Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen

Geography
Location	Arctic Ocean
Coordinates	78°54′N 18°01′E
Archipelago	Svalbard
Area rank	36th
Administration
Norway

Spitsbergen (formerly known as West Spitsbergen; the German spelling Spitzbergen is often (incorrectly) used in English) is a Norwegian island, the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The island of Spitsbergen covers approximately 39,044 km² (15,075 square miles). This name was also formerly applied to the entire archipelago of Svalbard and occasionally still is. It is around 450 km (280 miles) long and between 40 and 225 km (25 and 140 miles) wide. As Spitsbergen lies far within the arctic circle, the Sun is above the horizon for 24 hours a day from late April to late August. From 26 October to 15 February the Sun is continuously below the horizon, whilst from 12 November to the end of January there is civil polar night, where it is so continuously dark that artificial light must be used 24 hours each day.

History

The S. A. Andrée station at Spitsbergen, from a photochrom print at the end of the 19th century.

The name Spitsbergen means "jagged peaks" and was given by the Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz, who discovered the island while searching for the Northern Sea Route in 1596. However, this archipelago may have been known to Russian Pomor hunters as early as the 14th or 15th century, though solid evidence from before the 17th century is lacking. Following the English whalers and others in referring to the archipelago as Greenland, they named it Grumant (Грумант). The name Svalbard is first mentioned in Icelandic sagas of the 10th and 11th centuries, but they more likely refer to Jan Mayen or even Greenland.

Spitsbergen is one of three inhabited islands in the archipelago, and according to the terms of the Spitsbergen Treaty, citizens of any of the signatory countries may settle in the archipelago. Currently, only Norway and Russia make use of this right. The largest settlement on Spitsbergen is the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen, while the second largest settlement is the Russian coal mining settlement of Barentsburg (which was sold by the Netherlands in 1932 to the Soviet company Arktikugol). Other settlements on the island include the former Russian mining communities of Grumantbyen and Pyramiden (abandoned in 1961 and 1998, respectively), a Polish research station at Hornsundet, and the remote northern settlement of Ny-Ålesund.

Geography of Spitsbergen

Hornsund Polish Arctic Station, photographed in 2003

Skottehytta in Petuniabukta, Spitsbergen - polar base of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland

Lilliehookfjorden

Early whaling expeditions to Svalbard tended, because of currents and fauna, to cluster around West Spitsbergen and the islands off-shore.

Kvadehuksletta, on western Spitsbergen, is notable for its unique stone structures, including very circular stones and labyrinthine patterns. These structures are believed to be the result of frost heaving.

Allied soldiers were stationed on the island in 1941 to prevent Nazi Germany from occupying the islands. While the island had officially been ceded to Norway in the 1920s, that country fell under German occupation in 1940. The majority of inhabitants on the island were Russian (Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Germany until June 22, 1941). The United Kingdom and Canada sent military forces to the island to destroy installations, mainly Soviet coal mines, and prevent the Germans from occupying it.

Ecology

Polar bears are found in the Spitsbergen area, particularly on Storfjorden coast vicinity. moreover, the sub-population of Ursus maritimus found here is a genetically distinct taxon of Polar Bears associated with the Barents Sea region. Edgeøya lies to the southeast of Spitsbergen. This uninhabited island is the largest part of the South East Svalbard Nature Reserve, home to polar bears and reindeer.

Polish Polar Station

Main article: Polish Polar Station, Hornsund

The station was erected in July 1957 by the Polish Academy of Sciences Expedition within the framework of the International Geophysical Year. The expedition was led by Stanislaw Siedlecki, geologist, explorer and climber, a veteran of Polish Arctic expeditions in the 1930s (including the first traverse of West Spitsbergen island). A reconnaissance group searching the area for the future station site had been working in Hornsund in the previous summer, and selected the flat marine terrace in Isbjørnhamna. The research station was constructed during three summer months in 1957.

The station was modernized in 1978, in order to resume a year-round activity. Since then, the Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences has been responsible for organising year-round and seasonal research expeditions to the station.

Seed Vault

Main article: Svalbard Global Seed Vault

The Norwegian government has built a "doomsday" seed bank to store seeds from as many of the world's plant species as possible. The bank was created by hollowing out a 120-meter (390 ft) tunnel on Spitsbergen cut into rock with a natural temperature of −6 °C (21 °F), refrigerating it to −18 °C (0 °F), and then storing seeds donated by the 1,400 crop repositories maintained by countries around the world. The vault has top security blast-proof doors and two airlocks. The number of seeds stored depends on the number of countries participating in the project, but the first seeds arrived late in 2007. The point of this project is to save plants (wild, agricultural, etc.) from becoming extinct as a side-effect of crop gene manipulation, or due to a global catastrophe such as climate change (the tunnel is 130 meters or 430 feet above sea-level) or nuclear war.

Fossil Find

Between 2007-2008, researchers from the University of Oslo uncovered the fossil remains of the largest known pliosaur on Spitsbergen. The team held off on announcing the discovery until two sets were found. The find, for now dubbed "Predator X", probably represents a new genus, and possibly a new family of pliosaurs.

The island's three-week excavation season and difficult field conditions mean that the fossil resources have so far gone largely untapped. However, a member of the expedition said that Spitsbergen has "one of the most important localities of extinct marine reptiles in the world."

In popular culture

• In the fairy tale, The Snow Queen, this is the location of the Snow Queen's palace.
• Spitsbergen is the location of the fictional 'Spitzbergen Static', from Predator's Gold by Phillip Reeve
• The film Far North (2007), directed by Asif Kapadia from a short story by Sara Maitland, was filmed at Spitsbergen..

See also

• Polish Polar Station, Hornsund - Hornsund fjord, operated since 1957
• Russenorsk language
• List of islands of Norway by area

Sources

• West Spitsbergen. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 16, 2005, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.

External links

• Photoseries from Dutch travel photographer Thijs Heslenfeld
• The Svalbard Pages
• General information on Spitsbergen
• Spitsbergen (photos, geographical and practical information, traveling reports and literature)
• Information on the nature of Spitsbergen, with many pictures
• Spitsbergen Maps
• Stone circles explained, with pictures of stones in Kvadehuksletta
• Spitsbergen Banknotes
• Captioned photos from Spitsbergen's Longyearbyen and Pyramiden