Municipality Qaasuitsup | Population uninhabited | |
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Meteorite Island (Danish: Meteorit Ø) is an island in Baffin Bay, in the Qaasuitsup municipality, off NW Greenland.
Contents
Map of Meteorito, Greenland
The Cape York Meteorite fell thousands of years ago on the southern shore of this island.
Geography
Meteorite Island is quite barren and desolate. It lies off the shore of Meteor Bay and is part of a small chain of coastal islands formed by Meteorite Island, Salve Island, George Island, Bushnan Island and a small islet, and is the largest of the group. This chain of islands is located between Cape York and Cape Melville.
The now abandoned Inuit village of Savissivik is located at the southwestern end of Meteorite Island. The settlement had a heliport, Savissivik Heliport and in 2010 it had 66 inhabitants. In the Greenlandic language, the name of the settlement Savissivik means 'place of meteorite iron' (savik = iron/knife), alluding to the numerous meteorites from 10,000 years ago that have been found in the area. The meteorite is estimated to have weighed 100 tonnes before it exploded. The iron from the meteorite attracted migrating Inuit from Arctic Canada.