The “Northern Island of the World” is actually an iceberg

The island that is supposed to be the northernmost in the world is actually an iceberg. This is what scientists from Denmark and Switzerland discovered, who examined an island discovered in 2021 along with other islands north of Greenland. Researcher Rene Forsberg told science moderator Videnskab.dk that there is water under the “islands” and that they are actually flat icebergs covered with earth and gravel on the surface.

All reported island sites have been visited since 1978 — it became clear that they couldn’t be islands, Forsberg says.

For a long time, scientists, explorers and others have been searching for new islands in the North Greenland region. A Swiss-Danish research team made a special discovery a little over a year ago: they named the island, which is about 30 x 60 meters in size, Qeqertaq Avannarleq, which means something like “the northernmost island”. It was about 800 meters north of Udaq Island, which was discovered in 1978 at the northernmost tip of Greenland and was previously considered the piece of land closest to the North Pole.

However, the researchers decided that it couldn’t be more accurately described as an island either. Accordingly, another island called Inuit Qeqertaat with a position of 83° 39 “55” N, 30° 37 “45” W is the northernmost point of the Earth.