Franz Josef Land

Franz Josef Land is a scatter of one hundred and ninety-two islands between eighty and eighty-two degrees north, about eighty-five per cent covered by ice caps, the northernmost land in the eastern hemisphere and among the last significant land masses on earth to be found - reached by an Austro-Hungarian expedition in 1873 whose ship had been trapped in the ice and carried there. It has never had a permanent population and forms part of the Russian Arctic National Park. Expedition ships call in a window of a few weeks: walrus haul-outs, polar bears, huge seabird colonies on the basalt cliffs of Rubini Rock, glacier fronts calving directly into the sea, and on Champ Island the spherical concretions, stone balls up to two metres across weathering out of the sediment. Cape Tegetthoff and other sites hold the remains of nineteenth and early twentieth-century expedition camps.

History

The Norwegian sealer Spidsbergen probably sighted the islands in 1865, but the Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition of 1872-1874, led by Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht on the schooner Tegetthoff, was the first to announce them, naming them after Franz Joseph I. Benjamin Leigh Smith's expedition on the Eira landed on Bell Island in 1880, and when he returned the following year the ship sank off Cape Flora on 21 August (Wikipedia, Franz Josef Land).

What's there

• The ice - about eighty-five per cent of the archipelago under ice caps.
• The Champ Island spheres - stone concretions up to two metres weathering out of rock.
• Rubini Rock - basalt columns holding enormous seabird colonies.
• The expedition remains - camps left by nineteenth and twentieth-century parties.

When to go

July to early September, the only ice-free window. Ten days to two weeks aboard an expedition ship. Landings depend entirely on ice and weather.

Before you go

Reachable only by expedition cruise, which is expensive and books far ahead. Landings are cancelled routinely by ice, fog and swell - a booked itinerary is a hope, not a schedule. Polar bear protocols govern every landing. Permits and paperwork are handled by operators and are not optional.

Nearby

Novaya Zemlya lies south; Murmansk and Arkhangelsk are the mainland ports.

Key facts