Svalbard

• 1. Introduction

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  Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago that sits roughly midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. In its largest town, Longyearbyen, the sun stays above the horizon from the 20th of April until the 23rd of August. Then the light drains away, and polar night lasts from the 26th of October to the 15th of February. The islands run from 74 to 81 degrees north, and glaciers cover about 60 percent of the land. Even so, people live here all year. Norwegians, Russians, Poles and others work in mines, research stations and a university, and no road joins one settlement to the next. How did a cold, empty hunting ground become a place that several nations care about? Who has the right to dig, fish and build here? And what could a vault full of seeds be doing in the rock?

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• 2. A Name Disputed

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  In 1596, the Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz sailed along the west coast of the biggest island and described its jagged peaks as spitse bergen, meaning pointed mountains. That phrase became Spitsbergen. Barentsz never grasped that he had found a whole archipelago, so the name long covered both the main island and the group around it. The German spelling, Spitzbergen, swaps the s for a z.

  A much older name lives in medieval Icelandic writing. The Icelandic Annals record that a land called Svalbarði was discovered in 1194. The Landnámabók places it four days' sailing north of Langanes. The word appears to join svalr, meaning cold, with barð, which can mean edge, ridge, turf or beard.

  Whether that land was Spitsbergen is doubtful. In 1827, Baltazar Keilhau proposed that Svalbarði meant Spitsbergen. Gustav Storm revived the idea in 1890, and Gunnar Isachsen did the same in 1907. By then, an ancient Norse connection would help modern Norway's contested claim to sovereignty. Isachsen read the four days as four periods of 24 hours, which ruled out Jan Mayen. Cultural studies academic Roald Berg thinks Svalbarði more likely meant part of Greenland.

  That doubt did not slow Norway down. The Svalbard Act of 1925 formally annexed the islands and gave the whole archipelago the name Svalbard. Spitsbergen shrank to mean the main island alone, which had sometimes been called West Spitsbergen. Berg says the renaming secured Norwegian sovereignty, which the 1920 treaty had already recognised.

  Russians have traditionally called the archipelago Grumant. The Soviet Union nonetheless kept the name Spitsbergen, written Шпицберген in Russian, to back undocumented claims that Russians were the first to discover the island.

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• 3. Whalers and Walrus Hunters

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  In 1604, an English ship landed at Bjørnøya, also called Bear Island, and its crew began hunting walrus. It is the first recorded landing on Svalbard. Annual expeditions soon followed, and from 1611 Spitsbergen served as a base for hunting the bowhead whale.

  No government ruled the islands, and the competition turned rough. English, Danish, Dutch and French companies and authorities each tried to use force to keep other countries' fleets away. In 1619, the Dutch founded Smeerenburg, one of the first settlements. The English, Danish and French built smaller bases of their own.

  At first these outposts were only summer camps. From the early 1630s, a few individuals began to stay through the winter. Whaling at Spitsbergen lasted until the 1820s, when Dutch, British and Danish whalers moved elsewhere in the Arctic.

  Russian hunters arrived in the late 17th century. They overwintered far more than the whalers had, and they hunted land mammals such as the polar bear and the fox.

  Norwegian hunting began in the 1790s, mostly for walrus. The first Norwegian citizens to reach Spitsbergen proper were Coast Sámi people from the Hammerfest region. They were hired onto a Russian crew for an expedition in 1795.

  After the Anglo-Russian War of 1809, Russian activity faded, and it had ended by the 1820s. Norwegian whaling was given up at about the same time. Whaling continued around Spitsbergen until the 1830s, and around Bjørnøya it lasted until the 1860s.

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• 4. Coal and the Treaty

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  Norwegians began mining coal along Isfjorden in 1899. By then the islands already drew Arctic tourists and served as a base for exploring the far north. In 1904, British interests set up in Adventfjorden and started the first year-round operations. Americans began production at Longyearbyen in 1908. Store Norske established itself in 1916, and other Norwegian firms arrived during the First World War, partly by buying out the American interests.

  Who should govern all this coal? Talks on sovereignty began in the 1910s but were interrupted by the First World War. On the 9th of February 1920, after the Paris Peace Conference, the Svalbard Treaty was signed and granted Norway full sovereignty. Every signatory country, however, kept non-discriminatory rights to fish, hunt and extract minerals. The treaty took effect on the 14th of August 1925. That was also the day the Svalbard Act came into force and the first governor, Johannes Gerckens Bassøe, took office.

  Forty-eight countries are now signatories. The treaty limits Norway's right to collect taxes to what is needed to pay for services on Svalbard. So income tax is lower than on the mainland, there is no value added tax, and a separate budget ensures compliance.

  Svalbard belongs to the Kingdom of Norway but is not part of any Norwegian county. It is an unincorporated area, run directly by the government through an appointed governor. It sits outside the Schengen Area, the Nordic Passport Union and the European Economic Area. Nobody needs a visa or residence permit to live and work there, whatever their citizenship. The condition is that residents can support themselves, and the governor may reject people who cannot. The governor is both county governor and chief of police, and also handles search and rescue and tourism management. Lars Fause has held the post since 2021.

