The geologist Vladimir Ivanov, who worked as the head of the expedition of the Research Institute of Arctic Geology on the New Siberian Islands, returns to the long-standing dispute about the existence of Sannikov Land. In the light of the latest data obtained today by geologists, the author of the essay analyzes the ideas of the famous Russian scientist Eduard Toll, whose name is forever associated with the exploration of the North and the hypothetical Sannikov Land.
On August 13, 1886, an event occurred in the life of Eduard Vasilyevich Toll that determined his entire life. further fate. Standing on the northern shore of the island of Kotelny, at the mouth of the Mogur stream, he saw with his own eyes in an azimuth of 14-18 degrees "the clear contours of four table mountains with a low peak adjacent to them in the east."
On modern maps, I did not find a stream called Mogur. It could be any of the streams cutting through the rocky cliffs of the northern bank of the Kotelny, and the streams here are similar to each other. But I can easily imagine Toll as he stood on the edge of a cliff with strong marine binoculars in his hand...
The picture that opened up to E. V. Toll on that sunny day was so clear that he not only determined the distance to the mountains - about 150 versts, or one and a half degrees in latitude, but also concluded that the mountains were composed of trap massifs, like the islands of Franz Land -Joseph.
From that moment on, all the days that Toll still had to live in the world were subordinated to the dream of reaching the island he saw ...
But let's make some more digression in time - to the year 1810, when the Ust-Yansk "industrialist" (hunter and collector of mammoth ivory) Yakov Sannikov, being a member of the first official Russian expedition to the New Siberian Islands, led by collegiate registrar Matvey Matveyevich Gedenstrom, saw the northern tip of the island of Kotelny hitherto unknown land, "... to the north-west, at an approximate distance of 70 miles, high stone mountains are visible," wrote M. M. Gedenshtrom. Here a phenomenal story begins: how the “lands” that have never been set foot and never set foot by a person, for a century and a half, have brought to life research that has yielded invaluable results...
Sannikov Yakov (patronymic, as well as the dates of birth and death have not reached us) was a man of rare energy and inquisitive mind. He directly owns the honor of discovering at least three islands of the Novosibirsk archipelago - Stolbovoy, Faddeevsky, Bunge Land. A strait, a river, a polar station, as well as the famous Earth, which, although it does not exist in nature, are known much more widely than these objects, are named after Sannikov.
The history of the discovery of the New Siberian Islands begins somewhere in the 17th century. On April 22, 1647, the Cossack Mikhailo Stadukhin, the first Russian to reach Kolyma, reported in the Yakut prison that if you go by sea from Lena to Kolyma, then an island opens from the Holy Nose on your left hand - “... and snowy mountains, and fall, and the streams are all noble ... ”- and that island stretches against the Yenisei and Lena mouths; they call it Novaya Zemlya, they go to it from Pomerania, from Mezen, and in winter the Chukchi move on reindeer to that island one day ... What is true here? Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island from the traverse of Cape Svyatoi Nos is better visible than Kronstadt from Lisiy Nos near Leningrad. Mount Emni-Tas stands out clearly at a height of 311 meters, with patches of snow even in summer. Stream valleys are visible. But further in Stadukhin's description, everything is mixed together... Obviously, that's why he was not honored to be considered the discoverer of the New Siberian Islands. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia states: “The first information about the New Siberian Islands was reported at the beginning of the 18th century. Cossack Y. Permyakov, in 1712, Fr. B. Lyakhovsky was reached by a detachment of Cossacks led by M. Vagin.
At the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries, industrialists mining mammoth ivory took up the matter, and by 1815 almost all the islands that were part of the Novosibirsk archipelago were discovered, with the exception of the De Long Islands - a group of tiny rocky islets lost far to the north in expanses of the East Siberian Sea. By this time, eleven islands out of ... seven that exist today were known. This is not a typo, the reader will find out later why this happened.
The exotic polar islands aroused interest in society, but after the expedition of M. M. Gedenstrom, it became clear that there were no special riches, except for mammoth ivory, on the New Siberian Islands. Yes, and "their appearance is even more gloomy than the Siberian coast," reported M. M. Gedenstrom. Why, then, did the archipelago continue to attract minds? But because on the map of Gedenshtrom, to the north of the already surveyed islands, two more islands were plotted, which no one has yet visited, and it is written: "Lands seen by Sannikov." Actually, Sannikov saw three "lands" (one - from Kotelny Island and two - from New Siberia), but Gedenstrom did not put the third on the map, deciding that this was "a ridge of the highest ice masses."
In 1820, an expedition was organized under the command of Lieutenant of the Navy P.F. Anzhu, with the aim of verifying Sannikov's discoveries. On April 5, 1821, Petr Fedorovich Anzhu went to a point in the north of the Kotelny, from where Sannikov observed his Earth. The horizon was open but the northwest was nothing but level ice, was not viewed. For two days, cutting through the hummocks, the detachment moved in the direction indicated by Gedenstrom and, having mastered about 44 versts, reached the edge of fast ice on the border with the Great Siberian Polynya. "The proposed land was not in sight." Anjou took samples of the bottom soil (it turned out to be "liquid silt"), the depth of the sea was about 34 meters - nothing indicated the proximity of land. P. F. Anjou, unlike Sannikov, had good spotting scopes. He concluded that the predecessor saw "a mist that looked like earth".
After that, the New Siberian Islands were not remembered for sixty years - until, in 1881, the American George De-Long discovered an archipelago of small islands far to the north of New Siberia Island, named after him. The following year, the scientific secretary of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, A. V. Grigoriev, published an article where he suggested that the Bennett and Henrietta islands discovered by De Long were the ego of the “land” seen by Gedenstrom and Sannikov from New Siberia. Distances (to Henrietta - 260 miles!) did not bother A. V. Grigoriev, he referred to cases of abnormally distant visibility in the Arctic, especially on clear spring days. On such days, the islands are often cloudy, which visually lifts them above the sea, and the phenomenal transparency of the air at high latitudes increases visibility.
“After this,” Grigoriev wrote, “there can be no doubt about the reality of the existence of the land that Sannikov saw in 1810 NW from the northern tip of Kotelny Island.” By the way, A. V. Grigoriev was the first to use the phrase “Sannikov Land” in print.
In 1885, the Academy of Sciences organized, in fact, the first ever scientific research expedition to the New Siberian Islands. A physician, later the flagship doctor of the Baltic Fleet, Alexander Alexandrovich Bunge, was appointed head. Baron Eduard Vasilyevich Toll, candidate of zoology, was invited to help him.
Personally, it is difficult for me to write about Toll. This is not just one of the researchers of the geology of the New Siberian Islands, this is the founder. The geological language of Toll differs from the language of his predecessors, just as the language of Pushkin's poems differs from the language of Trediakovsky. We speak the same language. Only in recent years, having adopted geophysical methods that make it possible to see the earth's crust not in a horizontal section, but in volume, have we entered the next stage ...
Over the summer, E. V. Toll bypassed the coast of Kotelny Island, explored Faddeevsky and New Siberia ... He managed to identify the main age complexes of rocks that make up the islands. The dating has changed little even today, unless the details have been clarified. And the next season, what happened with which we started the story: the scientist saw the island, which he mistook for Sannikov Land.
In 1893, the explorer had the opportunity to visit the archipelago again. The Academy sent him to investigate the corpse of a mammoth near the mouth of the Yana. Arriving at the site in early spring, Toll was convinced that the remains were not very interesting, but decided to examine them again after the snow melted, but for now to visit the New Siberian Islands, since there was a point in the expedition’s assignment that gave freedom of action: “the study of unknown parts of Siberia” ...
