It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. For about a week.

Schiermonnikoog is a small island off the coast of the Netherlands, that only 758 years ago was actually 2 kilometres north of its current location, and a completely different shape to boot! A combination of current, tides and wind have actually moved this island at the astonishing rate of around 2.64 metres per year.

The island’s name, “Schiermonnikoog” translates into English as “Island of the grey monks” and was named for the colour of the robes of the Cistercian monks who first owned this tiny piece of land. Today it stands as a municipality in its own right, and with only around one thousand inhabitants, is the least densely populated municipality in the Netherlands.

See our April 2008 post on Sea Reclamation for more on coastal erosion.

Thanks to Arjan.

Well, it’s not exactly the same week as it has been in previous years (in fact this year it’s not even during the same month), but nevertheless, the official Third Annual Google Sightseeing Island Week is upon us!

In a nutshell: we’ll be posting mainly about islands, and it’ll last the rest of this week. If you’ve any ideas for islands for us to post then we still have a couple of slots remaining, so get submitting your cool islands!

In the meantime, you can catch up on the first and second island weeks, which have featured classics such as:

• Easter Island and the fascinating Moai sculptures.
• The beautiful icebergs of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
• The nuclear bomb craters of the Republic of the Marshall Islands
• The headache-inducing Island and Lake recursion