Several ‘islands’ recorded as the northernmost on Earth are likely only icebergs, most fully covered by gravel and temporarily stranded on the seabed, according to new research.

For years, a heated international debate has been ongoing among explorers, scientists, island-hunters and other interested parties about which is indeed the northernmost island on Earth.

At least seven of these phenomena have been recorded and celebrated by visiting explorers, adventurers and scientists.

In the summer of 2021, five members of a Swiss-Danish science expedition landed in a helicopter on yet another and until then undiscovered ice-and-gravel phenomenon about two kilometres north of the Greenland mainland.

The muddy but sturdy structure turned out to be about 80 by 30 metres, rising to about two metres above sea level. A year later and following a new expedition, the issue of the small island-like structures has possibly been settled once and for all.

According to the new findings, all the structures recorded since 1978 are not islands in any classical sense of the word, but simply icebergs partly or fully covered by gravel and temporarily stranded on the seabed in the shallows north of Greenland.