Nordvik () was a settlement and a

harbour A harbor (American English), or harbour (Commonwealth English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), is a sheltered body of water where ships, boats, and barges can be Mooring, moored. The t ...

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manch ...

Krasnoyarsk Krai Krasnoyarsk Krai (, ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject (a krai) of Russia located in Siberia. Its administrative center is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Krasnoyarsk, the second-largest city in Siberia after ...

Russian Federation Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

, located on the

Khatanga Gulf The Khatanga Gulf or Khatanga Bay () is a large tidal estuary in the Laptev Sea. It is relatively narrow, its length being with a maximum width of . Geography The Bolshoy Begichev Island divides the gulf into two straits: Northern Strait ( wide) ...

(

Laptev Sea The Laptev Sea () is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, the Taimyr Peninsula, Severnaya Zemlya, and the New Siberian Islands. Its northern boundary passes from the Arctic Cape to a point with ...

) at the mouth of the

Khatanga River The Khatanga () is a river in Krasnoyarsk Krai in Russia. The river is navigable. The river port of Khatanga is located on the river. Course It begins at the confluence of the rivers Kotuy and Kheta. The Khatanga is long ( including its hea ...

, on the Uryung Tumus Peninsula, west of

Nordvik Bay Nordvik Bay (; , ''Nordvik xomoto'') is a gulf in the Laptev Sea in the north of Russia. Lat 73° 45' and long 112°. Nordvik Bay and most of its surrounding area belongs to the Sakha Republic administrative division of the Russian Federation. ...

. A penal colony existed in the settlement. The climate is exceptionally severe, with prolonged, bitter winters. Near Nordvik there is a

paleozoic The Paleozoic ( , , ; or Palaeozoic) Era is the first of three Era (geology), geological eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. Beginning 538.8 million years ago (Ma), it succeeds the Neoproterozoic (the last era of the Proterozoic Eon) and ends 251.9 Ma a ...

salt dome known as Tus-Takh on the Uryung Tumus Peninsula itself. It was suspected that the ground underneath would probably yield oil and gas. The remains of a

plesiosaur The Plesiosauria or plesiosaurs are an Order (biology), order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appeared in the latest Triassic Period (geology), Period, possibly in the Rhaetian st ...

''(Plesiosaurus robustus)'' were also found on this peninsula.

History

The name literally means "North Bay" in Norwegian and refers to the

discovered by the Russian

Great Northern Expedition The Great Northern Expedition () or Second Kamchatka Expedition () was a major Russian Arctic expedition between roughly 1733 and 1743, which mapped most of the Arctic coast of Siberia and much of the Arctic coast of North America, greatly red ...

in 1739. In 1933, the newly formed ''

Glavsevmorput The Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (), also known as Glavsevmorput or GUSMP (), was a Soviet government organization in charge of the maritime Northern Sea Route, established in January 1932 and dissolved in 1964. History The organiz ...

'' (Chief Directorate of the

Northern Sea Route The Northern Sea Route (NSR) (, shortened to Севморпуть, ''Sevmorput'') is a shipping route about long. The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is the shortest shipping route between the western part of Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region. Ad ...

) sent the freighter ''

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most in ...

'' to Nordvik with an

oil exploration Hydrocarbon exploration (or oil and gas exploration) is the search by petroleum geologists and geophysicists for hydrocarbon deposits, particularly petroleum and natural gas, in the Earth's crust using petroleum geology. Exploration methods V ...

expedition led by N. N. Urvantsev. By September 4, ''Pravda'' was close to Nordvik. Сaptain Belitskiy had decided to approach Nordvik Bay from the east, between Poluostrov Paksa and Bolshoy Begichev Island. Despite having no knowledge of the depth of the channel, Belitskiy went ahead without taking the elementary precaution of sounding, and ''Pravda'' twice ran aground in the centre of the channel. According to Urvantsev, drilling at Nordvik over the next few seasons revealed small, shallow oil pockets in connection with salt structures with little commercial significance. However the salt itself was extracted on a fairly massive scale by means of

forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, or violence, including death or other forms of ...

ers in a penal colony. From the 1930s onwards Nordvik became an important source of salt supply for the northern fisheries. Although the original prospects for oil at Nordvik did not materialise, experience was gained in exploring for hydrocarbons within the continuous permafrost zones. This experience proved invaluable in the later exploration and exploitation of the massive oil and gas fields of Western

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. The penal colony was closed in the mid-1940s when Americans arrived at Nordvik as allies of the Soviet Union . The salt was extracted by internal deportees rather than prisoners after the camp closure. The settlement at Nordvik was closed in 1956.

Landscape

References

*
Memorial

Newspaper article about expedition
(in Russian)
Map marking plesiosaur findsNordvik entry from Dead Cities
{{in lang, ru Geography of Krasnoyarsk Krai Laptev Sea Camps of the Gulag Gulag industry North Siberian Lowland