8 POLAR PROBLEMS 



deep sea basin north of the New Siberian Islands or whether it may 

 be separated from it by some submarine ridge. A single sample of 

 water and temperature from depths greater than looo meters north 

 of Alaska would have settled this question. 



We know that there is open communication in the upper water 

 layers between the sea north of Alaska and Bering Strait and the 

 sea between Spitsbergen and Greenland. This is proved by the 

 drift of several objects, and there is obviously a constant, though 

 slow, drift of the ice across the sea near the north pole from the sea 

 north of Bering Strait, Alaska, and eastern Siberia into the Norwegian 

 Sea, where the ice drifts southwards along the east coast of Greenland. 

 But to what extent this North Polar Sea traversed by the drifting ice 

 is a deep sea, is the still open and important question. 



The late R. A. Harris of the United States Coast and Geodetic 

 Survey^ for several reasons came to the conclusion that a continuous 

 great land probably existed in the region northwest of the Canadian 

 Arctic Archipelago, between the north pole and Alaska. He based 

 this hypothesis chiefly upon computations of the tidal observations 

 made at several places along the coasts of the North Polar Sea, and also 

 on the nature of the polar ice in the different regions of this sea and 

 on the directions and nature of its surface currents. On several pre- 

 vious occasions^ I have discussed Harris' hypothesis and have pointed 

 out that, according to my view, none of his arguments were con- 

 clusive and that they could not be accepted as evidences of the 

 existence of any great land to the north as assumed by him. This 

 view has been confirmed by later observations. By computations 

 of the tidal observations made during Amundsen's Maud expedition 

 (1918-1921) at three different places along the north coast of Siberia, 

 Mr. J. E. Fjeldstad'^ has arrived at the conclusion that the tidal 

 phenomena along the coasts of the North Polar Sea do not support 

 Harris' hypothesis and do not indicate the existence of any great 

 land mass in the still unknown region of this sea. This is even more 

 clearly borne out by the numerous tidal observations and current 

 measurements made by Dr. H. U. Sverdrup during the drift of the 

 Maud across the continental shelf to the north of eastern Siberia.^ 

 Dr. Sverdrup considers it "justifiable to conclude that the tidal 



= R. A. Harris: Evidences of Land Near tlie North Pole, Rept. 8th Inlernatl. Geogr. Congress, Held 

 in the United States, igo4, Washington, 1905, pp. 397-406 (reprinted and expanded from idem: Some 

 Indications of Land in the Vicinity of the North Pole, Natl. Geogr. Mag., Vol. IS, 1904, pp. 255-261). 



idem: Arctic Tides, U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, Washington, 1911, with map, Cotidal 

 Lines for the Arctic Regions, 1:10,500,000 (reproduced below, p. 20, as Fig. i). 



^ Fridtjof Nansen: On North Polar Problems, Geogr. Journ., Vol. 30, 1907, pp. 470-487 and 

 585-601, with bathymetric map of Arctic Basin, 1:20,000,000. 



idem: Spitsbergen Waters: Oceanographic Observations During the Cruise of the "Veslemoy" 

 to Spitsbergen in 1912, Videnskapsselkapets Skrifter: I, Mat.-naturv. Klasse, 1915, No. 2, Christiania. 



' J. E. Fjeldstad: Litt om tidevandet i Nordishavet, Naturen, Vol. 47, Bergen, 1923, pp. 161-175. 



8 H. U. Sverdrup: Dynamic of Tides on the North Siberian Shelf: Results from the Maud Ex- 

 pedition, Geofys. Publikasjoner, Vol. 4, No. 5, Oslo, 1926. 



