Kotelny Island

Kotelny Island (Russian: Остров Котельный, Yakut: Олгуйдаах арыы) is part of the Anzhu Islands subgroup of the New Siberian Islands located between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea in the Russian Arctic. It is administratively and municipally part of Bulunsky District (Russian: Булунский улу́с; Yakut: Булуҥ улууһа).

Kotelny, Faddeyevsky and Bunge Land are usually named as separate islands on most 20th century maps, although sometimes on the newest maps the name "Kotelny" is applied to the whole island. A flat, low-lying, plain connecting both is known as Bunge Land (Земля Бунге).

The total area of Kotelny Island is 23,165 km². Kotelny is one of the 50 largest islands in the world. These merged islands are a practically uninhabited territory belonging to the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) of the Russian Federation.

History

The island was officially discovered by a Russian merchant and hunter, Ivan Lyakhov, with the merchant Protod’yakonov, in 1773. In 1770, Ivan Lyakhov noticed reindeer tracks heading seaward across the sea ice. In 1773, he and Protod’yakonov discovered the Lyakhovsky Islands by boat using the bearing of these tracks. Continuing from the Lyakhovsky Islands, they discovered Kotelny Island and named it "Kettle Island" after a copper kettle, which they found while exploring it. The person(s), who visited Kotelny Island and left the copper kettle, is unknown. Formerly this island had been known as "Thaddeus Island" or "Thaddeus Islands" in some maps.