Elling Carlsen Carlsen made his first voyage out of Hammerfest in Finnmark, Norway. In 1859, Carlsen discovered the island group that would later be named Kong Karls Land in the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Although Carlsen is credited with the finding, the islands may have been first sighted by the whaler Thomas Edge in 1617. In 1863, Carlsen completed the first circumnavigation of Spitsbergen. During a voyage to the Arctic Ocean in 1871, Carlsen discovered the lodge of Willem Barentsz on the north-eastern shore of the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya. This winter camp had been used as shelter by Barentsz
Novaya Zemlya numbering 298, was removed to the mainland in 1957 before nuclear testing began. In 1943, during World War II, Novaya Zemlya briefly served as a secret seaplane base for Nazi Germany's "Kriegsmarine", to provide German surveillance of Allied shipping en route to Siberia. The seaplane base was established by U-255 and U-711, which were operating along the Northern coast of Soviet Russia as part of "13th U-boat Flotilla". Seaplane sorties were flown in August and September 1943. In the months following Hitler’s June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain organized convoys of merchant ships