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Windswept ridges and fallout trace human histories on Komsomolets Island
At the top edge of the map Few islands seem less interested in human company. Komsomolets Island lies in the high Russian Arctic, the northernmost major island of the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, set between the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea and divided from October Revolution Island by the Red Army Strait. Even by polar…
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Buried Arctic archives resurface on Prince Patrick Island
Few pieces of land seem so thoroughly given over to weather. In the western Canadian Arctic, beyond the better-known channels of the Northwest Passage, Prince Patrick Island lies as a broad, spare mass in the Queen Elizabeth Islands of Nunavut, bounded by ice-choked seas for much of the year and visited more often by pressure…
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Cold War relics on Graham Bell Island map shifting Arctic geopolitics
There are islands that feel discovered, absorbed into routes and narratives, and then there are islands that still seem to stand outside ordinary time, known mostly through ice reports, expedition logs, and military records. Graham Bell Island belongs to the second kind. It lies at the northeastern edge of Franz Josef Land in the Russian…
