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Tusenøyane: Lurøya

Lurøya, Tusenøya­ne – vir­tu­al pan­o­r­amic tour

Tour Sta­ti­ons

Lurøya (1)

The archi­pe­la­go of Tusenøya­ne („Thousand islands“) is a litt­le world on its own. A lar­ger num­ber of litt­le islands, more or less situa­ted in seve­ral groups, they are lying south of Edgeøya. In his­to­ri­cal times, they had a bad repu­ta­ti­on for being dif­fi­cult to reach becau­se of the often hea­vy ice con­di­ti­ons; it hap­pen­ed that the drift ice that gene­ral­ly comes from the nor­the­ast does not loo­sen its grip at all during the sum­mer and win­te­rers had to spend a second, then often dra­ma­tic year.

Lurøya (2)

The islands of Tusenøya­ne are all very small, most­ly less than a kilo­met­re in dia­met­re. Most of them are very bar­ren and rocky, they are all built up of dia­bas, a basal­tic rock. The sur­face of the­se rocky islands is often cover­ed with bould­ers and they can be dif­fi­cult to walk on. Lar­ger islands have tun­dra are­as on flat parts, which are very rich in lichens and have a lot of very old wha­le­bo­nes: wit­nesses of post-gla­cial land uplift.

The­re are wal­rus colo­nies in Tusenøya­ne, and polar bears are com­mon in the area.

Lurøya (3)

Becau­se of their ani­mal life rich­ness, Tusenøya­ne used to be an area whe­re Pomors (Rus­si­an hun­ters) win­tered and Nor­we­gi­an ice sea skip­pers went, most­ly during the sum­mer, to catch wal­rus­ses, seals and polar bears. Unin­ten­ded, dra­ma­tic win­terings occur­red more than once.

This small, tri­an­gu­lar hut does not have a his­to­ri­cal back­ground. It was built by sci­en­tists from the Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te. It is the only hut still stan­ding in Tusenøya­ne. Only incon­spi­cuous foun­da­ti­ons remain from older ones.

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last modification: 2019-04-22 · copyright: Rolf Stange
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