Clavering Island

Coordinates: 74°16′N 21°00′W / 74.267°N 21.000°W / 74.267; -21.000
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Clavering Island
NE Greenland National Park
Demographics
Population0 (2021)
Pop. density0/km2 (0/sq mi)
Ethnic groupsnone

Clavering Island (Danish: Clavering Ø) is a large island in eastern Greenland off Gael Hamke Bay, to the south of Wollaston Foreland.

The Eskimonaes (Eskimonæs) radio and weather station was on this island. It was staffed by Danish scientists and was captured by German troops in 1943. The place where the station stood had also been the location of the last Inuit settlement in Northeast Greenland around 1823.[1]

History

The island was named by the second

Douglas Charles Clavering (1794–1827), commander of the Griper on the 1823 voyage, which explored the area and, at the southern shore of this island made the first (and last) encounter that Europeans made with the now extinct Northeast-Greenland Inuit
.

In late August 1823, Clavering and the crew of the Griper encountered a band of twelve Inuit, including men, women and children. In his journal, Clavering described their seal-skin tent, canoe, and clothes, their harpoons and spear tipped with bone and meteoric iron, and their physical appearance ("tawny coppery" skin, "black hair and round visages; their hands and feet very fleshy, and much swelled"). He remarked on their skill in skinning a seal, the custom of sprinkling water over a seal or walrus before skinning, and their amazement at the demonstration of firearms for hunting.[2]

European visitors to Northeast Greenland prior to 1823 reported evidence of extensive Inuit settlement in the region although they encountered no humans. Later expeditions, starting with the Second German North Polar Expedition in 1869, found the remains of many former settlements, but the population had apparently died out during the intervening years.[3]

Bones of

muskoxen have been found at Inuit sites on the island, but no such animals were reported by Clavering in 1823. Large numbers of Arctic hare bones suggest that the Inuit were reduced to hunting smaller game after the extinction of muskoxen in the area. After humans died out, muskoxen returned, and the first pair of live muskoxen ever to be brought to Europe were captured at Clavering Island in 1899.[4][5]

Eskimonaes

The Eskimonaes radio and

Three-year Expedition to East Greenland, as well as by other scientists from 1931 to 1939. From 1941 to 1943, it became the headquarters of the Danish North-East Greenland Sledge Patrol.[6]

During the war, the code name used for the Eskimonæs Station by the

David Armine Howarth in his 1951 book The Sledge Patrol.[7]

Geography

Clavering Island is a coastal island, separated from the mainland by fjords and sounds of the Greenland Sea, some of which are narrow. The Tyrolerfjord bounds the island in the north, with its extension, the Young Sound in the northeast, Rudi Bay and the Copeland Fjord in the west, the Godthab Gulf in the southwest, and Gael Hamke Bay in the southeast. Payer Land lies to the west, A. P. Olsen Land to the north, Wollaston Foreland to the east and northeast, and [8]

The island's highest point is the 1650 m high Ortlerspids and the island has an area of 1,534.6 km2 (592.5 sq mi) and a shoreline of 165.4 km (102.8 mi).[9] The Halle Range (Hallebjergene) is an up to 1,200-metre-high (3,900 ft) mountain chain on the southwest part of Clavering Island that was named by Lauge Koch during his 1929–30 expedition.[6]

Some small islands are located nearby, such as the Finsch Islands to the south and Jackson Island far to the southeast at the mouth of the bay.[10]

1870 map of the Northern Portion of Eastern Greenland showing coastal islands.
Map of the area around Clavering Island.

See also

Bibliography

  • Glob, P.V. 1946: Eskimo settlements in Northeast Greenland. Meddelelser om Grønland 144(6), 40 pp.

References

  1. ^ Zabecki, David T. World War II in Europe: An Encyclopedia p. 628
  2. ^ Clavering, Douglas Charles (1830). "Journal of a voyage to Spitzbergen and the east coast of Greenland, in His Majesty's ship Griper". Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. 9: 21–24. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  3. ISBN 9788763512084
    . Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  4. ^ Vibe, Christian (1967). "Arctic Animals in Relation to Climatic Fluctuations". Meddelelser om Grønland. 170: 1–227.
  5. ISBN 0-8061-3170-5
    .
  6. ^ a b "Catalogue of place names in northern East Greenland". Geological Survey of Denmark. Retrieved 8 July 2016.[permanent dead link]
  7. ^ David Howarth, The Sledge Patrol: One of the Greatest Adventure Stories of World War II, (1951)
  8. ^ "Clavering Ø". Mapcarta. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  9. ^ UNEP
  10. ^ Shannon Ø
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