  The treaty also bans military installations, making Svalbard a demilitarized zone. Yet it names Norway as the sovereign power, and Norway claims exclusive rights in the sea around the islands. Spain, Iceland and especially Russia argue that the treaty gives them extensive rights beyond Svalbard's territorial sea. Norway claimed a 200 nautical mile economic zone in 1977, covering 770565 square kilometres, and Russia denies that the zone is exclusive.

  In September 2010, Russia and Norway signed a treaty fixing the boundary between Svalbard and the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. Interest in Arctic petroleum had made a settlement more pressing. Tension rose again after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In January 2022, an undersea cable linking Svalbard to mainland Norway was damaged. A Russian trawler was the only vessel in the area, but the investigation was reported as inconclusive. Later that year, Russia announced new investment plans to support its presence at Barentsburg and Pyramiden.

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• 5. War in the Arctic

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  In 1928, the Italian explorer Umberto Nobile and the crew of the airship Italia crashed on the icepack off Foyn Island. Press coverage of the rescue attempts briefly made Svalbard famous. The next time the islands drew such attention, it was because of the Second World War.

  The German invasion of Norway in April 1940 barely touched Svalbard. The settlements went on mining coal and monitoring the weather as before. In July 1941, after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Royal Navy scouted the islands as a possible base for sending supplies to north Russia. The idea was rejected as impractical.

  Instead, in August 1941, the Norwegian and Soviet settlements were evacuated, with the agreement of the Soviets and the Norwegian government in exile. Their facilities were destroyed in Operation Gauntlet. The government in exile still judged a garrison politically important, and Operation Fritham put one ashore in May 1942.

  The Germans answered the loss of the weather station by setting up a reporting station of their own, codenamed Banso, in October 1941. A visit from what the Germans took to be four British warships chased them away, but they later came back. A second station, Knospe, operated at Ny-Ålesund from 1941 until 1942. After the Fritham force arrived in May 1942, the German unit at Banso was evacuated.

  In September 1943, a German task force that included the battleship Tirpitz sailed to attack the garrison in Operation Zitronella. It destroyed the settlements at Longyearbyen and Barentsburg. The effect was short-lived, because the Norwegians returned and re-established their presence.

  The last German weather station, Operation Haudegen, was set up on Nordaustlandet in September 1944. It kept working until after the German surrender. On the 4th of September 1945, a Norwegian seal hunting vessel picked up the soldiers, and they surrendered to its captain. They were the last German troops to surrender in the Second World War.

  Peace brought a new proposal. The Soviet Union suggested joint Norwegian and Soviet administration and defence of Svalbard, and Norway rejected it in 1947. Two years later Norway joined NATO. The Soviets kept up a high level of civilian activity on the islands, partly to make sure NATO could not use the archipelago.

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• 6. Company Towns

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  The coal mine at Ny-Ålesund killed 71 people during its years of operation, from 1945 to 1954 and again from 1960 to 1963. A 1962 accident that killed 21 workers set off the Kings Bay Affair, which forced Gerhardsen's Third Cabinet to resign. From 1964, Ny-Ålesund became a research outpost and a facility for the European Space Research Organisation. Today it is the northernmost functioning civilian settlement in the world, run by the state-owned Kings Bay company. It has a winter population of 35 and a summer population of 180.

  The Soviet Union meanwhile mined at Barentsburg, Pyramiden and Grumant. During the Cold War, Soviet citizens made up about two-thirds of a population just under 4,000. Between 1990 and 2010, the Russian presence fell from 2,500 people to 450. Grumant closed in 1962 after its coal ran out, and Pyramiden closed in 1998. A fire halted coal exports from Barentsburg in 2006, and they resumed in 2010.

  Barentsburg and Pyramiden were both built in the Soviet architectural and planning style of the post-war years. They hold the two most northerly Lenin statues in the world, along with other socialist realist art. Arktikugol owns everything in Barentsburg, including a hotel and souvenir shop for day-trippers from Longyearbyen. About 48 workers now keep Pyramiden's infrastructure running and staff its hotel, which has reopened to tourists.

  Longyearbyen stayed purely a company town until 1989, when utilities, culture and education were placed under Svalbard Samfunnsdrift. The national government bought the town in 1993, and the University Centre in Svalbard was established the same year. The centre teaches 350 students, charges no tuition and holds its courses in English. Tourism grew through the 1990s, and the town built an economy that no longer depended on Store Norske. Longyearbyen was incorporated on the 1st of January 2002 and elected a community council.

  The town now has an airport, a hospital, a school, a cinema and several museums. Almost all housing belongs to employers and institutions, so living there without working for one is difficult. Unemployment is effectively nonexistent, and there is no public assistance. In mid-2023, there were 2,465 people in Longyearbyen.