On April 19, Toll, his assistant, Lieutenant Evgeny Ivanovich Shileiko, and four mushers on dogs moved to Bolshoi Lyakhovsky Island. The trip proved to be difficult, as it was prepared in haste, and the mushers, accustomed to deer, did not know how to handle dogs. Nevertheless, they managed to get around Bolshoy Lyakhovsky and Kotelny, describe many outcrops, replenish astronomical and magnetic observations, arrange “food depots” for Nansen, who was then preparing for a flight on the Fram ...
In subsequent years, E. V. Toll, in public speeches and in the academic press, with activity reaching fanaticism, promotes the idea of an expedition to Sannikov Land. His conviction subjugates the facts and builds them into his system. Anjou didn't see Earth? But industrialists do not doubt its existence. F. Nansen, passing on September 19-20, 1893 in the area of Sannikov Land, did not find it? This means that he passed to the north, and the Earth is oriented in the latitudinal direction. Thick fog, always standing over the Great Siberian Polynya, prevented her from being noticed. Later, another enthusiast of the Sannikov Land, Academician V. A. Obruchev, continued to develop this motif. He referred to a paradoxical fact: the really existing, huge archipelago of Severnaya Zemlya was not seen either by Nordenskiöld from the Vega, or by Nansen from the Fram, or by Toll from the Zarya...
What attracted Eduard Toll to the North? He was looking for a clue to the mysteries of the recent geological past of the Arctic: did the mainland exist in the area of the modern New Siberian Islands? When and why did it break up? Why did the "mammoth complex" of mammals die out? Toll sought to get to the root cause of phenomena, and this is the happiness and torment of a true researcher.
The idea of the expedition met with a response in the advanced layers of Russian society. Among its active supporters were Academicians D. I. Mendeleev, A. P. Karpinsky, F. B. Schmidt, Admiral S. O. Makarov. At the same time, the plan of the Canadian polar expedition led by Bernier, who chose Sannikov Land as his stronghold, became known. Possibly spurred on by these reports (“... mammoth ivory deposits and the alleged abundance of game animals are already attracting the attention of German and American trading companies ...” - said in a letter from the Academy of Sciences addressed to the Ministry of Finance), government circles supported the academy's initiative. It was decided to organize a Russian polar expedition. The preparations immediately began on a grand scale, with wide coverage in the press - this was supposed to symbolize interest in Russia's remote Arctic possessions and cool the appetites of foreign capital. The Ministry of Finance released 150,000 rubles in gold, in Norway they purchased a whaling ship with a displacement of about 1,000 tons, which they called the Zarya. It had a machine of 228 indicator forces, but could also sail. E. V. Toll personally selected the scientific staff from young promising enthusiastic specialists and staffed the expedition with the best domestic and foreign equipment, equipment, food ...
June 21, 1900 "Dawn" solemnly left St. Petersburg. Swimming began, designed for three years.
There is no need to describe this journey in detail - Toll's most detailed diary was preserved and published in 1959 ...
More than a year after leaving St. Petersburg, on September 9, 1901, the Zarya reached the area of the alleged Sannikov Land. “Shallow depths speak of the proximity of the earth,” Toll writes in his diary, “but so far it has not been seen ...” The sailor from the “crow’s nest” saw only a horseshoe-shaped ice belt, and behind it - a strip of free water, (“.. I have a heavy foreboding... but enough about that!") The next day a heavy fog thickened, making further searches meaningless and bringing unexpected relief to Toll: "Now it is quite clear that it was possible to pass by Sannikov Land ten times without noticing her".
On September 16, the ship stopped for the winter in the Nerpelakh lagoon, off the western coast of Kotelny Island.
During the winter, Zarya worked as a stationary meteorological and geophysical station. And on June 5, when it was still far from the release of the Zarya from the ice captivity, E. V. Toll, astronomer F. G. Seeberg and two local hunters-industrialists - Vasily Gorokhov and Nikolai Dyakonov - went along the route High in New Siberia, and further - more than a hundred miles almost directly north along the ice of the East Siberian Sea - to Bennett Island. The purpose of the trip was to study the natural conditions of these islands, but in the depths of his soul, E. V. Toll harbored a dream that from Bennett Island he would be able to see Sannikov Land, and maybe even go to it. It was planned that in the summer Zarya would remove the group from Bennett Island ...
But the ice situation in the summer of 1902 was extremely difficult. After three unsuccessful attempts to break through to Bennett Island, the Zarya was forced to leave for Tiksi. Such was the order of E. V. Toll, left to the commander of the ship. “The time limit when you can give up further efforts to remove me from Bennett Island is determined by the moment when the entire fuel supply of up to 15 tons of coal is used up on the Zarya ...”
There are almost no material traces of the Zarya's presence near the island of Kotelny. In one place on the spit, our geologists saw a vertically dug-in log and several metal pegs in alignment with it - a device for determining astropoints. Maybe the stakes were driven in by people from Zarya? There is also an ancient hut on the shore; E. V. Toll could not help but visit it, but again there is no real evidence. Not far from the hut, we found a cast-iron iron. It was a great joy, but then, having rubbed off the rust, they read the date of manufacture: 1903. Too late. However, there is one indisputable monument: a cross on the grave of the expedition doctor G. E. Walter, who died on January 3, 1902.
In the summer of 1973 I was at Cape Walter. The cross stands, although it is very rusted ...
Sailors and polar pilots searched for Sannikov's land. Scientists of many specialties puzzled over her riddle. By the pre-war years, after numerous Soviet high-latitude expeditions and campaigns, there were no unexplored places on the map of the Arctic where Sannikov Land could be hidden. So what did Ya. Sannikov and E. V. Toll see - a cluster of hummocks? An ice island, an iceberg, as the famous polar explorer VF Burkhanov thought? Mirage? Fog over the polynya, as Professor A.F. Laktionov, an expert on the Arctic, thought?
In 1948, an employee of the Arctic Institute, V. N. Stepanov, suggested that Sannikov Land existed and only in the very recent past disappeared, having melted, as it was composed of fossil ice. This idea seems so obvious to me that it is amazing that it did not occur to E. V. Toll. Moreover, the origins of the idea, in essence, are Toll's geological ideas: his doctrine of fossil ice and his concept of the "mammoth continent".
Let's try to look into the recent geological past.
From what point do you start counting? Geological events, of course, do not start on January 1st. The chain stretches from the past and goes into the future. Let's take a look, for example, several tens of thousands of years ago, in the Pleistocene. The level of the Arctic Ocean was then 100 meters lower than it is now. For such a low-lying country as the north of Eastern Siberia, this was of great importance: practically the entire shelf of the Laptev and East Siberian seas - what is painted over in pale blue on geographical maps - was land, an endless plain. The majestic valleys of Anabar, Lena, Indigirka, Kolyma stretched across the plain in their lower - then - course. Now these lower reaches are flooded and only a fragment of the ancient Pra-Yana valley is available for observation - the sandy desert of Bunge Land, the "polar Sahara". To the south, the plain covered the area of today's Yano-Indigirskaya and Primorskaya lowlands. For a long time, a layer of lacustrine-flowing sediments accumulated throughout this single space. The upper part of the sequence contains a unique geological object - a layer of fossil ice tens of meters thick. The horizon is developed on the mainland throughout the lowland and occupies vast spaces on the islands of New Siberia, Faddeevsky, Small and Bolshoi Lyakhovsky. How was stone ice formed? For more than half a century, the theory of E. V. Toll, according to which the fossil ices of the New Siberian Islands are buried ancient snow and ice fields, like the glaciers of Greenland, was considered a model of scientific elegance. However, there was not one, perhaps the most important link in the chain of evidence - nowhere in the north of Eastern Siberia were found obligatory traces of ice cover: moraines, "ram's foreheads", etc. Toll himself felt this weakness and tried to see glacial formations in others , outwardly similar geological objects. Now the origin of the ice is explained differently, but they retained the strength of Toll's thought that the formation of ice occurred in the time interval corresponding to the maximum glaciation of Siberia, and that the ice thickness served as a kind of foundation for a vast plain - the "mammoth continent".
