Severnaya Zemlya Severnaya Zemlya Severnaya Zemlya ( (Northern Land), ) is a archipelago in the Russian high Arctic. It lies off Siberia's Taymyr Peninsula, separated from the mainland by the Vilkitsky Strait. This archipelago separates two marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean, the Kara Sea in the west and the Laptev Sea in the east. Severnaya Zemlya was first noted in 1913 and first charted in 1930–32, making it the last sizeable archipelago on Earth to be explored. Administratively, the islands form part of Russia's Krasnoyarsk Krai federal subject. In Soviet times there were a number of research stations in different locations,
Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition on currents, ice conditions, climate, and magnetic phenomena. In 1913 the hydrographic expedition of the Arctic Ocean discovered the large Emperor Nicholas II Land —now Severnaya Zemlya (Northern Land), the last significant geographical discovery on the globe. On 3 September 1913 (22 August 1913 in the Julian calendar used by Russia at the time), members of the expedition landed on what is now known as Cape Berg on present day October Revolution Island. They raised the Russian flag on the shore and named the new territory "Emperor Nicholas II Land", (Russian: "Zemlya Imperatora Nikolaya II"), after Emperor Nicholas II of