Rather than call this “More Thousand Islands” and confuse it with the purpose of my recent celebratory Kiloanomaly, I came up with a new name. Rest assured, by mentioning abundant agglomerated archipelagos, I actually meant places other than the Thousand Islands poking above the Saint Lawrence River between Canada and the United states that share a similar name. The latest twist was that none of them were in English. So the 12MC audience will get to see me struggle once again with my complete inability to deal with foreign languages.
I have to give a tip of the keyboard to Wikipedia’s Thousand Islands (disambiguation) page for inspiring the notion. I also researched other sources so it wasn’t like I completely stole the idea. Only partially.
Rivière des Mille Îles
Rivière des Mille Îles, or River of a Thousand Isles, had the best chance of Thousand Islands confusion. That’s simply due to proximity. The river was actually a channel of a larger river system, and one could reach the St. Lawrence from either its source or its mouth. Rivière des Mille Îles when paired with other channels formed the island that separated Laval from Montréal. The whole area teemed with islands, albeit farther downstream from the more famous Thousand Islands in Ontario. It can become rather confusing.
The area included the Parc de la Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, which sounded pretty nice in Google Translate:
“The decor of the Parc de la Rivière-des-Mille-Îles offers a real landscape bayous, with its calm river, shallow and safe, marshes flowers, marshy forests and lush vegetation of the islands, forming a maze of greenery. Half an hour from Montreal, nearly twenty islands that are accessible, a major tourist attraction and a unique place in Québec.”
Tusenøyane
Thousand Islands converted into the Norwegian language became Tusenøyane. Indeed, that’s the name of an isolated grouping found south of Edgeøya on the Svalbard archipelago. The entirety of Svalbard itself was rather obscure with barely 2,500 residents. So imagine the remoteness of one tiny scattering of rocks along its lower flank.
Correspondingly, there wasn’t all that much additional information about Tusenøyane available. The Norwegian Polar Institute served as the naming authority, identifying Tusenøyane as “A number of small islands south of Edgeøya” with a linguistic origin tracing to “the thousand islands.” The authority further noted several variant names including the Hopeless Islands.
I also found a site with several photographs. It looked barren and cold. I don’t think I’d describe it as “hopeless” though, well unless someone got shipwrecked there or something.
Kepulauan Seribu
Let’s understanding the theme presented so far. Thus, it should surprise exactly nobody that Kepulauan Seribu translated to Thousand Islands. In this case it came from the Indonesian language. These numerous small islets formed a string due north of Jakarta (map). Administratively they were actually part of Jakarta, and the city government explained:
“Kepulauan Seribu [Thousand Island] is located in Java Sea and Jakarta Bay, it is an area with characteristic and natural potential that is different with other parts of Jakarta Capital City, because this area is basically a cluster of formed coral islands and shaped by coral biota and other associated biota (algae, malusho, foraminifera, and others) with the help of dynamic natural process… it doesn’t mean that the total number of islands within the clusters is a thousand. There are approximately 342 islands in total, including sand islands, including vegetated and non-vegetated coral reefs.”
Indonesia created the Kepulauan Seribu Marine National Park and it grew into a major tourist attraction. Go ahead and search on Kepulauan Seribu online. One will find a nearly innumerable set of websites trying to sell luxury vacations there. Unfortunately this formerly unspoiled paradise may have become a little too well loved in recent decades. It’s led to warnings of environmental degradation.
Qiandao Lake
Qiandao Lake (represented by several Chinese language characters I couldn’t seem to replicate in WordPress), or Thousand Island Lake, was the only location in this series created artificially (map). The islands were a byproduct of the flooding of a valley after construction of a dam [link no longer works].
“…it formed a huge reservoir (Qiandao Lake) with 1,078 islands, which is part of a golden tourist route linking Hangzhou, Provincial capital of Zhejiang, and Mount Huangshan in neighboring Anhui Province.”
My favorite quote, however, was “Qiandao Lake, known for its clear, and sometimes drinkable water, is used to produce the renowned Nongfu Spring brand of mineral water.”
Sometimes drinkable? Thanks, I’d prefer consistently drinkable water.
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