Somehow I have gone all this time without writing about the most isolated island in the world. Turns out I don’t even have to leave Norwegian territory to do so. Bouvet Island, known in its native Norwegian as Bouvetøya, is an island in the South Atlantic Ocean situated between the tips of southern South America and Africa and just north of the Antarctic Circle. It’s hard to imagine a less hospitable island than Bouvet, almost entirely covered as it is in glaciers. As you might imagine from looking at the photos, it has no settlement nor residents aside from migratory birds. Unlike its South Atlantic sister Inaccessible Island, Bouvet doesn’t even seem to have any greenery. If you wreck on Bouvet, the best you can hope for is some wild fowl and a probable death by scurvy or some other horrible disease caused by malnutrition. There is supposed to be algae there, though, so if you bring along some salty broth and tofu maybe you can whip up a kettle of miso soup.
So why would any country bother claiming this island? It is in fact possible to make a landing on Bouvet, and people do sometimes visit to track whale migration. And after all, it’s always nice to have one more island on your country’s list of dependencies, as Norway managed to achieve in 1930 over the objections of the British (of course it’s the British – they just had to own every rock in the ocean back then.)
Strangely enough, Bouvet Island has its own top-level domain, .bv, that is completely unused. I just checked. (By the way, do not search “.bv” on Google if you’re currently eating. Please trust me on this one.) It’s really too bad – weird remote islands that have their own top-level domains usually end up home to exceedingly bizarre sites, like that infamous one that was hosted under Christmas Island’s .cx for a long time. (Once again, don’t look this up on Google. I’ve warned you.)
How to get there
Once again, you’ll need government permission to land on Bouvet Island. Since Bouvet has been legally made a nature preserve for birds, it’s very unlikely that you’ll get the proper permission from Norway to visit unless you’re some kind of whale or bird scientist with the intent to conduct a study there. There doesn’t seem to be any regular way to visit the island, in any case – the fact that it’s covered with glaciers precludes the building of an airfield, and since nobody lives there and it’s so remote, there probably aren’t any boats to take there unless you decide to take your own. As it is, it doesn’t seem like any rogue libertarians will bother trying to claim squatter’s rights on Bouvet Island, it being such a desolate place.
