Cold Islands
With 300 rainy days a year, the Faroe Islands are hard to beat for a summer holiday. At the same time, the pristine landscape, distinctive architecture and calming simplicity of life on the islands have recently begun to attract a huge number of tourists. The Faroe Islands are located halfway between Norway and Iceland, in the North Atlantic, right in the middle of the Gulf Stream. The archipelago consists of 18 islands, where many more sheep live than people. The islands are covered by a network of 965 kilometers of roads, making them an ideal location for traveling and exploring.
Unfortunately, many guidebooks mention the Faroe Islands only in passing, so most tourists come here with a minimum amount of information. So, if you didn’t know, the Faroe Islands are Danish territory. The total area of all the islands of the archipelago is smaller than the territory of London. In total, 49,000 people live here. And this despite the fact that the number of sheep exceeds 70,000.
The Faroe Islands are mostly visited before or after a trip to Iceland. As a rule, guests stay in hotels in the capital of the archipelago - Tórshavn. In local bars, tourists are treated to some of the most expensive beers in the world ($10 for a half pint) and can arrange a trip to the northernmost village of the main island of Streymoy - Tjornuik. It is believed that it is here that the rope with which the Icelandic giants pulled the archipelago to their island is tied to the Faroe Islands.
Mythological creatures. According to local mythology, trolls, gnomes and other inhabitants of the underworld of Iceland were so fascinated by the dark beauty of the Faroe Islands that they wanted to get their hands on them. At night, the two most powerful giants tied a rope to the islands and began to drag the land behind them, but when the sun rose and illuminated the backs of the inhabitants of the other world, they turned into rocks. This is how the 70-meter cliffs Risin and Kellingin (“Giant” and “Witch”), located north of the island of Esturoy, appeared.
Despite the relatively small size of the Faroe Islands, distances are fair and public buses are infrequent. Therefore, the best option for exploring the islands is to rent a car, or even better, a motorhome. Traveling around the Faroe Islands by car has a special charm and gives an amazing experience. You'll drive on smooth, narrow, single-lane roads across the windswept flat areas of the islands, cross from one coast to another on ferries, and fuel the adrenaline on mountain serpentines. This is exactly the kind of extreme that awaits you on Tjornuik. The road here is laid along the top of an almost vertical cliff. At the same time, you need to be prepared for the fact that even here the road may be blocked by a flock of sheep.
A few kilometers south of Tjornuik there is another settlement - Saksun. The road leading here is not so difficult, but no less impressive. 11 km of smooth turns along a green valley will lead you to a lonely church. Staying here, you will be able to see the stunning panorama of the fjord and several picturesque waterfalls.
Green roofs. While traveling around the islands, you will definitely notice that almost all the roofs here are not covered with tiles or slate, but with layers of green grass. This type of roofing began to be used by the islanders more than a thousand years ago, and today has become a symbol of the Faroe Islands. Grass, which holds a small layer of soil together with its roots, provides reliable protection from rain and thermal insulation. In summer, the sun almost never sets over the Faroe Islands, but there are practically no bright and hot days. However, it is at this time of year that exploration of the northern part of the archipelago is possible.
The main islands are connected to each other by underwater tunnels and one bridge, as locals joke: “The only bridge over the Atlantic Ocean.” Even a short drive through the roads and villages of the archipelago, such as Jegv, will be enough to understand how difficult life is here. Take, for example, the weather and the monotonous view from the window. In the summer, when the sun almost never sets, but it rains almost constantly, people live in constant twilight, dampness and loneliness. This, and the fact that young people do not see any prospects for life on the islands, forces them to leave their homes and go to the mainland. True, having received a diploma from one of the universities in Europe, young people often return to their homeland, where their relatives are waiting for them, always ready to lend their shoulder, as well as an atmosphere that can relieve any stress.
About the weather and the spirit of the islands, local residents say that if Vivaldi had visited the Faroe Islands, he would have included another composition in his eighth opus “The Seasons”, and they believe that just one day on the archipelago will enchant tourists with the extraordinary atmosphere, weather, views and mood.
