In 2021, an expedition off the icy northern Greenland coast spotted what appeared to be a previously uncharted island. It was small and gravelly, and it was declared a contender for the title of the most northerly known land mass in the world. The discoverers named it Qeqertaq Avannarleq — Greenlandic for “the northern most island.”
But there was a mystery afoot in the region. Just north of Cape Morris Jesup, several other small islands had been discovered over the decades, and then disappeared.
Some scientists theorized that these were rocky banks that had been pushed up by sea ice.
But when a team of Swiss and Danish surveyors traveled north to…
