World's most northerly island revealed to be gravel-covered iceberg

What was long thought to be the world's most northerly island has turned out not to be an island at all, but an iceberg covered with earth and gravel, Danish scientist Rene Forsberg told dpa on Friday.

Danish and Swiss scientists discovered the iceberg, which they believed to be an island, to the north of Greenland last year. However, water has now been discovered underneath it, meaning that it is in fact an iceberg.

Forsberg said that all the islands found since 1978 in the region had now been visited, and none of them had turned out to be true islands.

Last year, a Swiss-Danish team investigating the area to the north of Greenland named what they thought was an island measuring 30 by 60 metres as Qeqertaq Avannarleq – Greenlandic for "northernmost island" - around 800 metres north of the island of Oodaaq, seen until then as the closest land to the North Pole.

Oodaaq's status as an island is now also in question, however. The scientists now say another nearby island, Qeqertaat, is actually the northernmost land on earth.