From this point of view, "icecap islands" are a great geographic puzzle. These islands, in 

 spite of their low height above sea level and their small size, are almost completely buried under 

 ice. From the sea, they seem like a precipitous ice wall of larger or smaller hei^t above sea 

 level. The "ice dome" (figure 51), resembling a turtle shell, rises evenly toward the center of the 

 island. 



Ice islands can be roughly divided into two types: 



In the first type are Bruce and Evaliv Islands in the Franz Joseph Archipelago, and also 

 Ushakov and Schmidt Islands, located between Franz Joseph Land and Sevemaya Zemlya. These 

 islands are completely buried under an ice cover. 



White and Victoria Islands, located between Spitsbergen and Franz Joseph Land, belong to 

 the second type. These islands have only small and low spits (with a developed shore ridge) which 

 project from the precipitous ice wall. 



The precipitous ice walls are particularly high on White and Victoria Islands, where iti some 

 places, in spite of the small size (especially of the latter island), it reaches 12 to 15 m. At a 

 close scrutiny of the precipitous wall, we saw that, first, it is somewhat Inclined toward the sea 

 and, secondly, it is not unigenital but rather consists of wavy, horizontal layers of various thick- 

 ness and structure. Each of these layers evidently characterizes definite climatic conditions. The 

 less precipitation and the greater the summer warming, the smaller the layer is which is formed 

 during the course of a given year. 



The main difference on the ice cover of the icecap islands from the usual glaciers which are 

 compressed in their flow to the shores, is, first, almost a complete lack of fissures and variations 

 on their upper surface, and second, an even angle of the upper surface, equaling approximately 2 

 to 3°. These peculiarities of the icecap islands make them extremely usable for landing airplanes, 

 as was reported by Soviet airplanes in 1937 on the ice cover of the islands of Franz Joseph Land. 



The so-called katabatic winds on these islands are extremely unpleasant to airplanes . 

 These winds are understood to be a sharp current of air down along the cold slopes. Such winds 

 were observed along the edge of the antarctic mainland, for example. The British arctic aerial 

 route expedition observed such winds at its base camp in Greenland while at that time there were 

 only weak and temperate winds in Angmagsalik at a distance of several miles from the camp. Webb 

 concludes from this that katabatic winds are not distributed very high and are rapidly expended due 

 to the effect of friction and frictional mixing. In 1930, while we were anchored near one of the 

 icecap islands (White Island), we also observed katabatic wind phenomena: a wind of storm force 

 sped down along the slope, raising snow dust and tearing off wave caps near the shore; at the same 

 time, the sea was completely calm at a distance of 2 to 3 miles from the shore. 



Icecap islands are usually surrounded by a greater or lesser number of icebergs in various 

 stages of destruction (in other words, various ages). 



The most interesting fact is that these islands are located in the middle of, or not far from, 

 islands of the same size and height, and even larger, which have no great accumulations of snow 

 or ice. 



Thus, for instance, in the northwest part of the Barents Sea, south of the typical icecap 

 islands (White and Victoria), the King Karl Islands are located, which have no ice cover. To the 



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