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The polar archipelago of Svalbard was first discovered by Willem Barentsz in 1596, although there is disputed evidence of use by Pomors or Norsemen. Whaling for bowhead whales started in 1611, dominated by English and Dutch companies, though other countries participated.
The archipelago has fifteen bird sanctuaries, one geotopic protected area and six nature reserves—with Nordaust-Svalbard and Søraust-Svalbard both being larger than any of the national parks. Most of the nature reserves and three of the national parks were created in 1973, with the remaining areas gaining protection in the 2000s. [ 185 ]
A third period began in 1978, and has lasted until the present day. Preceded by an article written by the Norwegian-Russian palaeontologist Anatol Heintz in 1964, a Soviet expedition from the Institute of Archaeology at the USSR Academy of Sciences – led by Vadim F. Starkov – set out to prove that the Russian Pomors had preceded the Dutch on Svalbard.
Once named Spitsbergen after its largest island, the Svalbard archipelago was made a part of Norway—not a dependency—by the Svalbard Act of 1925. Since this date, it has been a region of Norway, with a Norwegian-appointed governor resident at the administrative centre of Longyearbyen.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Svalbard: Svalbard – incorporated territory of the Kingdom of Norway comprising the Svalbard Archipelago in the Arctic Ocean about midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. [1] The archipelago extends from 74° to 81° North, and from 10° to 35° East. The ...
Austfonna is an ice cap located on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Covering an area of 7,800 km 2, [1] it is Europe's third-largest glacier by area and volume, after the Severny Island ice cap of Novaya Zemlya, Russia, and Vatnajökull in Iceland. [2] The combined area of Austfonna and the Vegafonna ice cap is 8,492 km 2. [3]
[5] [6] The archive facility is on Spitsbergen, the biggest island in Svalbard. [ 7 ] The facility is a large steel vault [ 7 ] located somewhere between 150 metres (490 ft) [ 5 ] and 300 metres (980 ft) below the ground or permafrost [ 7 ] [ 4 ] inside an abandoned coal mine (Store Norske Gruve 3) that reaches over 300 metres (980 ft) into the ...
The Bratvaag Expedition was a Norwegian expedition in 1930 led by Dr. Gunnar Horn, whose official tasks were hunting seals and to study glaciers and seas in the Svalbard Arctic region. The name of the expedition was taken from its ship, M/S Bratvaag of Ålesund, in which captain Peder Eliassen had sailed the Arctic seas for more than twenty years.