Severnaya Zemlya any traces of land to the north of the wide strait between the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea that they navigated. The archipelago was not put on the map until the 1913–1915 Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition of icebreakers "Taimyr" and "Vaigach". The chief organiser and first captain of the Vaygach was officer Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Kolchak of the Imperial Russian Navy. The expedition was privately financed and was launched in 1910, being led by Boris Vilkitsky on behalf of the Russian Hydrographic Service. This venture accomplished its goal of exploring the uncharted areas of the continental side of the Northern
Climate of the Arctic a millennium ago, and small numbers of people have been living along the Arctic coast for much longer, scientific knowledge about the region was slow to develop; the large islands of Severnaya Zemlya, just north of the Taymyr Peninsula on the Russian mainland, were not discovered until 1913, and not mapped until the early 1930s Much of the historical exploration of the Arctic was motivated by the search for the Northwest and Northeast Passages. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century expeditions were largely driven by traders in search of these shortcuts between the Atlantic and the Pacific. These forays into the Arctic did