In
1921, the Danish explorer Lauge Koch traversed the northern shore of
the Arctic Riviera, a long section of Greenland's northeast coast that
has too little precipitation to breed glaciers. Contrary to the public
conception of northern Greenland as a vast icecap second only to Antarctica,
the snow-free summer tundra along the coast blooms with wildflowers
each July. Koch spotted an obvious island that he suspected could be
farther north than the cape and named it Kaffeklubben-Coffee Club Island-for
his informal group of geologists. |