The Completed Map of North East Land

Abstract

ALTHOUGH North East Land, the most easterly island of the Spitsbergen group, was known to the seventeenth-century whalers, it was relatively unexplored until some twenty years ago, except for an attempt by A. E. Nordenskjöld in 1873. The modern survey, begun by the Oxford University Expedition of 1924, was virtually completed by the Oxford Expedition of 1935-36, though some important work was done by the Swedish-Norwegian Expedition of 1931. The map published in the Geographical Journal of October 1937 is now revised in some minor and one major point by a new map in the Geographical Journal of October 1941 (A. R. Glen, “The Latest Map of North East Land”). This map makes use of the Norwegian aerial surveys of North East Land in 1938 which are not now accessible, and it shows one remarkable change. In the south a great lobe of the South Ice has overridden the coast on a thirteen-mile front and pushed ten miles out to sea. Recent investigations show that the ice of North East Land is in the main in retreat: small ice-free areas have been found on the east coast. This advance is probably purely local, and Mr. Glen suggests that it may be due to a tectonic disturbance or some internal glacial cataclysm. The whole surface of the ice lobe is heavily crevassed.