‘World’s northernmost island’ discovered off coast of Greenland by scientists 

The world’s northernmost point of land, which is a new island off the coast of Greenland, seems to have been discovered by scientists. It was revealed after the shifting of the ice.

Morten Rasch, who is a polar explorer and head of the Arctic station research facility in Greenland, said “It was not our intention to discover a new island. We just went there to collect samples.”

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Initially, the scientists thought they arrived at Oodaaq island, which was discovered by a Danish survey team in 1978. After checking the exact location later, they realised they had visited another island 780 metres to the north-west.

Swiss entrepreneur Christiane Leister, who is also the creator of the Leister Foundation that financed the expedition, said, “Everybody was happy that we found what we thought was Oodaaq island. It’s a bit like explorers in the past, who thought they’d landed in a certain place but actually found a totally different place.”

The new island roughly measures around 30 metres (100ft) across and has a peak of about three metres. It also consists of seabed mud as well as moraine – soil and rock left behind by moving glaciers.

According to the team, it should be named “Qeqertaq Avannarleq”, which means “the northernmost island” in Greenlandic.