Raffles Island is an
uninhabited island
A desert island, deserted island, or uninhabited island, is an island, islet or atoll that is not permanently populated by humans. Uninhabited islands are often depicted in films or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotype ...
located approximately 4 km to east of the Sparrebugt bay,
Liverpool Land
Liverpool Land is a peninsula in eastern Greenland.
Geography
The peninsula is bounded by Scoresby Sund in the south, Carlsberg Fjord in the northwest, '' Kangerterajiva'' (Hurry Inlet) in the southwest, the Greenland Sea in the east, and Jame ...
, about 20 km north-east of the town of
Ittoqqortoormiit
Ittoqqortoormiit (East Greenlandic: ; West Greenlandic: ''Illoqqortoormiut'' ), formerly known as Scoresbysund, is a settlement in the Sermersooq municipality in eastern Greenland. Its population was 345 as of 2020 and has been described as one o ...
,
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...
in the
Scoresby Sund area.
Description
It was named by
William Scoresby
William Scoresby (5 October 178921 March 1857) was an English whaler, Arctic explorer, scientist and clergyman.
Early years
Scoresby was born in the village of Cropton near Pickering south-west of Whitby in Yorkshire. His father, William ...
Jr. in 1822 as Raffles Island in honour of Reverend
Thomas Raffles
Thomas Raffles (1788–1863) was an English Congregational minister, known as a dominant nonconformist figure at the Great George Street Congregational Church in Liverpool, and as an abolitionist and historian.
Early life
The only son of Willi ...
(1788–1863), a prominent independent minister.
[Geological survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin 21 (2010), 117-368. Catalogue of place names in northern East Greenland, http://www.geus.dk/publications/bull/nr21/nr21_p117-368.pdf]
The alternative native
Greenlandic names of Agpalik or Appalik are also in use. It is also known with the Danish names of Raffle Ø or Raffles Ø.
The highest point of the island lies at 550m above the sea level. The island hosts a little lake, called Raffles Sø.
Its mean temperature is almost always close to 0 degrees Celsius.
Gull colonies have been recorded on the island.
[Boertmann, David (1994). An Annotated Checklist to the Birds of Greenland. Meddelelser om Groenland, Bioscience. ]
See also
*
List of islands of Greenland
The following is an alphabetical list of the islands of Greenland. Many of these islands have both a Kalaallisut language name and a European language name.
Islands and archipelagoes
* Aaluik
* Aasiaat Archipelago
* Achton Friis Islands
* A ...
References
Uninhabited islands of Greenland
{{Greenland-geo-stub