The glacial epochs in Siberia were not accompanied by extensive glaciation, as was the case in Europe, but a deep cooling set before the organic world an alternative - to adapt to the cold or perish. It was a huge milestone. Heat-loving animals of the Tertiary period died out. ancient man learned to live in caves, use fire and dress in skins. In the north of Eastern Siberia, mammals of the “mammoth complex” that are not afraid of the cold and are unpretentious in food have firmly settled. “There they wandered,” Toll writes, “in a vast free space, which, connecting with the current mainland, reached, perhaps, through the pole of the American archipelago and, despite the glaciers, was not poor in pastures.”
The "Mammoth Continent" began to disintegrate when the last glaciation ended and the sea level began to rise. Where is the cause and where is the effect?
Is the concept of "eustasia" familiar to the reader? This is a complex of processes that cause periodic fluctuations in the level of the World Ocean. The processes are different: planetary, intra-mantle, climatic... In particular, they distinguish between tectono-eustasia - vertical movements of the earth's crust, due to deep causes, and glacio-eustasia - processes associated with glaciations. The lowering of the ocean level during the Pleistocene glaciation was determined by the fact that huge masses of water were transferred to solid state- in the form of cover or buried glaciers. The subsequent melting of the ice caused the sea level to rise. Glacioeustasia! the reader will say. But why did the glaciations themselves occur? Because the flow of warm Atlantic waters into the Arctic basin was interrupted: due to the tectonic uplift of a section of the earth's crust, somewhere far to the west, a threshold was formed that the waters from the Atlantic could not overcome. Tectonic eustasia! What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Warming plus sea level fluctuations led to the fact that only a few islands remained from the “mammoth continent”. Everything else... melted away.
We were driving an all-terrain vehicle along the southern bank of Bolshoi Lyakhovsky, from Kigilyakh to the east. The Kigilyakh Peninsula is the realm of granite. From the water comes an almost even granite wall (as if on the Neva, from a boat, you look at the plummet of the Palace Embankment), above the stone lies in steps, like the remains of the stands of the stadium of the giants, and the top is crowned by the giants themselves - “kigilyakhs”, in Yakut “stone people” ”, - granite remnants fancifully processed by the wind. On a sunny day, with a haze, the "kigilyakhs" sway slightly, as if talking to each other. The illusion is complete, no wonder that Yakut hunters traditionally leave symbolic sacrifices at the foot of the “stone people”: small money, sweets, some ribbons ... When A. A. Bunge tried to recapture samples of Kigilyakh granites, local residents resolutely opposed, fearing the wrath of the giants ...
Near the Vankina River, we climbed to the edge of the coastal cliff and embarked on our last year's trail. The trail is a good guide, it removes the painful need to be on the alert all the time so as not to stray from the route. On the left, the slopes of Mount Khaptagai-Taas went up gently and long, and on the right, now approaching, now moving away from the trace, the edge of the coastal cliff stretched. The cliff itself was not visible from above, just the tundra ended, and there, on the floor below, the surface of the sea shone. Suddenly the driver stopped abruptly, and I saw that the track at an angle goes over the edge of the cliff, into nowhere, like rails at the edge of a blown up railway bridge. We drove a little along the cliff, and the trail reappeared, as if last year's all-terrain vehicle flew through the air over the sea and returned to solid ground. All this mysticism meant only that in a year a good piece of the coast managed to collapse.
The crumbling coast. Huge niches. Cornices. Cracks that cannot be jumped over. Collapsed blocks tens of meters in diameter clutter up the foot of the ledges. The picture suggests catastrophic natural phenomena, possibly earthquakes. It is hard to believe that the soundless and gradual melting of ice under the heat of the sun did all this...
The Semenovsky and Vasilyevsky Islands lay in the Laptev Sea to the west of Stolbovoy. In the winter of 1823, the first of the islands had parameters of 14,816 by 4,630 meters, the second was stretched for 4 miles, with a width of a quarter of a mile. An expedition on the Vaigach in 1912 recorded the following dimensions of Semenovsky Island: length 4630 and width 926 meters. In 1936, the Chronometer hydrographic vessel approached the islands, with the task of installing navigation signs on them. Alas, Vasilyevsky Island no longer existed, and Semenovsky was halved. The sign was installed on it 180 meters from the western coast, and in 1945, when the island was visited by I. P. Grigorov, he was already standing a meter from the cliff, threatening to fall into the water ... The island ceased to exist in 1950 .
In the spring of 1973, our expedition drilled several small wells from the ice of the Dmitry Laptev Strait. It turned out that the same Pleistocene rocks lie at the bottom of the strait as on the islands and on the adjacent mainland coast, but without layers. stone ice at the top of the cut. This ice has melted. But at a depth, in the rocks themselves, relics of "permafrost" have been preserved. Permafrost and the sea are incompatible. This means that the strait was formed quite recently. The same mechanism was at work as during the destruction of Semenovsky Island, and even earlier - Figurin Island, which lay in the last century to the north of Faddeevsky, and the islands of Mercury and Diomede in the Dmitry Laptev Strait ...
Our disappearing islands are breaking the notion of geological time. It is generally accepted that geological processes, except for earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, are so slow that they cannot be observed. However, this is not the case, at least for the areas in question. “The face of the Earth,” as they used to say beautifully in the old days, is changing before our eyes.
My colleague geophysicist V. A. Litinsky, while studying the deep structure of the waters of the seas of Eastern Siberia, became interested in the Sannikov Land. It was like a warm-up for the mind: it is curious to try to apply the latest geological and geophysical data to an old problem. It was immediately discovered that, in determining the azimuth to the Earth he saw, E. V. Toll did not take into account the variations in magnetic declination over time. Taking all the data on magnetic declination over the past century from the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism and Radio Wave Propagation, Litinsky calculated that the true azimuth to Sannikov Land was not 29-33 degrees to the northeast, as was commonly believed, but 22-26 degrees. Having plotted this direction on the map of the bottom sediments of the Laptev Sea, compiled by marine geologists Yu. P. Semenov and E. P. Shkatov, it was not difficult to make sure that the line directly falls on the area of development of sandy soils among the silt field. The sands were formed in shallow water conditions - today or very recently. (The second similar area was located on the site of the former Semenovsky and Vasilyevsky islands.) Finally, according to geophysical data, an intense maximum of the gravity field was identified at the same place, corresponding to a block of the ancient shelf basement, overlain only by a thin cover of young marine sediments. This means that the block had a steady tendency to uplift, which only in the recent past gave way to subsidence. The site is characterized by increased tectonic activity; several earthquakes have been recorded here. True, their intensity is not great, only highly sensitive seismographs could pick up the tremors...