  New institutions have replaced much of the mining. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a cooperation between the Norwegian government and the Global Crop Diversity Trust, is cut into rock near Longyearbyen. It stores seeds from as many of the world's crop varieties and their wild relatives as possible. The Arctic World Archive, a digital archive run by the company Piql and Store Norske, opened in March 2017. In mid-2020 it gained GitHub as its biggest customer. The Polish Polar Station at Hornsund has ten permanent residents, and China operates the Arctic Yellow River Station. Concerns have been raised about possible dual use of the Chinese station.

  On the 30th of June 2025, Mine 7 closed, the last Norwegian coal mine on Svalbard. The Russian mine at Barentsburg kept operating.

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• 7. Ice and Light

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  Austfonna, on Nordaustlandet, is the largest glacier on Svalbard, covering 8412 square kilometres. Glacial ice spreads over 36502 square kilometres, or 60 percent of the archipelago's 61022 square kilometres of land. Another 30 percent is bare rock, and only 10 percent carries vegetation. Kvitøya is 99.3 percent glacier. In summer, a skier can travel from Sørkapp in the south to the north of Spitsbergen with only a short stretch not covered by snow or ice.

  Repeated ice ages carved a former plateau into fjords, valleys and mountains. The tallest peak is Newtontoppen at 1717 metres, followed closely by Perriertoppen at 1712. The longest fjord is Wijdefjorden at 108 kilometres, with Isfjorden just behind at 107. On the 6th of March 2009, Svalbard also felt Norway's strongest earthquake, at magnitude 6.5.

  At 74 degrees north, the midnight sun lasts 99 days and polar night 84 days. At 81 degrees north, the figures rise to 141 days and 128 days. Twilight is long as well. Around the first and last day of polar night in Longyearbyen, twilight lasts seven and a half hours. The perpetual light lasts two weeks longer than the midnight sun does. In winter, a full moon over reflective snow can add extra light.

  The Arctic climate here is milder than the latitude suggests. The West Spitsbergen Current, the northernmost branch of the North Atlantic Current system, keeps winters up to 20 degrees warmer than at similar latitudes in Russia and Canada. Summer daily means run from 4 to 7 degrees Celsius in the 1991-2020 averages. Western Spitsbergen typically gets less than 400 millimetres of precipitation a year, while the uninhabited east side can see more than 1000.

  Then the numbers began to move. In 2016, the mean temperature at Svalbard Airport was 0.0 degrees Celsius, which is 7.5 degrees above the 1961-90 average. Rainy days equalled snowy days that year, where normally snowy days outnumber rainy ones at least two to one.

  Between 1970 and 2020, the average temperature rose by 4 degrees, and by 7 degrees in the winter months. On the 25th of July 2020, the archipelago recorded 21.7 degrees Celsius, the highest ever measured in the European part of the High Arctic. Temperatures stayed above 20 degrees for four days in a row. Melting ice exposes darker open water, which absorbs more sunlight and melts more ice. Forecasts expect a rise of between 7 and 10 degrees by the end of the century.

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• 8. Bears and Birds

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  In August 2011, a polar bear killed a British schoolboy and injured four other people on Svalbard. Another bear killed a Dutch man at a Longyearbyen campsite in August 2020. In both cases the bear was later shot. Anyone leaving the settlements must carry scare devices, and is advised to carry a firearm as a last resort. Svalbard has around 300 resident polar bears as of 2021. It shares a population of roughly 2,650 with Franz Josef Land, and Kong Karls Land is the most important breeding ground.

  Three mainly land-based mammals live on the islands besides humans: the Arctic fox, the Svalbard reindeer, and southern voles that arrived by accident and live only at Grumant. Attempts to introduce the Arctic hare and the muskox failed. The reindeer, a distinct subspecies, was once nearly extinct. Desperate polar bears have been documented hunting and killing them.

  About 20 million seabirds gather in the Barents Sea in late summer. Roughly eighty bird species are found on Svalbard, and most are migratory. The Arctic tern travels the farthest, all the way to Antarctica. The rock ptarmigan is the only bird that stays through the winter. In the rock itself, researchers found the remains of Predator X, Pliosaurus funkei, one of the largest marine reptiles of the dinosaur era.

  Plants have 165 species to show for a growing season that may last only a few weeks. They take advantage of the long midnight sun to make up for the polar night. Vegetation grows only where the ground thaws in summer, and it is most abundant around Isfjorden and wherever bird droppings enrich the soil. The Svalbard poppy, Papaver dahlianum, is the symbolic flower.

  Protected areas cover 65 percent of the archipelago, including seven national parks. Most nature reserves and three national parks were created in 1973, and the rest gained protection in the 2000s. Every human trace from before 1946 is automatically protected. Overnight tourist stays quintupled between 1991 and 2008, reaching 93,000. Cruise ships worried the government because up to 2,000 passengers could suddenly appear in Ny-Ålesund, a community that normally numbers fewer than 40. In February 2024, Norway set new limits, including a maximum of 200 passengers on ships in protected areas. There are 43 defined landing spots.

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