Severnaya Zemlya appeared to the north of the archipelago. Although located not far off the northern coast of Russia, nested among Arctic ice-locked waters, the archipelago that is now known as Severnaya Zemlya was not formally recorded until the 20th century. Earlier explorers deemed that there was a land mass in the general area of the archipelago, such as in the report by Matvei Gedenschtrom and Yakov Sannikov made in 1810 at the time of their exploration of the New Siberian Islands. Later in the 19th century Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld during the Vega Expedition sailed very close to this land in 1878
Severnaya Zemlya the islands, but adverse weather conditions forced them to turn southward when only an hour or two from viewing the archipelago's coastline. In the spring of 1931 Georgy Ushakov, accompanied by the geologist Nikolay Urvantsev, the veteran surveyor Sergei Zhuravlev, and the radio operator Vasily Khodov thoroughly surveyed Severnaya Zemlya during a two-year expedition to the archipelago. Ushakov and his team established a small base at Golomyanny – the western end of Sredniy Island, off October Revolution Island's western coast. From there they made multiple surveying trips into the interior and the coastlines of the larger islands. The first detailed