How to get there From Russia only with connection. The only carrier providing communication between the archipelago and the Danish mainland, and more precisely with Copenhagen and Billund, is Atlantic Airways. There are also flights to Iceland and Norway. In summer, Atlantic Airways offers flights to London, Barcelona and Milan. There is another way to get to the Faroe Islands - by ferry, which operates once a week. If you choose this type of travel, be prepared to sail through the cold North Sea for about three days.
By the 1930s, it had become clear that the imperfections of the human eye were to blame for a number of supposed discoveries of the so-called problematic lands. Indeed, apart from special atmospheric phenomena, primarily refraction, except snow and ice in the Arctic, there is nothing that would facilitate comparison with objects whose sizes are known - this is precisely what is based on a person’s ability to visually determine distances and estimate the depth of the opening view. Not to mention the lack of shadows in conditions of the so-called whiteout. All of the listed features more than once put the polar explorer in both a dangerous and often a funny position, when he could mistake an arctic fox for a polar bear and sometimes, worse, vice versa.
However, in the middle of the 20th century, another reason appeared to reconsider our attitude to a number of events in the Arctic. As is known, at this time the high latitudes became the scene of a brutal Cold War, when Soviet and American polar explorers conducted their research in deep secrecy from each other. In many directions, thanks to our ice reconnaissance, since pre-war times we were ahead of our potential enemy, and now the Americans rushed after us, since they had an advantage in long-range aviation and had extensive experience in using radar.
While we were landing numerous scientific teams in the polar region to study the hydrology and bottom of the Arctic Ocean in the North expeditions, the Americans were more interested in the ice itself, especially unusual ice formations that from time to time appeared on the radar screens of the B-29 strategic bombers that regularly flew in North Pole area with meteorological reconnaissance (and more) from Alaskan airfields. Rodal described the first event of its kind in the summer of 1946 in the following words: “During a routine flight across the North Polar Basin from Ledd Air Force Base in Alaska on August 14, less than three hundred miles north of Cape Barrow at latitude 76 degrees 10 minutes north and 160 degrees 10 minutes west longitude, a huge heart-shaped island with an area of approximately 200 square meters suddenly appeared on the radar screen. miles. At night, the plane commander sent an urgent report to Washington about this.
Initially, this island was given the designation T-X (target X), and later it became known as “Ice Island T-1”.
When it was first discovered, it was believed that it was an island of mainland origin (that is, ordinary land. - VC.), since the response pulse received on the radar screen was similar to what was usually received from the ground. When its location changed on subsequent observations, it became apparent that the island was moving and therefore could not be a mainland island. During clear weather, it was clear that the ice island T-X was an iceberg with a flat surface, which drifted freely in the Arctic Ocean."
Of course, our pilots saw similar ice formations, but since they freely landed their aircraft on the drifting ice of the ocean, such a discovery did not have the same meaning for us as for the Americans, who were interested in huge icebergs as unsinkable aircraft carriers.
Flights of drifting ice islands at low altitudes showed that their surface is distinguished by a characteristic system of parallel shafts and hollows, filled with melt water in the summer. This was an excellent deciphering feature when studying aerial photographs. At the same time, the Americans established what was already known to Soviet researchers from the results of the drift of the secret Soviet station SP-2 under the leadership of Mikhail Mikhailovich Somov: the drift system in this part of the Arctic Ocean is clockwise, which was predicted back in 1908 by a participant in the Russian expedition along search for Sannikov Land by Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak. Nevertheless, there was still one more mystery about the origin of the giants, but its time had come...
When studying previously accumulated materials, the attention of American and Canadian polar explorers was attracted by an aerial photograph taken back in 1947 on the coast of the island of Ellef Ringnes - there, on the glacial fringe along the coast, the same system of shafts and troughs was discovered as on the known drifting ice islands. They began to look through the reports of previous travelers - it turned out that similar forms of the ice surface had already been described by Cook, Peary and some others for the northern coast of Ellesmere Island. There was nothing else to do but to send an airplane for aerial photography to the indicated area, where the position of the edge of the ice shelf of the islands - the mystery of their origin and at the same time the mystery of some problematic lands - was finally solved, which took only two and a half centuries.
