Legend of Sannikov Land

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

This tropical island in the Arctic Ocean at the beginning of the 19th century was described by the Russian merchant and explorer of the Novosibirsk Islands Yakov Sannikov, who was distinguished by a shrewd mind, enormous energy and great honesty. So it is simply impossible to suspect this person of some kind of fantasies and fakes, as they say now.

According to the experienced polar traveler, who had previously discovered the Stolbovoy and Faldeevsky islands, the promised land among the ice was located north of Kotelny Island.

True, Yakov Sannikov himself saw this tropical island from afar - through a telescope from the Novosibirsk Islands. However, in support of his words, they usually cite preserved information that at that time birds flew north from the mainland in the spring, and in the fall they returned with their offspring, that is, it turns out that the birds nested somewhere, hatched, and then fed the chicks …

That is why many travelers tried to find the legendary Sannikov Land, for example, Eduard Toll, Fridtjof Nansen, Soviet academician and writer Vladimir Obruchev, who immortalized the legends about it in his eponymous science fiction novel, after which a wonderful film was shot, where the tropical island Sannikova represented the fantastic Valley of the Geysers of Kamchatka.

By the way, at the request of Obruchev in 1937, the Soviet icebreaker "Sadko" practically rounded Kotelny Island, but never found the mysterious land. A little later, planes of the Soviet Arctic aviation were sent here. The result is the same, after which it was officially recognized that Sannikov Land does not exist.

Sannikov's land could well have been

Then what did the Yakut merchant Yakov see? At one time, scientists made the assumption that theoretically a tropical oasis among the ice could arise if at that time it was surrounded by ice, in the hollow of which a unique microclimate was established, plus geysers - and here you have Sannikov Land. However, as in Obruchev's novel, something was disturbed in that fragile world - and the tropical island gradually or even instantly disappeared.

Today, independent researchers go much further in their assumptions about Sannikov Land, since recent discoveries make it possible to speak, for example, of parallel worlds, one of which could have been seen by a polar traveler at the beginning of the 19th century. Or, on the contrary, the fantastic island actually existed (after all, the birds were flying somewhere), and then "fell" into a parallel world: there are many such examples when villages, islands and lakes disappeared. And if so, then the Sannikov Land may well exist somewhere to this day. And it is possible that there will still be lucky ones who will visit this mythical island and even come back, thereby proving that Yakov Sannikov did not dream of that tropical paradise among the ice. However, no one ever doubted the veracity of the statement of the Russian merchant and traveler …