For the first time, the merchant-animal dealer Yakov Sannikov, who hunted foxes and mammoth bones on the northern shores of the Novosibirsk Islands, spoke about the existence of the mysterious northern territory. An experienced polar explorer, Sannikov, who had previously discovered the Stolbovoy and Faddeevsky islands, suggested the existence of a "vast land" north of Kotelny Island. According to the hunter, "high stone mountains" rose above the sea.
The earth was a ghost island in the Arctic Ocean, which some explorers allegedly saw to the north of the New Siberian Islands. The search for a hypothetical Earth has not yet led to success and, most likely, there is no such land now.
In 1800, Yakov Sannikov began exploring the New Siberian Islands, even himself became the discoverer of several islands, and in 1811 expressed an opinion about the existence of a vast land, which he allegedly even saw on the horizon.
The northern peoples told him about the distant land. This was indirectly evidenced by the footprints of deer walking on the ice somewhere to the north. The researcher asked a natural question: why, if there were no land and food? Later, a hypothetical area was named after him.
In the period from the middle of the XIX to almost the middle of the XX century, hundreds of people searched for Sannikov Land. The belief that somewhere in the north there is unexplored land was further strengthened after the discovery of the small islands of Jeannette and Henrietta with an area of 3 and 12 square kilometers by the American polar explorer D. De Long in 1881.
The expeditions of the Russian Arctic explorer Baron E. V. Toll, who was convinced of the existence of Arctida, the northern polar continent, whose coast, in his opinion, was observed by Yakov Sannikov, was aimed at searching for Sannikov Land. On August 13, 1886, Toll recorded in his diary:
“The horizon is perfectly clear. In the northeast direction, we clearly saw the outlines of the four mesas, which in the east joined the low-lying land. Thus, Sannikov's message was fully confirmed. We have the right, therefore, to draw a dotted line in the appropriate place on the map and write on it: "Sannikov's Land" "…
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In 1893, Toll again visually recorded a strip of mountains on the horizon, which he identified with Sannikov Land. It seemed that the mysterious Sannikov Land did exist.
However, in the same year, the Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen (1861 - 1930) passed the Novosibirsk Islands on his ship Fram and did not find any traces of Sannikov Land.
In 1902, during the Russian polar expedition on the schooner Zarya, one of the goals of which was to search for Sannikov Land, Toll died.
In 1937, the Soviet icebreaker "Sadko" during its drift passed near the alleged island from the south, and from the east, and from the north, but did not find anything, there was only ocean ice around. At the request of Academician V. A. Obruchev (author of the novel "Sannikov Land"), Arctic aviation planes were sent to the same area. However, despite all efforts, this search also gave a negative result: Soviet pilots proved that Sannikov Land does not exist.
Information about the existence of the hypothetical Sannikov Land, which arose at the beginning of the 19th century, was known only to narrow circles for a long time and became widely known only a hundred years after the publication of the novel of the same name by Vladimir Obruchev in 1926. The author himself, while working on a geological and geographical expedition in the north of Yakutia, heard from local residents about a mysterious warm land far in the Arctic Ocean. In Obruchev's novel, the anomalous climate on the island was fairly well substantiated by volcanic activity.
At the supposed location of the legendary Earth, the researchers discovered only an underwater bank (a shallow, the depth above which is much less than the surrounding depths), which they called the Sannikov bank.
The legendary land itself has never been found. They were looking for it with particular enthusiasm in the 1930s, when it became possible to fly around the ice in airplanes. With the advent of satellites and after mapping the Arctic Ocean, the issue of Sannikov Land was finally closed.
It is currently believed that although this land does not exist now, it may have existed before, but was destroyed by the sea and disappeared like a number of other islands, consisting of a mixture of fossil ice, soil and minerals. In the USSR, a fantastic film "Sannikov's Land" was shot, where the northern lands are shown as a fertile warm oasis inhabited by isolated tribes of people.
In 2003, at the 7th International Congress of the History of Oceanography in Kaliningrad, Sannikov Land was officially recognized as having existed for the first time. Scientists have stated that the island could well have been, but before 1935. The proof was a map found in the military-historical archive with the inscription: "The land discovered by Sannikov." On a piece of parchment 10 × 10 cm, a part of the land was painted with a river and a chain of mountains. The fact that this land was, and then disappeared, is confirmed by the reports of the North Polar Squadron in 1935. One of the pilots noticed an island not marked on the map. He fixed the coordinates and on his return to the base reported: "He opened the ground." But the planes that took off in search of a few days later found nothing because of the thick fog.
Scientists were guided by the coordinates indicated by the pilot when they conducted research there. The analysis clearly showed that only recently there was land on this place. Probably, it was her that the expeditions saw in the 19th century. It was difficult to find it because of the constant fogs, which, according to scientists, are nothing more than a sign of an active volcano. The cold air of the Laptev Sea mixed with the warmth of the volcano. So, there have been no fogs in those places for the last 60 years. They ended when they stopped seeing Sannikov Land. And this means that the volcano went under water along with the island.