Sometimes each of us has an irresistible desire to hide from the bustle of the world around us. There are still places on Earth where nature exists in its original form, and the nearest human habitation is hundreds of miles of ocean. Today we offer you Top 10 most distant islands where you can hide from civilization. Here anyone can feel like Robinson, enjoying the peace and quiet.
10. Easter Island(Paasch-Eyland)
It has the local name Rapa Nui and belongs to the territory of Chile. The distance to the continent is impressive - 3703 km. The island is famous for its stone statues (moai) made from compressed volcanic ash. The only regular flight to Easter Island is operated by the Chilean airline LAN Airlines.
9. Tristan da Cunha Island(Tristan da Cunha)
It is part of the British overseas territory of Saint Helena. From this piece of land, lost in the ocean, it is 2816 km to the coast of Africa, 3360 km to South America and 2161 km south to the island of St. Helena. The only mammals on the island are seals. There are many endemic plants here that are not found anywhere else in the world. The island is not connected to any mainland by regular passenger flights.
8. Mangareva Island(Mangareva)
- the largest of the Gambier Islands belonging to French Polynesia. Just over 800 people live on the island, who are engaged in the extraction of first-class pearls in the local waters. The climate in Mangareva is tropical. The coldest months are July and August.
7. Petit Saint Vincent Island(Petit St. Vincent)
It is part of the Grenadines archipelago. The island is privately owned; there are several villas and guesthouses on it, which belong to fans of secluded relaxation. The entire population of the island does not exceed 50 people.
6. Raja Ampat Islands(Raja Ampat Islands),
Located in Indonesia, they are a true paradise for scuba diving enthusiasts. The beautiful landscapes created by underwater corals and the abundance of underwater inhabitants make spending time here very exciting, especially if you have a set of diving equipment.
5. Ellesmere Island(Ellesmere Island)
is the northernmost of the Canadian islands. There are no human settlements on the island, but polar hares, deer and musk oxen walk among the glaciers and snow fields. The climate is quite harsh: temperatures in winter drop to -45°C. In summer it rarely gets warmer than +7°C. Ellesmere is a harsh place for fans of snow-covered exotics.
4. Saint Helena(Saint Helena)
- an overseas territory of Great Britain, famous for the fact that it was here that Napoleon Bonaparte spent the last years of his life. The climate on the island is tropical, trade wind. The entire population of the island is 5.6 thousand people.
3. Norfolk Island(Norfolk Island)
off the coast of Australia has a small population of just over 2 thousand people. The climate in Norfolk is subtropical, with little seasonal temperature variation.
2. Jan Mayen Island(Jan Mayen)
Located 600 km north of Iceland and belongs to Norway. Despite its northern location, the island's climate is characterized by fairly high temperatures for these latitudes. This is explained by the influence of the Gulf Stream. The weather here is cloudy and foggy often falls.
1. Desroches Island(Desroches Island)
Part of the Seychelles archipelago, it is a small coral atoll with an area of 3.24 square meters. km. The length of the island is 6.2 km, and the width at the narrowest part is only 500 meters. Covered with tropical vegetation, Desroches is framed by beautiful sandy beaches. The best time for solitude on the island is from September to May.
The official languages of the islands are French and English, but due to the popularity of Seychelles among tourists, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic are also common. So if you want to communicate with someone, take Japanese, French or English lessons for example. Eliminating the language barrier has not hurt anyone, but has only opened up a new way of understanding the world.
There are a lot of islands and archipelagos in the Arctic Ocean: Greenland (the largest island on Earth), the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island and others, with a total area of about four million square kilometers. This number is due to the fact that the Arctic Ocean is the shallowest of the Earth’s oceans.
Most of the islands are extensions of mountain ranges and sometimes plains of the Arctic mainland. These are, for example, almost all of Greenland, Baffin Island and many islands of the Canadian Arctic archipelago. And the fact that the Novaya Zemlya islands are a continuation of the Urals mountains is easy to see even on the smallest map.