Everything told indicates that recently - not in the geological, but in this case in the human sense of the word - there were more islands to the north of the Anjou Islands, and travelers could see them.
How far was Earth from Kotelny? Sannikov and Gedenstrom estimated the distance at 70 versts. E. V. Toll subsequently "pushed" it 150 miles or even further. The following remains a mystery: E. V. Toll made his observation in 1886 - just a decade and a half before the voyage of the Dawn. Could the Earth disappear for such short term? Semenovsky Island for 14 years "before death" had a size of only 2 by 0.5 kilometers. It turns out that the island seen by Toll in 1886 was about this size and had to be located very close to be seen? True, as we have already said, the distances and sizes of objects estimated in the Arctic by eye are very misleading.
The rescue party made its way to Bennett Island only on August 17 of the next, 1903. At 17 o'clock the whaleboat approached the shore at Cape Emma, and at the same moment the sailor Vasily Zheleznikov, standing with a hook on the tank, saw the lid of the aluminum pot used by Toll at the water's edge. There were boxes with collections on the shore, and in the kitchen, half-filled with frozen snow, they found some instruments, sheets from Ziegler's astronomy, fragments of a dress, a leather harness for a geological hammer ... Under a pile of stones lay a sheathed canvas box, in it was a circle Pistor and a document addressed to the president of the Academy of Sciences. The note provided brief information about the geology of Bennett Island, about its modern inhabitants, about the birds flying over the island from north to south. “... Due to the mists of the land from where these birds flew, it was just as invisible as during the previous navigation of Sannikov Land ...” (And here he did not forget about the Earth!) “Let's go south today. We have provisions for 14-20 days. Everyone is healthy. 26.X, 8.XI E. Toll.
They went south across the living, moving, treacherous drifting ice...
Admiral S. O. Makarov wrote: "All polar expeditions ... in the sense of achieving the goal were unsuccessful, but if we know anything about the Arctic Ocean, it is thanks to these unsuccessful expeditions."
All scientific works Toll are based on the results of his first two trips. It was not possible to process the materials of the last expedition. Big loss for science! But the diaries remain. The collections remained: four boxes on Cape Vysoky, four more and a basket on Bennett Island. They were completely taken out of there only in 1914 by an expedition on the icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigach. The members of the expedition placed a wooden cross over the symbolic grave of Toll and his companions. In 1956, having visited the Bennett, my friends, geologists D.S. Sorokov and D.A. Volnov, together with the zoologist S.M. Uspensky, strengthened the cross, which by that time had managed to bend. The collections of E. V. Toll were studied for many years, serving as an important source of information about the geology of the Novosibirsk archipelago, they already lived an independent life, separate from their collector...
Who was E. V. Toll in his scientific specialization? At one time, A. A. Bunge wrote that Baron Toll, a “candidate of zoology,” was appointed his assistant. In all subsequent sources, E. V. Toll is called a geologist. Toll graduated from the Faculty of Natural History of the University of Derpt, where he first studied mineralogy, then became interested in medicine, and in the last courses - zoology. Working at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, on the still distant threshold of the scientific and technological revolution, E. V. Toll possessed the comprehensive erudition of natural scientists of past eras, while at the same time managing to keep up with the latest scientific achievements of his day. Toll was equally skilled at making magnetic observations and identifying birds or plants encountered.
“... All the nature available to us forms a certain system, a certain cumulative connection of bodies, and here we understand by the word body all material realities, starting from a star and ending with an atom ...”
I don’t know if E. Toll read the works of F. Engels, but in his approach to the knowledge of geological phenomena he followed this principle, trying to cover the entire complex and contradictory set of cause-and-effect relationships in the evolution of the earth’s crust.
Toll did not find Sannikov Land as a specific geographical feature. But his scientific research helped to get closer to solving this riddle of nature.
For almost two centuries, the best Russian navigators and polar explorers have been looking for the legendary Sannikov Land. But the ghost island remained undiscovered, nevertheless giving rise to a large number of scientific hypotheses and mysteries.
mammoth tusk
Maybe this whole “race” for Sannikov Land would not have arisen if it were not for the Yakut hunters, who, in early XVIII centuries, they realized that the production of arctic fox is no longer in such volumes as before, and, therefore, a different source of income is needed. This new trade was the search for mammoth tusks or mammoth ivory. In search of valuable ornamental material, the hunters began to go further and further north and saw islands that they could reach on the ice. Subsequently, these islands were named Novosibirsk. In 1770, the merchant Lyakhov was the first to obtain a license for the extraction of mammoth tusks, therefore Catherine II orders the two islands closest to the mainland to be named after the merchant - Bolshoy Lyakhovsky and Small Lyakhovsky. After the death of Lyakhov, in 1806, the right to fish goes to his colleague, the merchant Syrovatsky, who sends a team of Yakut industrialists led by Matvey Gedenstrom to the archipelago. The goal is to find mammoth tusks.
Eureka!
The mammoth bone has indeed been found. However, this is not what glorified the Novosibirsk archipelago and its first explorers. The team of the first Russian expedition included the same Yakov Sannikov, who saw “high stone mountains” rising above the sea. His opinion that there are "vast lands" to the north of Kotelny Island was not questioned - and this is not surprising. An experienced polar traveler who had previously discovered three New Siberian Islands - Stolbovoy, Faddeevsky and Bunge Land - could hardly be mistaken. Gedenstrom puts "Lands seen by Sannikov" on the map and writes "...to the north-west, at an approximate distance of 70 versts, high stone mountains are visible." In favor of the existence of the lands, scientists who observed birds also spoke. For example, polar geese flew north, from where they returned with their young. Couldn't they nest and raise offspring in the ice? Maybe the relatively warm Sannikov Land became a temporary home for them?
Fog
It was not so easy to refute or confirm the existence of Sannikov Land. It was possible to swim to the islands only two or three months a year, and even then, if the end of summer and autumn were warm. Otherwise, even in summer, the ocean is ice-bound. 19th century explorers favored dog sledding. Sannikov himself made one such attempt. And in the 20s of the 19th century, Pyotr Fyodorovich Anzhu went in search of the Earth, who went to the point from which Sannikov saw his Earth. But, despite the clear horizon, in the north-west of Anjou, he saw nothing but a flat ice surface, while, unlike Sannikov, he had excellent optics. For two days, the expedition moved in the indicated direction, but "the proposed land was not visible." The samples taken of the bottom soil and the 34-meter depth of the sea testified that there was no land nearby at all. Anjou's verdict - Sannikov saw "a fog that looked like earth."
New coil
After Anzhu's statement, Sannikov Land seems to be forgotten. But after 60 years, a new impetus to the search is given by the discovery by the American explorer George De-Long of an archipelago of small islands located far north of the island of New Siberia, and an article by the scientist of the Russian Geographical Society, Mr. Grigoriev, who makes the assumption that the De-Long Islands are "those" lands. By the way, it was Grigoriev who first used the phrase “Sannikov Land” in print. A few years later, in 1885, the Academy of Sciences decided to organize, in fact, the first research expedition to study the New Siberian Islands. Alexander Bunge is appointed its head, and Baron Eduard Toll becomes his assistant.
