then that's it - the ice did not allow. That is, ice has prevented one, and water - the other," he added.
Only one person has met no obstacles and managed to discover Severnaya Zemlya. Boris Vilkitsky, the son of a famous Russian hydrographer, a researcher of the Arctic Ocean seas, a graduate of the Maritime Academy, in early 1913 was appointed commander of the Taymyr icebreaker steamer. Together with another steamer, the Vaygach, the Taymyr was to assess the Northern Sea Route navigation.
"The very first thing that strikes me about Boris Vilkitsky is that he was only 28 years old at the time. A very young man. It is hard for us to believe that at such an age he was able to manage the crew of an icebreaking steamer without navigation experience in high latitudes and in dense ice. Realistically, he managed not just the Taymyr crew, but actually two crews - that of the Vaygach, as well. Vilkitsky was appointed the expedition leader. His contemporaries wrote in memoirs that, when reporting the expedition results in St. Petersburg, he noticed irony and skepticism in the audience - most likely due to his young age. That didn't bother him much, however," the expert said.
The expedition participant Eduard Arngold described interestingly how Severnaya Zemlya was discovered. "Both vessels were sailing along the east coast to the north. Icebergs began to appear, though how could they appear here... At a time, they were about two dozen. Right at that moment, the Vaygach's watch commander, Navigator-Lieutenant Nikolai Yevgenov, reported to the flagship that he saw an unknown land. So, Leonid Starokadomsky on the Taymyr and Yevgenov on the Vaygach saw the land almost simultaneously. No wonder, as the vessels were sailing side by side. As the ships were approaching the new land, the coast view was getting more and more impressive. High mountains, up to 500 m, descended steeply towards the sea. The island was very large," Arngold wrote in the memoirs.
This is how the archipelago was discovered. On that day, September 4, 1913, Vilkitsky solemnly announced to the crews the annexation of this land to the property of his imperial majesty. The sailors greeted this news with three cheers, raised the flag, and the captain treated them with a glass of vodka and a festive dinner.
Archipelago bearing royal name
Perhaps it was then, at that very dinner, that the first, unofficial name of the archipelago arose. "The sailors dubbed it Tayvay (first syllables of Tay-myr and Vay-gach) to memorize the two ships that were the first to sail so close to the archipelago. It is still unclear, why this name has never officially been given to the new place," the expert said.
Perhaps Vilkitsky was confused by the sounding, unusual for that time, or by the presence in the name of a part of the word "Vaygach," which in Nenets means "island of terrible doom." Anyway, the fact remains: like the archipelago discoverer suggested and the maritime minister of the Russian Empire supported in 1914, that place was called the Land of Emperor Nicholas II. One of the islands became known as the Island of Crown Prince Alexey.
Other results of the Vilkitsky expedition (besides the discovery and the name choice) were not notable as the crew could have wished. Officer Starokadomsky (the one who first saw the archipelago) of the Taymyr's crew wrote in memoirs: "Having discovered Severnaya Zemlya, we were able to locate and map only its eastern shore part, limiting ourselves to coastal points viewed from the sea, and leaving out the places where the coastline bent significantly into the land or was completely interrupted. We were unable to verify whether the breaking lines were coast retreats, like bays, or those retreats indicated separate islands."
According to Mikhail Chechelev, after the Vilkitsky expedition, many explorers attempted reaching the archipelago again, but no one has managed to do it. For example, in the late 1920s, Italian researcher Umberto Nobile wanted to take Severnaya Zemlya's photographs off the Italy airship. But, as we all know, the airship crashed and Nobile had to drop the dream of seeing the archipelago. We know other names of the Arctic adventurers - Amundsen, Nansen. However, none of them could repeat what Vilkitsky and his crew did - setting foot on Severnaya Zemlya.
The brave four
The archipelago received the name "Severnaya Zemlya" in 1926. For only 12 years it kept the royal name. In the USSR, the archipelago's large islands were given names Bolshevik, Pioneer, Komsomolets and October Revolution.
The new name was followed by a new research. In the 1930s, Georgy Ushakov's expedition headed for the archipelago.
"Ushakov's expedition was of great importance for Severnaya Zemlya. Our museum keeps an iconic photograph of the four archipelago explorers in the 1930s - all the members of that expedition: Georgy Ushakov, Nikolay Urvantsev, Vasily Khodov and Sergey Zhuravlev," the Taymyr Local History Museum's Director Emilia Stambrovskaya said.
All the Arctic researchers with whom experts had managed to talk were unanimous in their opinion: that expedition was successful largely because the four conquerors were very well chosen. Everyone was in the right place. The expedition leader Georgy Ushakov was a student of a famous Russian traveler and ethnographer - Vladimir Arsenyev. He spent 1926-1929 on the Wrangel Island, engaged in research, and even organized one of the first Eskimo settlements there. It was Ushakov who drew up a detailed plan of the expedition to Severnaya Zemlya. "Ushakov's idea was not to spend winter aboard the ship that would bring researchers to the archipelago. They could rely only on the expedition members," Chechelev said.
