[2] This fjord was first surveyed in 1899 by Swedish Arctic explorer Alfred Gabriel Nathorst during the Swedish Greenland Expedition in search of survivors of S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897.

Nathorst named it after Swedish politician Robert Dickson (1843–1924), one of the financial backers of the venture.

[4] On 16 September 2023, a significant landslide, consisting primarily of ice and rock, occurred in Dickson Fjord, triggering a 200-meter-high tsunami.

A seiche is a standing wave oscillating back and forth within a confined body of water, such as a fjord.

In this case, the seiche phenomenon caused the tsunami wave to be trapped and amplified within the fjord for approximately nine days, resulting in unusual seismic readings worldwide.