Life's work
The expedition of 1885 radically changes Toll's life - he will again and again try to reach Sannikov Land. And how could it be otherwise, if on August 13, 1886, he saw with his own eyes “the clear contours of four table mountains, which in the east connected with low-lying land”! Clear weather allowed Toll not only to visually determine the distance to the mountains - about 150 miles, but also to talk about their structure, similar to the islands of Franz Josef Land. In 1893, he again went to the archipelago - the Academy instructed him to investigate the discovered corpse of a mammoth in the area of the Yana River. The item “Study of unknown parts of Siberia” gives Toll a relative freedom of action: before starting to study the remains of an animal, he decides to visit the New Siberian Islands again and again sees a strip of mountains on the horizon, which he identifies with Sannikov Land. Toll is almost certain that a continent once existed in the region that attracts him, and, as a true researcher, he is tormented by endless questions, the main of which is the riddle: how and why did this continent, if it existed, break up? In subsequent years, Baron Toll will subordinate the available facts to his conviction: Anjou did not see the land, but the industrialists did not doubt its existence, and those who did not discover it may have passed north or were hindered by thick fog. Toll's ideas found a warm response from the progressive people of that time - Mendeleev, Schmidt, Karpinsky, Makarov.
Catch up and overtake!
At the turn of the century, it becomes known about the plans of the Canadians, who decide to send a polar expedition to the Arctic under the leadership of Bernier. It was decided to organize a Russian polar expedition immediately, on a grand scale and with wide coverage in the press. Especially for the expedition, a Norwegian whaling ship, called the Zarya, was bought. From talented, young and promising specialists, Toll personally formed a team, the best equipment and equipment was purchased. "Zarya" left St. Petersburg on June 21 (old style) 1990. Toll, accompanied by Friedrich Seeberg, Vasily Gorokhov and Nikolai Dyakonov, set off for Bennett Island, where Zarya was supposed to arrive in two months. However, due to serious damage and heavy ice conditions, the Zarya was unable to approach the island at the appointed time. Without waiting for the "Dawn", Toll's group decides to make their way towards the continent ... In 1903, the expedition, led by Alexander Kolchak, discovers Toll's campsite on Bennett, diaries and valuable research materials. Toll and his colleagues have not been found. A detailed description of the journey is presented in the baron's diary, published first in Berlin in 1909, and then in an abbreviated form, in 1959, in our country.
There is only a moment…
The point was set by researchers of the last century. First, in 1937, the team of the Soviet icebreaker "Sadko" walked around the place of the proposed Earth from all sides - south, north, east. Nothing but ice was found. At the request of academician Vladimir Obruchev, who is known to the general public as the author of the science fiction novel Sannikov Land, Arctic aircraft are sent to the area. A titanic effort to find Earth is bearing fruit. Negative! Sannikov Land does not exist! A number of scientists come to the conclusion that, like most of the New Siberian Islands, which disappeared over time (Vasilevsky, Semenovsky, Mercury, Diomede), the mysterious island was permafrost with a relatively small layer of soil. The Sannikov Land has simply… melted away.
45 years ago, the popular film Sannikov Land was released, based on the science fiction novel by Vladimir Obruchev. Few of the admirers of the writer's work know that his main activity was science, and he brought the idea of the novel at the beginning of the 20th century from an expedition to Yakutia.
It was there that the writer from the locals heard a beautiful legend about a flourishing archipelago of islands, lost in the vast expanses of the Arctic Ocean. In support of their words, the Yakuts pointed Obruchev to flocks of birds flying north towards the ice hummocks of the Arctic.
The natives believed that the Onkilon tribe, which the scientist later described in his book, once went after the birds: the great shaman "showed the people the way to this land." In 1924, Obruchev completed the novel, published in 1926 under the title Sannikov Land, or the Last Onkilons.
The writer did not even suspect that this region was known to the ancient Greeks under the name of Hyperborea. It is about her as the ancestral home of the Hyperboreans and all mankind that is mentioned in some ancient spiritual treatises.
However, despite numerous attempts, no one has been able to find it yet. However, it is possible that this group of islands was not the legendary Hyperborea at all, but the Lomonosov Ridge protruding from the water, which once plunged into the Arctic Ocean. However, you should not speculate, it is better to turn to real events of the past.
It turns out that the industrialist and merchant Yakov Sannikov really lived in Russia. As an experienced businessman, he sought to find suppliers of cheap furs. Having traveled around many northern islands, one day in clear weather, the merchant saw a certain land far, far on the horizon.
Not towering ice hummocks, but precisely the blackening peaks of mountains of an unknown land. To the question asked by the locals about what is seen in the distance, the merchant received a strange answer. They explained to him that this is really land, but there is no way to get to it.
Annoyed Sannikov tried more than once to get to the mysterious land, but in vain. Each time, his dog teams, having retired a decent distance from the mainland, were forced to turn back, colliding with ice hummocks and a wide polynya.
Finally upset, the merchant wrote letters telling about the new land to Moscow and St. Petersburg. The researcher suggested that the mysterious land could be not only a group of islands, but even a small continent with a warm climate.
To everyone's surprise, Russian Academy Sciences favorably reacted to Sannikov's note, because he had previously discovered two previously unknown islands - Stolbovoy and Fadeevsky.
It must be said that everyone who came into contact with the secret land of Sannikov fell under its mysterious charm and unconditionally believed in its existence. Admiral P.F. was the first to try to test Sannikov's guess in practice. Anjou.
The members of his expedition also saw the outlines of an unknown land on the horizon, hired dog teams from the locals and set off. However, they, like Yakov Sannikov before, failed: they ran into ice hummocks, behind which was a wide polynya, forcing the polar explorers to turn back.
At the same time, the curiosity of researchers was fueled by the stories of fishermen and sailors about the mysterious land. The researchers argued that when approaching the pole it becomes much warmer.
In 1900, a large expedition was sent to an unknown land. It was headed by the geologist and traveler Eduard Vasilyevich Toll. The journey took three years. Thanks to his remarkable organizational skills, Baron Toll gathered a group of experienced polar explorers on the Zarya schooner and set off with them from St. Petersburg in search of a new land.
Soon, the travelers really saw the outlines of the earth on the horizon, but they could not get to it. Unconditionally believing in the positive outcome of the case, the baron did not lose heart, he abandoned the schooner and, like many of his predecessors, set off in search of dogsled.
Members of Toll's expedition aboard the schooner Zarya
It was assumed that the Zarya would pick up the travelers two months later from Novy Island. However, the schooner was locked in the ice, sharp ice floes pierced her side and formed a serious leak. "Dawn" had to return to the port of Tiksi, the closest to the accident site.
Toll began to search only a year later, in 1903. The future Admiral Alexander Kolchak was sent to search for him. The rescue expedition arrived at Bennett Island, to which Toll had previously gone by dog sled.
There Kolchak discovered the polar explorer's winter hut in excellent condition. It seemed that people only briefly left him, only to return soon. But neither Toll nor his assistants were found. Maybe they found the treasured land and settled on it forever?
It would be strange if the search for this amazing land did not continue in the 20th century. Moreover, researchers have many new opportunities. But even today there is no more clarity on this issue than at the beginning of the last century.
When the author of this article personally spoke with one Rear Admiral, who in Soviet times commanded a nuclear submarine in the Northern Fleet, he made it clear that there are still many white spots in the Arctic.
Islands can either appear, suddenly rising from the water, or sink into the ocean. The admiral could not say anything more concrete. The last studies that could have discovered Sannikov Land were carried out in the 1930s by the Sadko icebreaker.
Schooner Zarya in Tiksi Bay, 1912
The ship carefully studied the Arctic near the New Siberian Islands, where Sannikov saw the outlines of his Earth, but to no avail. In 1937, on the initiative of Academician Obruchev, even aerial reconnaissance was carried out, but it also did not give anything, like space images taken later.
