Markgama, or Markham Island is a small, isolated island in the southern region of the Kara Sea

Kara Sea

The Kara Sea is part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. It is separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya....

 off the Sorevnovaniya Bay. This island has only sparse tundra vegetation and it is covered with snow most of the year. The coast of the Taymyr Peninsula

Taymyr Peninsula

The Taymyr Peninsula is a peninsula in the Far North of Russia, in the Siberian Federal District, that forms the northernmost part of mainland Eurasia and Asia...

 is located 15 km to the southeast.

The island's length is only 2 km and its maximum width 1.5 km. The sea surrounding it is covered with pack ice with some polynias in the long winter and there are many ice floes even in the summer.

Markgama belongs to the Krasnoyarsk Krai

Krasnoyarsk Krai

Krasnoyarsk Krai is a federal subject of Russia . It is the second largest federal subject after the Sakha Republic, and Russia's largest krai, occupying an area of , which is 13% of the country's total territory. The administrative center of the krai is the city of Krasnoyarsk...

 administrative division of the Russian Federation. It is also part of the Great Arctic State Nature Reserve

Great Arctic State Nature Reserve

The Great Arctic State Nature Reserve is a nature reserve in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia...

 – the largest nature reserve of Russia and one of the biggest in the world.

History

The area around Markgama was explored by Otto Sverdrup

Otto Sverdrup

Otto Neumann Knoph Sverdrup was a Norwegian sailor and Arctic explorer.-Early and personal life:...

 on ship Eklips in 1914 while he was searching for Brusilov

Georgy Brusilov

Georgy Lvovich Brusilov or Hryhoriy Brusylov was a Ukrainian Russian naval officer of the Imperial Russian Navy and an Arctic explorer...

 and Rusanov

Vladimir Rusanov

Vladimir Alexandrovich Rusanov was an experienced Russian geologist who specialized in the Arctic.In 1909–1911 V. A. Rusanov carried out explorations in Novaya Zemlya. He was helped by Tyko Vylka, his guide, who later became the Chairman of the Novaya Zemlya Soviet.In 1912 Rusanov had been...

. The island was named after British Arctic explorer Albert Hastings Markham

Albert Hastings Markham

Admiral Sir Albert Hastings Markham, KCB was a British explorer, author, and officer in the Royal Navy. In 1903 he was made Knight Commander in the Order of the Bath...

, but it is mostly known by the Russian genitive case

Genitive case

In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

spelling of Markham: Маркгамa ("Markgama").