Although Icelandic writings from 1194 contain the brief note “Svalbarði fundinn”, it is a Dutchman, Willem Barents (1549-97) who is given the credit for finding Svalbard. When he embarked on his expedition in 1596, his intention was to find a north-east passage to Asia. This was not to be. On 12 June, he caught sight of a mist-enshrouded island in the distance. Once ashore his crew came face to face with a strange white bear. They tried to catch it with a lasso, but soon realised that they would need both a gun and an axe. The gun was not much use, but after a few well-aimed slashes with the axe, the bear lay dead. This dramatic episode was immortalised in the name Barents gave the island: Bear
Island (Bjørnøya). On 17 June, they sighted land again They had reached the northern point of Svalbard (“the land of cold coasts”) and were met by a row of jagged peaks. Here, Barents planted the Dutch flag. Once again he found a natural name: Spitzbergen, pointed mountains. Barents led his expedition north-eastwards as far as Novaja Semlja, where his vessel got caught in the ice. In a hut built of wood from the wreck, the members of the expedition managed to survive through most of the winter. However, when spring came, three of them had died of scurvy. One of them was Barents himself. During the summer months, the rest of the crew made their way over to the Kola
Peninsula, where they were found and taken home. It was not long before accounts of the expedition spread through Europe and soon the interest in pepper from Asia was replaced by prospects of rich catches of walrus and whale on Svalbard. Willem himself had managed to leave his mark in names such as Barentsburg, Barents Island and Barents Sea, which continue to remind us of the daring Dutch seafarer.
THE LARDER OF THE NORTH From then until 1640, Dutchmen and Englishmen sent well-organised hunting expeditions to Svalbard. The walrus began to lose its popularity and the hunt was directed instead at the Greenland whale, which was very common along the coast and easy to catch. Its thick layer of blubber was suitable for the production of lamp oil and lubricants. The expeditions became profitable and hunting took on greedy dimensions. By 1640 the fjords round Svalbard were purged of Greenland whale. In the 18th century, Russian hunters began to appear on Svalbard where they spent the winter hunting white whale, walrus, polar bear, fox, ptarmigan and geese.
In time Norwegian hunting expeditions found their way to Svalbard, attracted mainly by the large quantities of walrus. With modern, effective weapons, these trusting animals were slaughtered in their thousands and before long the
stock was reduced to a minimum. The hunters then turned to reindeer. Reindeer were also easy to catch. Thousands and thousands were killed and their numbers slumped. The same fate awaited eider duck and geese. Towards the end of the 19th century, it was still possible to hunt seal, arctic fox and polar bear, but the commercial interest in hunting on
Svalbard declined. The first hunting expeditions at the beginning of the 17th century also gave rise to the need for a postal service. It startedasakindofbottlepost.IntheKobbefjordonthewestcoast ofDanskøya,thereareafewsmallholmscalledPostholmen. Themenonthehuntingvesselsleftlettersforhomethereand theywerepickedupbyhomewardboundvesselswhichcalled in at Postholmen.
It was Tromsø skipper, Søren Zachariassen, who initiated the coal age on Svalbard. Quite by chance, he discovered coal deposits at Bohemannesset in the Isfjord and in 1899 he organised coal excavation. The tools were a pick and shovel. The first cargo of coal shipped to Tromsø did not yield much profit. New attempts were initiated by, for example, an American, J.M. Longyear. He founded the Arctic Coal Company in 1906 and started cutting coal on the south side of the Adventfjord. The settlement he established was called Longyearbyen. Coal mining was in full swing there from 1910 onwards.
In 1916, the Norwegian Store Norske Spitsbergen Kul kompani AS purchased the rights in Longyearbyen and expanded operations. This was also a politically important move, because Norwegian interests were significantly strengthened and Norway became a major player at the Spitzbergen Conference in 1920. The Green Harbour Coal Company secured the rights to break coal in the Kongsfjord. These rights were taken over by Store Norske in 1911 and sold soon after to interested parties in Ålesund, who formed the Kings Bay Kul Comp. The mining community was called Ny-Ålesund. Companies from a number of countries tried mining on Svalbard between the wars. However, only Norway and
Russia continued coal mining after 1932.
Down through the years, the Kings Bay mines were haunted by operational problems and acciÂdents. Gas explosions in 1948, 1952, 1953 and 1962 claimed a total of 63 lives. The accident in 1962 also had political consequences. The Gerhardsen administration had to step down and a non-socialist government took over. Coal mining in King’s Bay was discontinued.
