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Halvmåneøya ( en, Half Moon Island) is a small, uninhabited
Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...
island off the southeastern coast of
Edgeøya Edgeøya (), occasionally anglicised as Edge Island, is a Norwegian island located in southeast of the Svalbard archipelago; with an area of , it is the third-largest island in this archipelago. An Arctic island, it forms part of the Søraust-S ...
, part of the Svalbard archipelago. Halvmåneøya, as part of Edgeøya, has been a nature preserve since 1973, and visitation is strictly regulated. The island was labelled as ''Abbots I''. by the Muscovy Company's map (1625), and ''St. Jacob'' by Willem Jansz. Blaeu (1662). Hendrick Doncker (1663) was the first to mark it ''Halvmaens eyl.''. This last name has been retained to the present. The modern Norwegian name, Halvmåneøya, is a direct translation of the old name, meaning Half Moon Island. Halvmåneøya is 12 square kilometres large and consists entirely of dolerite rock. In 2010, traffic has been banned on most of the island, except a small area around Bjørneborg, a hunting station originally built in 1904. Bjørneborg has been enlarged and repaired later. Four Russian sailors, Aleksei Inkov, Khrisanf Inkov, Stepan Sharapov, and Fedor Verigin, were marooned on either Halvmåneøya or Edgeøya for over six years from May 1743 until September 1749. Three of them survived. Author
David Roberts David or Dave Roberts may refer to: Arts and literature * David Roberts (painter) (1796–1864), Scottish painter * David Roberts (art collector), Scottish contemporary art collector * David Roberts (novelist), English editor and mystery writer ...
wrote a book sharing his research on this amazing survival story, ''Four Against The Arctic.''Four Against the Arctic: Shipwrecked for Six Years at the Top of the World. (2003). Simon & Schuster. After years of research regarding the four Russians, Roberts was able to spend two weeks on the desolate Halvmåneøya to further pursue his research. He concluded, although not definitively, that the men were probably on Halvmåneøya and not Edgeøya. This island is the main setting for the 2014 Norwegian movie Operation Arctic.


References

*Conway, W. M. 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. *Stange, Rolf (2012). ''Spitsbergen-Svalbard. A complete guide to the arctic archipelago.'' * Norwegian Polar Institute
Place names in Norwegian polar areas


External links

* Virtual tou


Line notes

Islands of Svalbard Uninhabited islands of Norway {{svalbard-geo-stub