The Northernmost Island in the World Was Just Discovered by Accident

When a team of scientists from Switzerland and Denmark landed by helicopter on a small island off the northern coast of Greenland in July, they didn’t think much of it. It was just “one of a hundred sites” the team visited, says expedition leader Morten Rasch, while collecting samples for themselves and other scientists around the world. They had had a hard time finding their destination—called Oodaaq Island—but eventually were able to land and spend about 15 or 20 minutes before taking off again. “It was nothing big for us,” says Rasch, of the University of Copenhagen. Except they weren’t on Oodaaq at all, but a previously undocumented island that now holds an interesting distinction that Oodaaq once held: the northernmost landmass in the entire world.

They didn’t realize it for some time. It was only later that Danish journalist Martin Breum, who accompanied the expedition, was going back through his notes and realized the team had been some 80 miles north of Oodaaq, in a place where there wasn’t supposed to be an island at all. When Breum called Rasch to tell him the news, “I didn’t pay much attention to it,” says Rasch with a laugh. He was, after all, in the middle of his busy season at the research station in Qeqertarsuaq, the small Greenland town where he lives. But when Breum published an article about the discovery in a Danish newspaper, suddenly “there was a lot of interest,” says Rasch. Since then, he has been fielding calls from journalists from all over the world drawn by the story of the mysterious new island discovered by accident. “It’s funny, now my friends call and say ‘Morten, you have become world-famous!’ and I just say to them ‘Yah, and I just need some sleep.’”

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