So, there is no Sannikov Land - this is a fact. But what about the statements of Yakov Sannikov and Baron Toll, who saw the outlines of an unknown land? Where could the legendary unknown land evaporate?
The first version is quite prosaic. It is possible that the land, which was indeed observed by both sailors and residents of the northern islands, gradually submerged under water. Only, it is unlikely that she managed to do this in 30-50 years, although there is an island in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago that annually loses up to 20 meters of coastline.
Icebreaker "Sadko", 1930s
It is easy to calculate that in thirty years it will lose more than six hundred meters, but it will not disappear completely. And on the Sannikov Land, as the natives and polar explorers assured, there were black mountains. This means that an island with mountains needs more time to sink into the depths of the sea forever.
However, scientists studying optical phenomena assure that a so-called confluence band sometimes appears near large continents and large islands. Often such mirages are seen in the Laptev Sea near the New Siberian Islands, just where Sannikov first noticed his land. It is likely that the land that Sannikov saw is a chrono-mirage, a ghost of land that once existed.
The second version, actively discussed by lovers of mysticism, is parallel worlds. Indeed, physicists have already proven that these worlds exist, and some of them even touch each other through some kind of “rabbit holes”.
Perhaps, adherents of this version argue, Sannikov Land, just like Vinland among the Scandinavians, Dilmun among the Sumerians, the islands of the Blessed among the Greeks, are nothing but worlds that manifest themselves in our reality due to the curvature of space.
In our time, an active process of melting ice in the Arctic has begun. This phenomenon has many disadvantages, for example, the flooding of a number of coastal cities around the world. But on the other hand, when the Arctic ice melts, humanity will know for sure whether Sannikov Land actually existed and whether it was related to the legendary Hyperborea.
Used materials from an article by Dmitry Sokolov from the site
friesland
Friesland (Frislant insula)- a ghost island that appeared on maps of the North Atlantic from the 1560s to the 1660s.
On the maps, the island was depicted south of Iceland, at the same longitude. It is currently believed that the appearance of the island was the result of an error: perhaps the cartographers incorrectly determined the position of one of the Faroe Islands. At the same time, the Faroe Islands are depicted on the same maps as Friesland, but much further east. Visually, none of the Faroe Islands resembles the outline of Friesland.
Saint Brendan's Island
He is best known for The Voyage of Saint Brendan the Navigator, which describes the voyage of the Catholic monk Saint Brendan from Ireland west across the Atlantic Ocean.
It was believed that the land of St. Brendan is the eighth island of the Canary archipelago, which does not exist in reality, as well as the island of the Blessed and the embodiment of earthly Paradise. After the discovery of America by Columbus, attempts were made to identify the land of St. Brendan with America and to ascribe to St. Brendan the honor of its discovery.
Brazil Island
Mentioned since Early Middle Ages and applied to very many maps of the XIV-XVII centuries.
Brasil was said to be surrounded by haze and fog, which parted once every seven years. Then only the island can be seen. It is inhabited by monks and other people who do not know any troubles.
Since there was no exact information about its location, cartographers constantly "moved" the island on the map. Most often, Brazil was depicted to the west of Ireland, but sometimes it was "shifted" to the Azores region.
Thule
Thule (Tile)- the legendary island in the north of Europe, described by the Greek traveler Pytheas (c. 380 - c. 310 BC) in his essay “On the Ocean”.
In the Middle Ages, Thule was often identified with Iceland, the Faroe, Shetland, Orkney and Hebrides, or even considered part of Britain, Scandinavia, Jutland. However, some of the ancient authors questioned the existence of this island.
magnetic islands
In the center of the map, at the place of the pole, the Black Rock (Rupes Nigra) is depicted, which has magnetic properties. Based on his studies of the magnetic poles and the data of other scientists, Gerard Mercator mapped two islands indicated as magnetic: a rocky one and a very small one, depicted by a circle.
Sannikov Land
For the first time, it was reported in 1810 by Yakov Sannikov (1749-1845), an experienced polar traveler who had previously discovered the islands of Stolbovoy and Faddeevsky, who mined arctic foxes and mammoth ivory on the northern shores of the New Siberian Islands. He expressed the opinion about the existence of a "vast land" to the north of Kotelny Island.
Another evidence in favor of the existence of vast lands in the north was the numerous observations of migratory birds - polar geese, etc., flying further north in the spring, and returning with their offspring in the fall. Since birds could not live in the icy desert, it was suggested that Sannikov Land, located in the north, is relatively warm and fertile, and birds fly there. However, the obvious question arose: how could fertile lands be located north of the desert coast of Eurasia? Due to significant difficulties and the level of equipment, the expeditions that explored this region in the 19th century did not give final confirmation or refutation of the existence of Sannikov Land.
And only in 1937, the Soviet icebreaker Sadko, during its drift, passed near the proposed island from the south, from the east and from the north, but found nothing but ocean ice. Arctic aircraft were sent to the same area. And, despite all efforts, these searches gave negative result: it was found that the Sannikov Land does not exist. According to a number of researchers, Sannikov Land, like many Arctic islands, including most of Novosibirsk, was not made of rocks, but of fossil ice (permafrost), on top of which a layer of soil was applied. Over time, the ice melted, and Sannikov Land disappeared. The researchers found only an underwater jar, which they called the Sannikov jar. The mystery of polar geese has also recently been clarified - it turned out that they fly in such a strange route to Canada and Alaska.
Land of Glory to Russia
The map was compiled by Aleksey Vladimirovich Dolgoruky (1813?-1869?), a retired lieutenant, author and compiler of the books Family Notes and Dolgoruky, Dolgoruky and Dolgoruky-Argutinsky, as well as the author of the books: Animal Magnetism, Organon of Animal Mesmerism. With a map of the northern, polar countries, compiled according to the legend of the clairvoyants.
From 1840, he treated patients with animal magnetism (hypnosis) in institutions in Moscow, since 1859 he was officially appointed to serve at the hospitals of the department of St. Petersburg institutions of Empress Maria for the treatment of animal magnetism.
Reef Maria Teresa
Maria Theresa Reef (Tabor Island, Maria Theresa Island)- "ghost island", a reef allegedly located east of New Zealand and south of the Tuamotu archipelago, "discovered" by the whaler Asaph P. Taber in 1843 and named after the American town of Maria Teresa, where he was born. According to another version, the name is given in honor of the ship.
One of the many defunct reefs in South pacific ocean depicted on maps until the second half of the 20th century. The fame of the reef was brought by the novels of J. Verne "Children of Captain Grant" and "The Mysterious Island" - it was on this island that Captain Grant found refuge after a shipwreck, Ayrton was left here, and from here the inhabitants of Lincoln Island took him with them. Contrary to popular belief, Maria Theresa Reef is not a figment of a writer's fantasy, unlike Lincoln Island; Jules Verne sincerely, like his contemporaries, believed that the island exists.
Septentrionalium Terrarum descriptio. From the atlas: Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes…Duisburg, 1595. L. 1.
Map of the North Pole from the world atlas of Gerard Mercator "Atlas or cosmographic reasoning about the creation of the world and the view of the created", Duisburg, 1595.
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Map of Scandinavia from the world atlas of Abraham Ortelius "The Spectacle of the Circle of the Earth", published in Antwerp in 1570.
On one of the four circumpolar islands there is an inscription: "Pygmies live here", which in a number of sources is interpreted as an indication of the legendary Hyperborea.
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Quivirae regnum, cum aliis versus Boream. Novae Gvineae Forma & Situs. From the atlas: Speculum orbis terrӕ. Antverpea, 1593-1613. L. 12.
