The double life of Giles Land

Giles Land persisted on maps of the Arctic well into the 20th century. But how did this remote island manage to fool mappers and explorers for so long?

In 1707, and under fortuitous sea-ice conditions east of Svalbard, the Dutch whaler Cornelis Giles sighted land ~80°N and proudly named the discovery after himself.

Source: TopoSvalbard

This ‘Giles Land’ is known today as Kvitøya (“white island” in Norwegian). The sighting was promptly included on contemporary maps, albeit tentatively, such as on this chart of Spitsbergen by van Keulen from 1715 (see the right margin).

Source: Harvard University

Source: Harvard University

Heavy pack ice, typical in this region, meant the discovery went unconfirmed over the next few centuries. ‘Giles Land’ thus evolved into an enigmatic legend amongst cartographers and polar explorers, also becoming associated with other sightings of land east of Spitsbergen.

For example, during Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld’s expedition to Svalbard in 1863-64, he claimed to have sighted Giles Land much farther south. But in reality, Nordenskiöld had spotted Svenskøya – the westernmost island of the Kong Karls island group.

Source: Yale University

Source: Yale University

With little further information through the 19th century, Giles Land appeared on maps in different forms. In one extreme variation, on Baur’s world map of 1870 Giles Land was plotted with a size almost comparable to Spitsbergen itself, albeit with a tentative question mark.

The transition of Giles Land into mythical status solidified in 1872 when the famous German cartographer, August Petermann, published a map with his own interpretation of the location, now much farther north at 81°30’N (top-right corner in the map below).

Source: University of Erfurt

Source: University of Erfurt

Petermann’s conjecture became widely adopted by other cartographers. So in 1876 when Johan Kjeldsen from Tromsø, Norway, finally rediscovered Kvitøya (or Hvide-ø as he named it) at 80°10′N 32°30′E during a walrus-hunting expedition, its significance was not immediately realised.

What would become of Giles Land now?

The island’s ‘double life’ had in fact just begun. The ‘newly’ discovered Kvitøya and Petermann’s conjectured Giles Land would now often appear together on new maps, such as on this English chart of the North Polar region from 1897.

The impenetrable location of this now phantom Giles Land at 81°30’N allowed the mystery and confusion to continue into the early 20th century, drawing the curiosity of numerous Arctic explorers.

A serious search for the mysterious Giles Land was made by Frederick Jackson in 1897, during the final weeks of an expedition to Franz Josef Land – the same expedition that rescued Fridtjof Nansen after his attempt to reach the North Pole.

Jackson had been able to steam about 50 nautical miles to the northwest from the Russian archipelago before thick ice forced him to turn back. Nevertheless, he had come relatively close to the position of Petermann’s conjectured Giles Land. Yet, there was no land in sight.

Source: Wikimedia

Frank Worsley, captain of Shackleton’s ship Endurance during the Antarctic expedition of 1914–1917, also tried and failed to reach this area in 1925. Although reaching only 60 miles from his objective, the crew observed “a strong appearance of land against the glow of approaching sunrise”.

With little conclusive evidence for this remote island, Giles (Gillis) Land was disappearing from maps during the early 20th century. One of its last appearances can be found on the 1931 version of the Arctic Ocean and Greenland Sea chart from the British Hydrographic Department of the Admiralty.

Perhaps the last expedition to make a serious attempt to reach the mythical Giles Land was by the Soviet Union with the English-built icebreaker, Sadko, in 1935. The Soviets managed to reach Petermann’s coordinates at 81°30’N, however, they found no land, effectively laying the myth to rest.

Further reading:

Lantz, B., 2019. Giles Land—a mystery for S.A. Andrée and other early Arctic explorers. Polar Research. https://doi.org/10.33265/polar.v38.3433