Arctic Archipelago

Arctic Archipelago (ärk`tĭk, är`tĭk), group of more than 50 large islands, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, N Canada, in the Arctic Ocean. The southernmost members of the group include Baffin (the archipelago's largest island), Victoria, Banks, Prince of Wales, and Somerset islands; N of Viscount Melville and Lancaster sounds are the Queen Elizabeth Islands, of which Ellesmere is the largest. Tundra and permanent ice cover the islands, on which oil and coal have been discovered. After Greenland, the Archipelago is the world's largest high-arctic land area.

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Arctic Archipelago

Group of Canadian islands, Arctic Ocean. They lie north of the Canadian mainland and have an area of about 550,000 sq mi (1,424,500 sq km). The southeastern islands are an extension of the Canadian Shield; the balance consists of the Arctic lowlands to the south and the Innuitian Mountains to the north. The archipelago includes the large islands of Baffin, Ellesmere, Victoria, Banks, and Prince of Wales.