And quite recently (by geological standards, of course), less than 20 thousand years ago, these islands were not islands at all. The ocean then was a hundred meters shallower than it is now (the water was “bound” in huge glaciers that lay on land), and many of the current straits were not straits, but isthmuses. Like, for example, the Bering Strait: it did not separate Eurasia and North America, but connected them.
Among the small islands there are many islands - remnants (from the words “stay, remain”), which are pieces of the coast, cut off from the mainland by the destructive surf. And besides the surf, the heat of the water also has a destructive effect on the shore, which in many places is composed of small particles of soil frozen together, “unfreezing” such shores and islands. Underground ice (permafrost) melts, and soil particles held together by ice, like bricks with cement, crumble.
When the shores erode, many individual particles of soil are formed that fall into the ocean. And their further fate may be different: currents can carry them far from the shore (and there they will settle on the bottom of the ocean), or move them along the shore. In this case, such particles may encounter some obstacle in their path (for example, a shore protrusion that slows down the flow speed). They begin to accumulate, first forming shoals, and then (although not always) islands. Such shallows and islands, composed of accumulated small particles, are called spits (if they are connected to the shore) and bars. These are, for example, the islands of Kambalnitskie Koshki, the island bar Torasavey, the Svyatoy Nos peninsula (which is a spit connecting the shore and a rock outcrop) and many others.
There are a lot of tiny islands in the Arctic (sometimes only a few square meters in area). They usually have a rounded, smoothed shape and are covered with grooves. In Scandinavia they are called skerries, in Russia - luds. Their origin is interesting. As we have already said, several thousand years ago, during the last glaciation, the sea level was about 100 meters lower than today - the water was bound in glaciers. The shallow waters of the Arctic Ocean were then dry land along which glaciers moved south. Like giant bulldozers, they tore loose sediments from the surface, but when they encountered a rock outcropping, they were often unable to cope with it. Such projections remained under the glacier, and it “smoothed” them - mainly not by itself (the ice is quite soft), but by stones frozen into it. Larger stones left grooves in the rocks. After the glaciers melted, these protrusions were preserved in the relief. They are called sheep's foreheads. There is another type of similar hills - drumlins; They are not composed of rock, but of loose sediments melted from the glacier.
Greenland is considered the largest island in the world, it is located in the waters of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, northeast of North America. Greenland is not a country, but an autonomous territory of Denmark. The population of Greenland is about 57.7 thousand people, 90% of the population are Greenlandic Eskimos, the remaining 10% are Danes and representatives of other European nationalities. The average temperature in January is approximately -7 - 10 C., on the eastern side of the island the temperature drops to -27 C due to powerful winds that blow from the glaciers; in July the temperature rises to +7 C.
The largest city in Greenland is Nuuk, also known as “Gothob”, its population is about 14-15 thousand people. This city is located in the western part of the island. It was founded by Hans Egede, who arrived in these cold places in 1721. To this day, the house of this founder has been preserved; today the government of Greenland is located there. The city was officially founded back in 1728.
Nuuk is considered the economic capital of this island, with about 56% of Greenland's entire industry located here. The main industry here is fishing, which accounts for 85% of the entire economy, mainly processed shrimp. Thanks to this, Greenland is able to occupy the first place in the world in shrimp production. In addition to shrimp, about 30,000 tons of fish are also caught per year. In addition, reindeer herding and sheep breeding are developing on the island. It is also worth paying attention to the mining of lead and zinc ore, which accounts for 12% of the economy, and cryolite is also being mined.
There are no highways between the cities of Greenland; people travel by car only within the city or suburbs. Unfortunately, there are no railway tracks either. Communication between the cities of the island is carried out using dog sleds and all-terrain vehicles such as snowmobiles. There is a regional airline operating in Greenland called Air Greenland. The company was founded in 1960. Its difficult tasks include transporting passengers, conducting rescue operations, which are carried out quite often, and providing medical assistance.
The island attracts tourists with its ice caves and icebergs. In Ilulissat, the Knut Rasmussen Museum and the Cold Museum are worth a visit, while hiking trails through the ice caves and Disko Bay will reveal the beauty of the island. A significant factor that lures tourists is the “residence” of Santa Claus; his office and post office are located in the city of Nuuk. Santa Claus's castle is located in Umanaka.
