2 of the World’s Most-Remote Islands: Even in the 21st century, there are places on the planet where few people tread. Lonely mountain tops, desert interiors, Arctic ice floes, or the vast frozen ice sheets of Antarctica are remote places that come to mind immediately. But what about faraway islands of adventure?
The Kerguelen Islands: The Kerguelen Islands are a group of windswept Indian Ocean islands filled with glaciers, mountains, rocky outcrops, and vast plains of tussock grasses and mosses.
With a daily mean temperature ranging from 2.1 to 8.2 ⁰C (35.8 to 46.8 ⁰F), the Kerguelen Islands are not the first choice for human settlement, but the islands are a haven for seals, albatrosses, terns, and four species of penguins.
Link: On this Day, July 5: the List of Historical Events
Spitsbergen: With an area of 39,044 square km (15,075 square miles), Spitsbergen is the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago, and it is also Norway’s largest island.
Given its location some 830 km (about 516 miles) east of the coast of Greenland and about 950 km (about 590 miles) north of the coast of Europe, it is no surprise that the island is covered in snow and ice and harbors a sizable population of polar bears.
The island’s main settlement is Longyear city, or Longyearbyen, which sits less than 3.2 km (2 miles) away from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault—a secure facility built into the side of a mountain intended to safeguard the
seeds of the world’s food plants in the event of a global crisis. 