When it became clear at the beginning of the 20th century that there were minable coal reserves on Svalbard, rules had to be laid down for management of the land and mineral resources. Several attempts were made, but it was not until the Spitzbergen Conference, which was part of the Versailles negotiations after the first world war, that agreement was reached on the Treaty of Svalbard. It entered into force in 1925. The Treaty establishes that Svalbard belongs to Norway and that it is Norway which passes and enforces legislation
for the archipelago. However, citizens and companies from the signatory nations have equal rights to enter and stay on Svalbard. They have the same right to fish, hunt and engage in all kinds of maritime, industrial, mining and trading Âoperations, but these operations are all subject to Norwegian law. Foreign military presence is not welcome. Norwegian military presence is kept at a low level and is represented by the Norwegian Coast Guard.
The interest in possible oil on Svalbard arose in the early 1960s. Norwegian and foreign companies started exploring and drilling and at times there were signs of oil fever. But nothing was achieved. Today interest is concentrated on the huge sea areas south of Svalbard. The interest in oil and gas is not without its problems. The environmental and technological challenges posed by the recovery of oil and gas in Arctic Sea areas are great. This applies not least to the Barents Sea, one of the richest fishing areas in the northern hemisphere.
In the 1890s there was a strong increase in tourist traffic to Svalbard and in 1896 a small hotel was built beside the Adventfjord. Tourists could buy package tours including travel and hotel accommodation for NOK 360 excluding alcohol. Initially the route between Hammerfest and Svalbard was covered by the express steamer “Lofoten”, skippered by the well-known polar explorer, Otto Sverdrup. There was no post office on Svalbard in 1896, so the owners of the “Lofoten” issued two local postage stamps to pay for transport to the mainland, where letters would be affixed with official Norwegian stamps. The local stamps were very popular and many of the postcards that were sent from
Svalbard went out into the world without official Norwegian stamps. This annoyed the German postal administration, which sent a complaint to Norway. As a result, the Norwegian postal administration opened a small post office in the tourist hotel in summer 1897. It was called Advent Bay and had its own cancellation stamp. It was a busy time for the postmaster when the large tourist ships arrived.
The hotel and post office were closed in 1899, but the tourist traffic continued. A number of local postage stamps were issued by shipping companies and tour operators. A stamp featuring a polar bear was issued in 1905. When coal mining was established in the Adventfjord, the need for postal services was revived. In 1906, the post office in Advent Bay was reopened (until 1910). When Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani took over the mining operations in Longyearbyen in 1916, a post office was opened again in the Adventfjord. Both were manned in the summer months.
The post office in Ny-Ålesund was opened in 1917. Situated by the beautiful Kongsfjorden, Ny-Ålesund is a popular tourist destination. It can therefore become quite crowded in the post office when the tourists arrive. They all want to send postcards from the world’s most northerly post office. In the winter months, the Svalbard community was cut off from the mainland and contact was maintained by telegraph. The annual winter isolation lasted until April 1950, when a Catalina aeroplane made its way for the first time to Longyearbyen and dropped off mailbags full of Easter greetings. In spring 1959, a runway was cleared in Advent Valley and a Braathens DC 6 aircraft was able to land with long-awaited mail on board. This led to a couple of visits by aircraft each
year.
At that time the inhabitants on Svalbard also became acquainted with ‘postal infection’. The environment was virtually free of bacteria after a cold winter, but new common cold bacteria arrived with the mail from the mainland and flourished among people with reduced immunity. It was always a grand occasion when the year’s first mail boat arrived at the end of May or beginning of June. The inhabitants gathered outside the post office in Longyearbyen, where the distribution of mail and parcels was organised from the window.
In 1975, a permanent airport was opened outside Longyearbyen. Since then communications have developed quickly. Today, they have a daily air service, direct telephone connection, TV broadcasts and the Internet via fibre cable.
