Which country has the highest number of islands?

And why are they so numerous in one region?

 

Multiple nations around the globe hold the record for the highest quantity or quality of a particular commodity. Canada has the most lakes, with an estimated 879,000, while Russia takes the cake for the most trees, with an estimated 45.0% of its geographical area covered in forest.

 

However, which nation has the most islands overall? Maybe you're in Greece. Can it be Indonesia? Where does that leave Canada, the country that hosts the Arctic Archipelago?

 

Sweden has triumphed by a wide margin. According to Statista, a German statistics provider, this northern European country is home to a remarkable 221,800 islands, the vast majority of which are deserted. The study, published in 2005 in Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, found that this figure includes islands as small as 270 square feet (25 square meters). It is the equivalent of a single-car garage in size.

 

According to Statista, Finland comes in second with an estimated 188,000 islands, while Norway rounds out the top three but is a far cry with only about 55,000.

 

Scandinavian, or Scandinavian, covers all three countries (including Iceland and Denmark). That brings up a fascinating mystery: why are there so many islands in this particular section of the world?

 

This is because "they have a special recent past, geologically speaking," Karin Sigloch, director of research at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), explained to Live Science in an email.

 

"The climate of Earth has featured an Arctic ice cover and recurrent ice ages in the Northern Hemisphere for the past few years (2.6 million years). Ahead of that, it hadn't, "that's what she said."

 

Sigloch said that every 41,000 years or thereabouts, glaciers have grown and shrunk over the bedrock in the Nordic countries.

 

An ice age is not just a long period of freezing weather. Earlier ice ages, or "glacials," and warmer interglacial periods occur inside larger ice ages. During the Quaternary glaciation, which started about 2.6 million years ago and lasted until about 800,000 years ago, these cold glacial periods happened about every 41,000 years. After that, they occurred less often, about every 100,000 years.

 

Many parts of the Nordic region were buried under "mile-high" ice sheets during the previous ice age, whose weight "caused the Earth's crust to sink," as reported by the BBC.

 

This ice melted during a mild period called the Holocene Climatic Optimum (5,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C., according to a University of Arizona lecture), which allowed the crust to get back to its old shape and strength (Springer, 2015).

 

The Kvarken Archipelago, the only natural World Heritage site in Finland, continues to "climb" slightly every year due to isostatic balance. The BBC stated that it gained about 0.4 square miles (1 square kilometer) of land each year.

 

Sigloch further noted that the region's warm mantle accounts for the Nordic countries "very high topography." Continents and oceans are pushed upward as the warm mantle grows below them.

 

Deep fjords have formed as a result of glacial erosion and steep topography, leaving "bits of rocks sticking out everywhere," as Sigloch put it.

 

Sea levels around the world are considerably higher during interglacial periods than they are during ice ages. The reasoning is elementary: when glaciers melt, the water they contain flows into the ocean, increasing the water level there. In extreme cases, the consequences can be devastating. During the Last Glacial Maximum, which happened at the end of the Pleistocene period (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), sea levels were about 400 feet (122 meters) lower than they are now, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

 

A lot of this ice melted, which caused widespread flooding and, as Sigloch put it, the appearance of "islands" here and there.

 

While climate and geology may explain why Sweden and its neighbors have so many islands, the concept of an island remains a bit murky.

 

Most folks think of an island as a piece of land isolated by water. Australia fits this definition precisely; therefore, it is classified as a continent, whereas Greenland, which is just three times smaller yet has identical features, is classified as "the world's largest island" by Britannica.

 

Although there is no single, all-encompassing definition of a "continent," the general opinion holds that a continent must be located on its tectonic plate. This is also the position taken by ThoughtCo, an online educational resource. Since Greenland is located on the North American plate rather than the Eurasian one, it does not meet this definition and is instead classified as an island.

 

On the other hand, Siglock claimed that the Swedish islands were technically not islands at all.

 

According to Sigloch, "geologically speaking, the 'islands' of Scandinavia aren't islands." They are simply continental in appearance yet protrude from the ocean. In everyday language, though, they are called islands because they are so small.

 

So, it's possible to draw the conclusion that Sweden won the island contest on a technicality, but that's debatable.

 

Suppose we restrict our definition of "island" to include just those geographical features that are home to human populations and are not connected to the mainland in any way. In that case, the author of the study from 2005 concludes that Sweden has only 401 islands. Perhaps we need to settle on a common definition of the term "island," a topic that could be discussed at length on a future trip to a deserted "island" with a beautiful beach.

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/what-country-has-most-islands

Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/vectors/pantai-matahari-terbenam-2245049/

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