Kara Sea Kara Sea The Kara Sea (, "Karskoye more") is part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. It is separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. It is named after the Kara River (flowing into Baydaratskaya Bay), which is now relatively insignificant but which played an important role in the Russian conquest of northern Siberia. The Kara River name is derived from Nenets word meaning "hummocked ice". The Kara Sea's northern limit is marked geographically by a line running from
Austfonna of Svalbard and Norway). Austfonna Austfonna is an ice cap located on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Covering an area of 8,492 km it is the largest ice cap by area and with 1,900 km (excluding Vegafonna) the second largest by volume in Europe, after the Vatnajökull in Iceland (not counting the still larger Severny Island ice cap of Novaya Zemlya, Russia, which is located in the extreme northeast of Europe), and the seventh largest in the world. Austfonna has a thickness of up to 560 metres (235 meters average thickness), and is 200 km in circumference. The