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A new tourist attraction appeared in 1896 when the Swedish balloonist, Salomon August Andrée set up a base on Danskøya. He built a large balloon shed and waited for a south wind to carry “Ørnen” (the Eagle) to the North Pole. But the wind seldom blows from the south in that area and Andrée had to return home without accomplishing his plan. He returned the following year and got the wind he was waiting for. “Ørnen”, with Andrée and crew on board, drifted northwards. They never returned. The remains of the expedition were eventually found on Kvitøya in 1930. In 1906, 1907 and 1909, the American journalist and adventurer Walter Wellman, sponsored by newspaper mag-
nate William Randolph Hearst, attempted to fly the motorised airship “America” to the North Pole. The expeditions
were a fiasco, but tourists and philatelists were able to purchase attractive postcards with special cancellations. In 1925, the eyes of the world were focused on Svalbard because Roald Amundsen wanted to lead an airborne expedition to the North Pole. Two Dornier-Wal seaplanes, with three men in each, flew northwards. One aircraft soon suffered engine trouble and had to make an emergency landing on the ice at 87° 45’ N. The other plane landed in open water close by. The first plane was repaired, but the other one sprang a leak and had to be abandoned. After struggling for three weeks to build a runway on the pack ice, the six men managed to return to Svalbard.
Amundsen returned to Ny-Ålesund the following year, with an airship. It had been designed by the Italian Umberto Nobile and christened “Norge” in Rome with great festivity, in the presence of Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. On 11 May, “Norge” left Ny-Ålesund for the North Pole. Nobile took part himself as pilot of the airship. They reached the North Pole the next day and on 14 May landed at the mining town of Teller on the west coast of Alaska. Roald Amundsen and Captain Oscar Wisting were thus the first men who had reached both the North and South Poles.
Some of the crew had secretly brought letters with them on the trip over the North Pole and had them stamped on arrival in Teller. These items were much sought after and are difficult to find today.
In 1928, Ny-Ålesund was once again the centre of attention. Umberto Nobile arrived with a new, improved airship, “Italia”. The goal this time was not only to reach the North Pole, but also to fly over large areas of the Arctic and, if possible, discover new land. The “Italia” reached the North Pole on 24 May, but encountered bad weather on the way back. It crashed on the ice north-east of Svalbard. A huge rescue operation was instigated. A total of 23 planes, 16 ships
and 1600 people, including Roald Amundsen, took part. His plane took off from Tromsø on 18 June. but crashed in the vicinity of Bjørnøya and all six on board lost their lives. Nobile was eventually found alive and picked up from the ice on 23 June by a Swedish pilot, Einar Lundberg. On 12 July, the remaining survivors were rescued by the Soviet icebreaker, “Krassin”. Eight men had died.
Conditions on present-day Svalbard are similar in many ways to those in much of Norway towards the end of the ice age, nearly 10,000 years ago. About 60% of the land mass is covered in ice and in the ice-free areas there is permafrost. In places, the earth is frozen to a depth of as much as 400 metres.
The landscape was mainly formed during the Quaternary Period, i.e. in the course of the last two million years of the Earth’s history. Svalbard was probably covered by inland ice at least once during this period. The work of the ice has left its mark everywhere. Steep, craggy, sharp-pointed mountains are typical features of the landscape, particularly on the west and north-west of Spitzbergen. In central parts of the island and eastwards towards Bjørnøya and Edgeøya, horizontal layers of rock give rise to plateau-shaped mountains, separated by wide valleys.
Svalbard’s seasons are full of contrasts. At the end of October, the sun throws its last rays over the islands and drops below the horizon until the middle of February. In latitudes as far north as Longyearbyen the polar night, when the sun is more than 6 degrees below the horizon, lasts from 14 November until 29 January. It is then dark all day and all night. However, on days with good weather, a full moon, starlit sky and dancing northern lights, you can experience the wonderful blue light of the polar night.
Then comes February, possibly the most beautiful time of the year. On a cloudless day, the many blue tones of the sky are blended with pink. The rays of the sun touch the mountain tops and from there creep slowly down into the valleys. The winter night retreats; the light is back. The midnight sun shines on Svalbard from the middle of April until the end of August. The so-called ‘light winter’ lasts until May. When the snow melts in June, flowers peep up from the soil and the teeming bird life replaces the quiet of winter. Summer has come to Svalbard!