Part cards North America(Kivira) and New Guinea from the world atlas of Gerard De Jode "The Mirror of the Circle of the Earth". Antwerp, 1593-1613. L.12.
One of the texts on the map of Kivira compares the inhabitants of the area with the Tatars - an allusion to the theory that North America was part of Asia and was inhabited by settlers from Asia. This is also confirmed by the images of humpbacked animals resembling camels.
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World map from the world atlas of Abraham Ortelius "The Spectacle of the Circle of the Earth", published in Antwerp in 1570.
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Nova totius terrarum orbis geographica ac hydrographica tabula. Auct. Guilj. Blaeuw.
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Map of North America.
To 0-Sam 1/3
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Americae Pars Borealis, Florida, Baccalaos, Canada, Corterealis…From the atlas: Speculum orbis terrӕ. Antverpiae, 1593-1613. L.11.
Map of a part of North America from the world atlas of Gerard De Jode "Mirror of the Circle of the Earth". Antwerp, 1593-1613. L.11.
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Orbis terrae compendiosa descriptio. From the atlas: Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes…Duisburg, 1595. [L. one].
World map from the world atlas of Gerard Mercator "Atlas or cosmographic reasoning about the creation of the world and the view of the created", Duisburg, 1595.
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L' Amerique Septentrionale Suivant les Nouvelles observations de mess-rs de l' Academie Royale des Sciences etc, augmentees de nouveau. Avec privil.. - Leide: chez Pierre van der Aa, 16…?].
Map of North America.
To 0-Sam 1/3
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Americae Pars Borealis, Florida, Baccalaos, Canada, Corterealis…From the atlas: Speculum orbis terrӕ. Antverpiae, 1593-1613. L.12.
Map of a part of North America from the world atlas of Gerard De Jode "Mirror of the Circle of the Earth". Antwerp, 1593-1613. L.11.
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Orbis terrae compendiosa descriptio. From the atlas: Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes…Duisburg, 1595. [L. one].
World map from the world atlas of Gerard Mercator "Atlas or cosmographic reasoning about the creation of the world and the view of the created", Duisburg, 1595.
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Americae nova tabula. Auct. Guiljelmo Blaeuw. From: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, sive Atlas Novus.
Vol. 2. Amsterdam: Apud Iohanem Guiljelmi F. Blaeu, 1645.
Map of North and South America from volume 2 of the atlas of the world by J. Blau, published in Amsterdam in 1645
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Americay Pars Meridionalis. – Amstelodami: J. Janssoniy, [after 1630 Map of South America from the atlas of the world
J. Janson, published in Amsterdam in 1630.
On the shores of Lake Parime (Parime) is signed "Manoa, or El Dorado".
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Americae nova tabula. Auct. Guiljelmo Blaeuw.
From: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, sive Atlas Novus. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: J/G. Blaeu, 1645.
Map of North and South America from volume 2 of the atlas of the world by J. Blau, published in Amsterdam in 1645
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Le Perou et le cours de la Riv.re Amazone. Par N.Sanson d'Abbeville Geographe ord.-re du Roy. .
On the shores of Lake Parime (Parime) is signed "Manoa, or El Dorado".
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America Meridionalis Concinnata juxta Observayiones… Per G. de l "Isle. Augustæ Vindel, T.C. Lotter, .
Map of South America, compiled by G. Delisle in 1700, and republished by Lotter after 1760.
On the territory called Terra Firma (“mainland province” of Spain (as opposed to the neighboring island colonies of Spain), modern parts of Venezuela and Colombia), the legendary country of El Dorado is marked.
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[Madagascar, NE Africa, Red Sea, Arabia] from a facsimile copy of the Atlas Universal atlas.
Diogo Homem,
The map shows the east coast of Africa. In the center, on the territory of modern Ethiopia, the figure of the Christian king [prester John] is depicted, often placed on maps of the 15th-16th centuries.
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Russia cum confinÿs. Per Gerardum Mercatorem. Cum privilege. .
Map of Russia from the atlas of the world of G. Mercator - J. Hondiya, Amsterdam, 1633.
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Novissima Russiae Tabula….. Authore Isaaco Massa. Amstelodami, Hen. Hondius, sumptibus Joannis Janssonii. - Amstelodami: Hen. Hondius, sumptibus Joannis Janssonii,
Map of Russia from the Atlas of the World by J. Hondiya-I. Jansson, Amsterdam, 1644.
One of the early maps of Russia created by foreign cartographers. Lukomorye is marked on the territory of the Asian part of Russia.
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La Russie Blanche ou Moscovie Divisée suivant l'Etendu des Royaumes, Duchés, Principautés etc.
Presenté à Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne par… H.Jaillot. - Paris, 1695.
One of the early maps of Russia created by foreign cartographers. Lukomorye is marked on the territory of the Asian part of Russia.
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Carte Tartarie. Dressée sur les Relations de plusieurs Voyageurs de differentes Nations et sur quelques observations qui ont été faites dans ce pais là Par Guillaume de l "Isle Avec Privil. Amsterdam, chez J. Covens et C. Mortier .
A map of Tartaria, compiled from the materials of many travelers by G. Delisle, and published in Amsterdam ca. 1720 Signed "Lukomorye" in the northern part of the map.
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Septentrionalium Terrarum descriptio.
From the atlas: Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes…Duisburg, 1595. L. 1.
Map of the North Pole from the world atlas of Gerard Mercator "Atlas or cosmographic reasoning about the creation of the world and the view of the created", Duisburg, 1595.
Friesland Island is shown on the map below, to the left of Iceland, and is also given on the additional map to the upper left.
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Typus orbis terrarum. From the atlas: Theatrum orbis terrarum. Antwerpen, 1570. L. 1.
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Septentrionalium regionum descrip. From the atlas: Theatrum orbis terrarum. Antwerpen, 1570. L. 45.
Map of Scandinavia from the world atlas of Abraham Ortelius "The Spectacle of the Circle of the Earth", Antwerp, 1570.
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Nova totius terrarum orbis geographica ac hydrographica tabula. Auct. Guiljelmo Blaeuw.
From: Theatrum orbis terrarum, Sive Atlas novus …T.1. Amsterdam: J. G. Blaeu, 1645.
World map from volume 1 of the atlas of the world by J. Blau, published in Amsterdam in 1645
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Typus orbis terrarum. From the atlas: Theatrum orbis terrarum. Antwerpen, 1570. L. 1.
World map from the world atlas of Abraham Ortelius "The Spectacle of the Circle of the Earth", Antwerp, 1570.
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One of the most memorable roles of Vladislav Dvorzhetsky is the role of the political exile Alexander Ilyin, the organizer of the campaign to the inaccessible, legendary land of Sannikov.
Sannikov Land is a Soviet feature film shot in 1972-1973 at the Mosfilm studio based on the novel of the same name by Vladimir Obruchev directed by Albert Mkrtchyan and Leonid Popov.
Not the last role in the success of the film was played by the poignant music of the composer Alexander Zatsepin.
I must say that little is left of Obruchev's novel in the film - indeed, only "motives". But the film was shot so talentedly that it has the right to be considered an independent work.
Of course, the film is not about history and geography - it is about what is important and valuable at all times: about nobility, love, friendship, courage, in a word, about real human values, about beautiful people both externally and internally.
