The Blosseville Coast ( da, Blosseville Kyst) is a long stretch of coast in

King Christian IX Land King Christian IX Land ( da, Kong Christian IX Land) is a coastal area of Southeastern Greenland in Sermersooq Municipality fronting the Denmark Strait and extending through the Arctic Circle from 65°N to 70°N. History This area was named i ...

, eastern

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 i ...

. Administratively it belongs to the

Sermersooq Sermersooq (, da, sted med meget is, lit=place of much ice) is a municipality in Greenland, formed on 1 January 2009 from five earlier, smaller municipalities. Its administrative seat is the city of Nuuk (formerly called Godthåb), the capital ...

Municipality. The Blosseville Coast is steep and difficult to access by ship owing to the great number of ice floes, frequent fog, dangerous currents and lack of good anchorages.

History

This stretch of coast is named after French Lieutenant

Jules de Blosseville Jules is the French form of the Latin "Julius" (e.g. Jules César, the French name for Julius Caesar). It is the given name of: People with the name *Jules Aarons (1921–2008), American space physicist and photographer *Jules Abadie (1876–195 ...

, commander of "La Lilloise". In 1833 Lt. Blosseville first sighted the stretch of unexplored coast between the 68th and the

69th parallel north The 69th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 69 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane, in the Arctic. It crosses the Atlantic Ocean, Europe, Asia and North America, and passes through some of the southern seas of the Arctic ...

. He decided to survey the coast more thoroughly and sailed first to

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

to make repairs on his ship. Then he headed back to the area of this coast but was lost without a trace. In the years that followed, three expeditions were organized to find Lt. Blosseville and the 83 other men on the ship but no trace was found. The coast was finally explored and mapped in 1900 by Georg Carl Amdrup in the course of the Carlsbergfund Expedition to East Greenland.

Geography

The Blosseville Coast is located between

Kangerlussuaq Fjord Kangerlussuaq Fjord (old spelling: ''Kangerdlugssuaq'', da, Søndre Strømfjord) is a long fjord in the Qeqqata municipality in central-western Greenland. The fjord is long and between and wide, flowing from the estuary of Qinnguata Kuussua r ...

in the SW and Cape Brewster at the entrance to

Scoresby Sound Scoresby Sound (Danish: ''Scoresby Sund'', Greenlandic: ''Kangertittivaq'') 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 Barclay Bay Barclay Bay () is a bay in Drake Passage between Cape Shirreff and Essex Point on the north side of Livingston Island, in the South Shetland Islands. Its head is fed by Etar Snowfield. The name appears on an 1825 chart of the British sealing e ...

and Cape Vedel. Compared to other coastal areas in Greenland the coast in this area is not deeply indented.

Fjord In physical geography, a fjord or fiord () is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia, Chile, Denmark, Förden and East Jutland Fjorde, Germany, ...

s, such as

Nansen Fjord Nansen Fjord is a fjord in King Christian IX Land, Eastern Greenland. It is part of the Sermersooq municipality. Geography This fjord lies in an indented area of the Blosseville Coast where there is a succession of rocky headlands with active glac ...

and Kivioq Fjord, are relatively short. In some fjords the Greenland ice sheet comes down to the shore. There are only a few islands lying off the coast and they are generally small.''Prostar Sailing Directions 2005 Greenland and Iceland Enroute'', p. 99

References

{{reflist Landforms of Greenland Coasts of North America