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.