History of Svalbard

Svaldbard map of 1758

Vikings may have discovered Svalbard as early as the 12th century. Traditional Norse accounts exist of a land known as Svalbarði – literally "cold edge" (but this land was more likely Jan Mayen (500 miles southwest of Svalbard), or a part of eastern Greenland). Russian Pomors may have had settlements on the archipelago in the 16th century, although evidence is lacking before the late 17th century. Pomor accounts name the island as Grumant. The Dutchman Willem Barents made the first indisputable discovery of Svalbard in 1596.

Following the report of a "great store of whales" by an English expedition under Jonas Poole in 1610, the first whaling expedition was sent to Spitsbergen in 1611. In 1612 the first Dutch and Basque expeditions were sent, followed by the French (1613) and Danes (1617). Stations were built ashore to process the blubber into oil, primarily on the west coast of Spitsbergen, particularly on its northwest corner, but others were also established to the southeast. Here they hunted the Bowhead whale. In the 1630s they began to catch whales in the open sea, and by 1670 the last station had been abandoned in favor processing the blubber on the return to port. Whaling off Svalbard continued into the first decades of the 19th century, being dominated by the Dutch and Germans until the late 18th century, after which it was taken over by the British. Belgian, Norwegian and Swedish expeditions were also sent to Svalbard during this time period.

In 1707 the Dutch whaler Cornelis Giles made the first circumnavigation of the islands. As whalers, Russian and Norwegian hunters, explorers, and scientists largely stuck to the coastal areas of the islands, the interior remained largely unknown until the 1890s, when Martin Conway and a group of scientists made the first crossing of Spitsbergen. In June and July 1896 his party crossed from Adventfjorden to Agardhfjorden on Spitsbergen's east coast.

In the winter of 1872–73, seventeen seal hunters died in the Svenskehuset Tragedy.

At the beginning of the 20th century, American, British, Swedish, Russian and Norwegian companies started coal mining on the archipelago. The coal was first mined on a significant scale by an American named Longyear, who founded Longyear City – or Longyearbyen in Norwegian – on the west coast of Spitsbergen. Norway's sovereignty was recognized by the Spitsbergen Treaty of 1920 with additions that limited the military use of Svalbard, and that the other nations retained rights to their settlements; five years later Norway officially took over the territory. Some historians claim that Norway was given sovereignty as compensation for its Merchant Fleet losses during World War I, when the Norwegian Merchant fleet played an important role supplying the UK.

At the beginning of World War II in 1939, Spitsbergen was inhabited primarily by miners – 2,000 Soviets and 1,000 Norwegians – running a coal-mine concession. After the German invasion and occupation of continental Norway, the Svalbard islands, as with Greenland and Jan Mayen, became the targets for possible Allied and Axis Powers confrontations. The Allies originally planned to land Canadian troops on Spitsbergen in 1940 and permanently occupy the island. The fast approaching winter and thin resources changed this plan to a raiding party that would destroy the weather stations, put the coal mining factories out of commission, evacuate the Russian and Norwegian workers and withdraw until spring.

On August 25, 1941, the former luxury liner Empress of Canada accompanied by two Royal Navy cruisers and three destroyers, docked at Green Harbour, a bay lying inside the great Isfjorden on Spitsbergen's west coast. A contingent of Canadian engineers, a Norwegian platoon and troops of the Royal Army Service Corps began the evacuation of the island and the mining facility was destroyed with explosives.

Two years later, the German Kriegsmarine carried out Operation Sizilien (also called Operation Zitronella), a raid on Spitsbergen, in September 1943. Supported by naval bombardment from the battleship Tirpitz, the battle cruiser Scharnhorst, and nine destroyers, the Germans occupied one island from 6 September to 9 September 1943, after which they withdrew from this untenable occupation. This was the only operation in which the Tirpitz fired her guns on enemy targets.

From the late 1940s to the early 1980s the geology of the Svalbard archipelago was investigated by teams from Cambridge University and other universities (e.g., Oxford University), led by Cambridge geologist W. Brian Harland. Many of the geographical features of the isles are named after the participants in these expeditions, or were given names by them linked to places in Cambridge (see Norwegian Polar Institute).

References

• Conway, William Martin (1906). No Man's Land: A History of Spitsbergen from Its Discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country. Cambridge, At the University Press. 
• Conway, William Martin; John Walter Gregory, Aubyn Bernard Rochfort Trevor-Battye, Aubyn Trevor-Battye, Edmund Johnston Garwood (1897). The First Crossing of Spitsbergen: Being an Account of an Inland Journey of Exploration and Survey, with Descriptions of several Mountain Ascents, of Boat Expeditions in Ice Fjord, of a Voyage to North-East-Land, the Seven Islands, down Hinloopen Strait, nearly to Wiches Land and into most of the Fjords of Spitsbergen and of almost complete circumnavigation of the Main Island. Charles Scribner's Sons. http://books.google.com/books?id=CMEEAAAAMAAJ.