The expedition's second participant was Nikolay Urvantsev, a famous geologist. By that time, he had worked on the Taymyr for many years. It was he who discovered the copper-nickel ore deposits in Norilsk. The youngest expedition member was Vasily Khodov. At the age of just 21 he was one of the best radio operators in the USSR. He was responsible for radio communications and meteorological observations on Severnaya Zemlya. The fourth brave man was the most experienced team member - Sergey Zhuravlev - a hunter coming from the Arkhangelsk Region. At that time he was 38, and Ushakov valued his experience, which in the resume was written as "spent 13 winter seasons on Novaya Zemlya."
Here is what already in the 1960s Urvantsev said about the expedition in an interview with the national broadcaster: "At the very end of September - in early October (1930 - TASS), we left four our first trip. I, Zhuravlev, Khodov and Georgy Ushakov within just two days reached the shores of Severnaya Zemlya. There, in a deep bay, we erected the Soviet flag. Saluted from three rifles, announced the annexation of that land to the territory of the Soviet Union, laid our first food depo and then drove some 30 to 40 kilometers to the north and to the south to make sure finally those were the outlines of Severnaya Zemlya."
The researchers remained on Severnaya Zemlya for two years. "We worked in frosts of minus 30-40 degrees, sometimes amid heavy winds, blizzards. At times, we were short of food. There've been many hardships. <...> But we are happy with the result. First, Severnaya Zemlya was mapped. That data has served as a reliable cartographic reference for navigation in ice. Secondly, Severnaya Zemlya was studied from the point of view of its geological structure. Further, we have described its basic climatic features," Urvantsev said later on.
During that expedition, he discovered a mineral deposit on the archipelago - tin. He also noted signs of copper, iron and hydrocarbons, in particular oil. The scientists observed the flora and fauna on the islands. It was Ushakov's expedition that was the first to record arctic foxes, seals, polar bears and even reindeer on the archipelago, but the latter, Urvantsev wrote in memoirs, most likely had just walked there incidentally.
"Please return historic name to Severnaya Zemlya"
Ushakov's expedition launched an active scientific life on Severnaya Zemlya. Scientists have gone there regularly, and on the archipelago appeared weather stations and houses for polar explorers. However, only little is known about that aspect. "Research continues as planned," this is how the Krasnoyarsk Worker daily wrote about Severnaya Zemlya in the 1960s.
A new stage of studies began a century after the discovery. In 2019, on board the Professor Molchanov scientific expedition vessel, a complex expedition - Archipelagos of Arctic - 2019: Severnaya Zemlya - kicked off from Arkhangelsk. The expedition explored the islands, took water samples in the bays (mostly narrow fjords with sliding glaciers), and studied plankton from up to one km deep.
The researchers had yet another mission. They paid tribute to polar explorers by landing at Cape Berg in the north of the October Revolution Island, where Vilkitsky and his team had first set foot on the archipelago. The expedition found a pyramid of stones with remains of a flagpole, erected there back in 1913. They replaced the shaft (the initial one was of bamboo), and the flag remained as it was in the time of Vilkitsky - the 1913 model tricolor.
A year later, the Krasnoyarsk Region witnessed a loud dispute about the return to Severnaya Zemlya of its original name - the Land of Emperor Nicholas II. The supporters included the then Governor Alexander Uss, traveler Fyodor Konyukhov, the bishop of Naryan-Mar, Jacob, Boris Vilkitsky's granddaughter - Irina Tikhomirova. The regional legislators filed several requests with the Academy of Sciences asking for a feedback on the initiative. Academicians said the initiative was "insufficiently reasonable historically", and the idea remained on paper.
Science and tourism
Severnaya Zemlya will celebrate its 110th anniversary quite modestly. Small exhibitions will be at the Krasnoyarsk Region's local history museums, and school students will be told about Vilkitsky, about the four brave polar explorers, and, perhaps, about what the archipelago is like nowadays.
"It's great that [the archipelago] has been discovered by Russians, or it would have been a foreign territory and we would not have had any access to the Arctic Ocean. Or rather, we would, but [with the discovery of the archipelago, we've got] a lot. The scientific component is very important there. The Straits of Vilkitsky and Shokalsky are on Severnaya Zemlya, there are glaciers there, and glaciologists work (they study natural ice - TASS), there are currents, salinities, and an emerging oceanographic image. The local flora and fauna are inviting for quite many observations, which is very important," said leader of the Russian Geographical Society's local branch Igor Spiridenko.
Emilia Stambrovskaya was among the few who managed to visit the archipelago last summer. Scientific work there continues without stopping for a minute. "We took a flight to the station, which is called Cape Baranov (on the Bolshevik Island - TASS). We were welcomed there heartily. At that time, 28 polar explorers engaged in various activities lived at the station. <...> There were hydrologists, meteorologists, even a specialist in paleontology. <...> Their everyday life is very well arranged - they have a cafe, a laundry, a sauna, a library, a recreation area," she said.
One of the goals of that expedition, which Emilia Stambrovskaya joined, was to demonstrate Severnaya Zemlya's tourist attraction. "Extreme tourism is good and of high demand. There are things to see there - the amazing wildlife, the beauty of the ice. <...> I think in the format of an exclusive tour, it is quite doable," she added.
So far, very few tourists have visited Severnaya Zemlya (helicopters take them there in small groups when the weather allows). In terms of geographical discoveries, this is the youngest archipelago, and therefore, its global tourist fame is still to come.