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Queen Maud Land, in Norwegian Dronning Maud Land, is a roughly 2.7-million-sq-km region of Antarctica claimed by Norway as a dependent territory. It borders the claimed British Antarctic Territory 20° west and the Australian Antarctic Territory 45° east. In addition, a small unclaimed area from 1939 was annexed in June 2015. Positioned in East Antarctica, it makes out about one-fifth of the continent, and is named after the Norwegian Queen Maud (1869-1938).
In 1930, the Norwegian Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen was the first person known to have set foot in the territory.
On 14 January 1939, the territory was claimed by Norway.
On 23 June 1961, Queen Maud Land became part of the Antarctic Treaty System, making it a demilitarised zone. It is one of two Antarctic claims made by Norway, the other being Peter I Island. They are administered by the Polar Affairs Department of the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security in Oslo.
Most of the territory is covered by the east Antarctic ice sheet, and a tall ice wall stretches throughout its coast. In some areas farther within the ice sheet, mountain ranges breach through the ice, allowing for birds to breed and the growth of a limited flora. The region is divided into, from west to east, the Princess Martha Coast, Princess Astrid Coast, Princess Ragnhild Coast, Prince Harald Coast and Prince Olav Coast. The waters off the coast are called the King Haakon VII Sea.
There is no permanent population, although there are 12 active research stations housing a maximum of around 40 scientists, the numbers fluctuating depending on the season. Six are occupied year-round, while the remainder are seasonal summer stations. The main aerodromes for intercontinental flights, corresponding with Cape Town, South Africa, are Troll Airfield, near the Norwegian Troll research station, and a runway at the Russian Novolazarevskaya Station.
Queen Maud Land extends from the boundary with Coats Land in the west to the boundary with Enderby Land in the east, and is divided into the Princess Martha Coast, Princess Astrid Coast, Princess Ragnhild Coast, Prince Harald Coast and Prince Olav Coast.
The territory is estimated to cover around 2,700,000 square kilometres, which roughly corresponds to the sizes of India, Argentina or Kazakhstan. The limits of the claim, put forth in 1939, did not fix the northern and southern limits other than as the mainland beach in Antarctica ... with the land that lies beyond this beach and the sea beyond. The sea that extends off the coast between the longitudinal limits of Queen Maud Land is generally called King Haakon VII Sea.
There is very limited ice-free land at the coast, in the vicinity of Japan's Showa station. The remainder of the coast consists of a 20-to-30-metre high wall of ice almost throughout the entire territory. It is thus only possible to disembark from a ship in a few places. Some 150 to 200 kilometres from the coast, rocky peaks pierce the ice cap, itself at a mean height of around 2,000 metres above sea level, with the highest point at Jøkulkyrkja in the Mühlig-Hofmann Mountains. The other major mountain ranges are the Heimefront Range, Orvin Mountains, Wohlthat Mountains and Sør Rondane Mountains.
Geologically, the ground of Queen Maud Land is dominated by Precambrian gneiss, formed c. 1 to 1.2 Ga, before the creation of the supercontinent Gondwana. The mountains consist mostly of crystalline and granitic rocks, formed c. 500 to 600 Ma in the Pan-African orogeny during the assembly of Gondwana.
In the farthest western parts of the territory, there are younger sedimentary and volcanic rocks. Research on the thickness of the ice has revealed that without the ice, the coast would be similar to those of Norway and Greenland, with deep fjords and islands.
Queen Maud Land was the first part of Antarctica to be sighted, on 27 January 1820 by Fabian von Bellingshausen. However, it was among the last to be explored, as it required aircraft in combination with ships to undertake systematic exploration. Early Norwegian research activities in Antarctica rested entirely on whaling and sealing expeditions funded by ship owners, particularly by Christen Christensen and his son Lars. The first two Norwegian expeditions were carried out by sealing ships in 1892-93 and 1893-94. While they were primarily sent for exploring, sealing, and whaling possibilities, they also performed scientific research. Further Norwegian expeditions were mounted into the first decades of the 20th century.
The Antarctic Plateau was claimed for Norway by Roald Amundsen as the King Haakon VII Plateau when his expedition was the first to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911. It was mapped as a circular territory comprising the plateau around the South Pole, including all the land above latitude 85°S. However, roughly the same area had been claimed by the British as the King Edward VII Plateau, which was in conflict with the Norwegian claim. Amundsen's claim has never been officially claimed by the Norwegian government.
The name Queen Maud Land was initially applied in January 1930 to the land between 37°E and 49°30′E discovered by Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen and Finn Lützow-Holm during Lars Christensen's Norvegia expedition of 1929-30 It was named after the Norwegian queen Maud of Wales, wife of the then-reigning King Haakon VII.
The territory was explored further during the Norvegia expedition of 1930-31. During this whaling season, a total of 265 whaling ships, mostly Norwegian, worked off the coast of Queen Maud Land. In the same season, Riiser-Larsen discovered the Prince Olav Coast, Princess Martha Coast and Princess Ragnhild Coast from the air. Captain H. Halvorsen of the whaler Sevilla discovered the Princess Astrid Coast independently at the same time. Six years later, during Christensen's expedition of 1936–37, Viggo Widerøe flew over and discovered the Prince Harald Coast. Negotiations with the British government in 1938 resulted in the western border of Queen Maud Land being set at 20°W.
Norway's claim was disputed by Germany, which dispatched the German Antarctic Expedition in 1938, led by Alfred Ritscher, to fly over as much of it as possible. The ship Schwabenland reached the pack ice off Antarctica on 19 January 1939. During the expedition, an area of about 350,000 square kilometres was photographed from the air by Ritscher, who dropped darts inscribed with swastikas every 26 kilometres. Germany eventually attempted to claim the territory surveyed by Ritscher under the name New Swabia, but lost any claim to the land following its defeat in the Second World War.
On 14 January 1939, five days prior to the German arrival, Queen Maud Land was annexed by Norway, by royal decree.
More information: Norsk Polarinstitutt
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