Initially, it was planned to involve Vladimir Vysotsky (for the role of Krestovsky) and Marina Vlady (for the role of Ilyin's bride) to participate in the film. Vysotsky was very inspired by the plot and wrote three songs for the film: "White Silence", "The Ballad of an Abandoned Ship" and "Fussy Horses". However, on the radio "Deutsche Welle" there was a broadcast with recordings of V. Vysotsky's songs. In the context of this program, Vysotsky was presented as a rebel and a dissident. The road to filming in "Sannikov Land" Vysotsky and Vladi was closed.
The famous "Picky Horses" was never included in the film.
By the way, about music. Interestingly, the song "There is only a moment" was actively criticized in Soviet years.In particular, the newspaper "Trud" dated 06/03/1983 published an article "Is there only a moment?", Which said that this song, in essence, is about weak people who only whine that life is fleeting, and only care about their own fate. It was argued that this is a frank vulgarity, clothed, unfortunately, in a beautiful melody, and therefore easily remembered, disturbing young souls with false romance, petty-bourgeois ideas about happiness.
How it all began
In 1924, Vladimir Afanasyevich Obruchev completed work on the novel Sannikov Land or the Last Onkilons. At the very beginning of the twentieth century, he worked in a geological and geographical expedition in Yakutia. From local residents, Vladimir Afanasyevich heard a mysterious legend about a flowering land located in the vast expanses of the Arctic Ocean.
In 1811, industrialist Yakov Sannikov, who mined arctic fox on the islands in the Arctic Ocean, reported that he had seen an island with high mountains in the ocean north of the New Siberian Islands. Geographical discoveries at that time were constantly being made (Sannikov himself discovered several more real islands), and the idea settled in the minds of researchers that somewhere far in the North there is an unknown land with an abnormally warm climate. This conclusion was made on the basis of observations of birds that flew away from the coast in autumn for some reason not to the south, but to the north. From that moment on, the search for Sannikov Land took on the character of an epidemic.
It was not so easy to confirm or deny the existence of Sannikov Land, because this was fraught with considerable difficulties, so the question of its existence was open for a long time. Hypothetical new earth at a distance of several hundred kilometers from the New Siberian Islands, it could have been ice-bound continuously for decades. The polar night, which lasted about four months in these latitudes, ruled out any possibility of research from November to March. Most of expeditions that explored the region in the 19th century were carried out by dog sled during the spring months; attempts to reach Sannikov Land by dog sled (including by Sannikov in 1810–1811 and Anjou in 1824) were often interrupted by hummocks and polynyas.
In the period from the middle of the 19th to almost the middle of the 20th century, hundreds of people were looking for Sannikov Land. The belief that there are unexplored lands somewhere in the north was further strengthened after the discovery by the American polar explorer D. De Long in 1881 of the small islands of Jeannette and Henrietta with an area of 3 and 12 square kilometers, respectively.
Sannikov repeatedly tried to reach unknown shores, but all attempts were unsuccessful. Then he wrote about the new Earth to Moscow and St. Petersburg. At the end of the 19th century, the Russian geologist Baron Eduard Toll decided to find the legendary Sannikov Land. With his own money, he organized an expedition that managed to reach Kotelny Island. Toll, just like Sannikov many years ago, also managed to see four stone mountains. But due to complex weather conditions the members of the expedition could not reach them. They had to go back. But from that very day, the search for the legendary "Sannikov Land" became for Eduard Toll the cherished dream of his whole life...
Surprisingly, thanks to the report of Eduard Toll to the Academy of Sciences, Emperor Nicholas II himself gave permission for the first Russian polar expedition to the legendary land of Sannikov. She needed money, and the budget for a risky trip was discussed for a long time in the government. Until December 31, 1899, Nicholas II signed a document according to which he allocated 200,000 rubles from the budget of the Academy of Sciences. True, there was no suitable vessel for the risky expedition... And Toll bought the Norwegian seal-killing vessel Harald the Fair-Haired, which was renamed Zarya. The funds allocated by the emperor were not enough. And the ship had to be refitted with donations from private individuals.
June 21, 1900 the first ever Russian Empire polar expedition went on a ship to the Arctic. There were only 20 people on the team. Everyone was famous. But in the Soviet years, one name was kept secret...
Among the main members of the expedition was the future Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who at that time served as a lieutenant on the battleship Petropavlovsk. The ship followed the route from the Baltic to Far East. In one of the ports, Toll and Kolchak met by chance, and the baron managed to lure the lieutenant to his expedition.
On the ship, which was sent to the first Russian polar expedition, Kolchak was engaged in sounding depths, hydrogeological and magnetic observations. He wintered in Taimyr, twice visited the New Siberian Islands, Kotelny Island. Only in September 1901 did the crew manage to reach the supposed Sannikov Land. According to the coordinates and shallow depth, everyone said that they came close. But they could only see the ice belt in the distance. Due to the fog that appeared, Toll decided to postpone the search. The whole team again spent the winter on Kotelny Island, from where Sannikov once saw his land...
In the spring of 1902, Baron Toll tried again to reach the legendary island. But it was not possible to pick up the team on time, the ice blocks did not allow the ship to pass. And then Lieutenant Kolchak asked the Academy of Sciences to equip a rescue expedition under his leadership. The search operation took place from May 5 to December 7, 1903. But all attempts were in vain. From the team of Baron Toll, only a geological collection and a note were left, from which it became known that Toll had gone to the south of Bennett Island in October 1902. And the team had only two or three weeks of supplies left.
Whether he reached the Sannikov Land or died before reaching it is unknown...
Researchers suggest that the baron's expedition died during the transition from Bennett Island.
After the expedition of Baron Toll, many travelers and scientists tried to find Sannikov Land. But the legendary land remained unfound. Did she really exist? Modern geologists believe that the land of Sannikov most likely existed. But only it was not a continent or an island, as it was believed at the beginning of the 20th century, but it was a huge ice floe, on top of which lay the ground. But over time, due to warming, the ice melted, and the earth went under water.
The first Russian polar expedition turned out to be very useful for Russian science. And the hydrograph lieutenant Alexander Kolchak prepared the monograph "The Ice of the Kara and Siberian Seas" and received the Order of St. Vladimir of the 4th degree and the highest award of the Russian Geographical Society - the Konstantinovsky medal. In 1928, after the death of the legendary white general, this work was translated into English language and published by the American Geographical Society. BUT Soviet captains drove their ships on the map of Kolchak until 1934.
For many years, the merits of Admiral Kolchak in the development of the Arctic space were classified.
In the middle of the 20th century, military specialists were trying to get to the land of Sannikov. For their trips they use reindeer and dog teams. There were seven attempts. All members of the expeditions claim that they saw this uncharted land from afar. But every time they face an insurmountable obstacle. And until now, this land remains inaccessible to researchers.
Of course, modern space technology makes it possible to take a very good picture of any territory on the Earth's surface. There are such photos and Poles. But the pictures do not convince dreamers and romantics. They claim that strange shadows are visible in the pictures, according to the assumption of the Americans, Russian military installations.
There are rumors about a pilot who flew over the Pole in the 30s - they say he saw a large green oasis among the polar ice. Of course, no one believed his story, they suggested that the pilot saw a mirage.
And finally, a very beautiful, but completely implausible version. What if Sannikov saw a mirage from the past or the future? The medieval astrologer Ragno Nero wrote about the fact that the ice will melt in the north and there will appear and there will appear a flowering land, and Nostrdamus, they say, has something about the elect living beyond the Arctic Circle (although it was sometimes very difficult to understand this predictor).
A beautiful theory that is waiting for its writer and its director...