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Nothing is more exciting for visitors to Svalbard than an encounter with a polar bear, the king of the Arctic. It is as large as an iceberg, but still graceful. One minute it can seem friendly, the next threatening. You can be tricked into believing it is curious, but take care. Its curiosity only means that it is examining everything in the vicinity in its search for food. Curiosity can quickly turn into appetite. This has cost many people their lives on Svalbard. The polar bear and Alaska’s Kodiak bear are the largest land predators in the world. Second on the list of special Svalbard animals is the walrus. Unlike the muscular, elegant and supple polar bear, the
walrus is a shapeless mountain of blubber. On land, it can hardly move and it was easy prey for the hunters who ravaged Svalbard from the 17th century onwards. As a result, this trusting creature was almost exterminated. The Svalbard reindeer is the archipelago’s only vegetarian. In the course of the short summer and autumn it has to build up a thick layer of fat. In the winter, it can lose up to half of its body weight. Its fur is thick and insulating, allowing it to survive temperatures as low as minus 40° C.
The Arctic fox is nature’s scavenger. It will eat almost anything that comes its way; refuse and dead animals are its favourite foods. The summer is a continuous eating orgy, with an intake of eggs and chicks. In the winter it will follow the footprints of a polar bear on to the ice, where it can dine off the tasty remains of a meal of seal.
Eight to ten species of whale can be seen around Svalbard. The most common is the white whale. Fully grown males can be almost 8 metres long and weigh more than 2 tonnes. The most typical Svalbard whale is the Greenland whale. It can measure as much as 20 metres and weigh more than 50 tonnes, but is rarely seen. Ruthless exploitation in earlier times is responsible for that. It is mostly the ringed seal and the bearded seal which breed on Svalbard. The ringed seal is the most numerous. It is so called because of the light-coloured rings on its fur. It is the smallest of the Arctic seals, weighing less than 100 kg. The bearded seal is less numerous, but it is larger than the ringed seal, measuring 3 metres in length and 300 kg in weight.
Svalbard is one of the best areas to study Arctic bird life. A total of about 200 species have been registered, but only about 30 nest there regularly and most of them fly south when winter approaches. In fact, the Svalbard ptarmigan is the only real non-migratory bird. It stays on Svalbard all year round. Four species account for around 95% of the bird population on Svalbard. They are the fulmar petrel, kittiwake, little auk and thick-billed murre. The thick-billed murre is the Arctic answer to the Antarctic penguin.
Svalbard has been a favourite destination for tourists since the middle of the 19th century, first for the English aristocracy and later for organised groups. In the early 1990s, tourism and travel were chosen as a core development area. The results were not long in coming. Between 1990 and 2005, the number of tourists to Svalbard was more than doubled and now exceeds 25,000 per year. That does not include thousands of cruise passengers and tourists who travel independently. The number of visitor bed-nights rose from 20,000 to about 80,000 during the same period. There is plenty to tempt the tourist: expedition cruises with a variety of stops, day cruises, skiing, glacier walking, ice caving and walking tours.
There has been a rich variety of animal and bird life on Svalbard for thousands of years. Humans have only been there for a few hundred years. Here, however, like elsewhere on the globe, man has played the dominant role. He has managed this role badly; at best it can be described as exploitation and plundering. Only for the past 40-50 years has nature had effective protection. But there are still dark clouds. International pressure and rivalry for resources in the Barents Sea and waters round Svalbard are threatening the ecological system, and thus the natural basis throughout the region. Millions of sea birds, large stocks of seal, polar bears and various species of whale are part of the Barents Sea’s complex food chains.
The governments in Norway and Russia are planning exploratory drilling for oil and gas in the Barents Sea. Here the long dark winter, ice and uncontrollable weather and wind conditions pose challenges that far exceed those of the North Sea. The risk of an uncontrolled blow-out augurs no good. If an accident were to happen, the ecological impact could be formidable. On Svalbard itself, the most important ecological areas are protected as national parks and nature reserves.
In 1906 and 1907, Prince Albert I of Monaco (1848-1922) financed the first scientific expeditions to Svalbard. Prince Albert was a keen oceanographer and took part in the 1906 expedition. Topographical readings, studies of glaciers, oceanographic surveys were carried out from the research vessel “Alice� and information was obtained to make a map of a large part of the Arctic. A Norwegian geologist, Adolf Hoel, was a member of the 1907 expedition. He returned the following year to undertake new surveys. This was the first Norwegian-funded scientific expedition to Svalbard and it led to the establishment of the institution which is now known as the Norwegian
Polar Institute. The Polar Institute undertakes charting, observations and scientific surveys in the Arctic and the Antarctic. Its activities on Svalbard are directed mainly at ecology in the drift ice and on land, the impact of pollutants on animals, polar climactic research and geological charting. The Institute’s polar bear research has attracted particular interest.