 View of the Daugaard-Jensen Glacier at the head of Nordvestfjord. The shady mountain slope on the right is part of Charcot Land. | |
  Charcot Land | |
| Geography | |
|---|---|
| Location | East Greenland |
| Coordinates | 72°0′N29°0′W / 72.000°N 29.000°W Coordinates: 72°0′N29°0′W / 72.000°N 29.000°W |
| Adjacent bodies of water | |
| Length | 35 km (21.7 mi) |
| Width | 20 km (12 mi) |
| Administration | |
Greenland (Denmark) | |
| Zone | NE Greenland National Park |
| Demographics | |
| Population | Uninhabited |
Charcot Land is a peninsula of Eastern Greenland, part of the Scoresby Sound system. It lies in the Northeast Greenland National Park zone.
A peninsula is a landform surrounded by water on the majority of its border while being connected to a mainland from which it extends. The surrounding water is usually understood to be continuous, though not necessarily named as a single body of water. Peninsulas are not always named as such; one can also be a headland, cape, island promontory, bill, point, fork, or spit. A point is generally considered a tapering piece of land projecting into a body of water that is less prominent than a cape. A river which courses through a very tight meander is also sometimes said to form a "peninsula" within the loop of water. In English, the plural versions of peninsula are peninsulas and, less commonly, peninsulae.
Greenland is an autonomous country of the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for more than a millennium. The majority of its residents are Inuit, whose ancestors began migrating from the Canadian mainland in the 13th century, gradually settling across the island.
Scoresby Sund is a large fjord system of the Greenland Sea on the eastern coast of Greenland. It has a tree-like structure, with a main body approximately 110 km (68 mi) long that branches into a system of fjords covering an area of about 38,000 km2 (14,700 sq mi). The longest of the fjords extends 340–350 km inland from the coastline. The depth is 400–600 m in the main basin, but depths increase to up to 1,450 m (4,760 ft) in some fjords. It is one of the largest and longest fjord systems in the world.
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The area is remote and uninhabited. It was named after French Polar explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot (1867–1936) during aerial surveys by Lauge Koch as part of the Three-year Expedition to East Greenland.
Jean-Baptiste-Étienne-Auguste Charcot, born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, was a French scientist, medical doctor and polar scientist. His father was the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893).
Lauge Koch was a Danish geologist and Arctic explorer.
The Three-year Expedition was an exploratory expedition to East Greenland that lasted from 1931 to 1934 financed by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish state. The expedition included aerial surveys.
