Hiorthhamn is an abandoned settlement located on the east side of

Adventfjorden Adventfjorden (Advent Bay) is a 7 km long and 4 km wide bay running south-eastwards from the southern side of Isfjorden, on the west coast of Spitsbergen in Svalbard. The name represents a corruption of ''Adventure Bay'' - probably name ...

on the island of

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norw ...

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. It served as a

coal mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

camp from 1917 to 1921 operated by De Norske Kullfelter Spitsbergen. The settlement was named for the company's director,

Fredrik Hiorth Fredrik Wilhelm Louis Hiorth (February 4, 1851 – January 1, 1923) was a Norwegian engineer and industrialist. Early life and family Hiorth was born in Aker. He was the son of the sheriff there, Hans Jensenius Hiorth (1808–1902), and his wife ...

(1851–1923).

Muskox The muskox (''Ovibos moschatus'', in Latin "musky sheep-ox"), also spelled musk ox and musk-ox, plural muskoxen or musk oxen (in iu, ᐅᒥᖕᒪᒃ, umingmak; in Woods Cree: ), is a hoofed mammal of the family Bovidae. Native to the Arctic, i ...

were introduced in the area from

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...

in 1929, and the camp took the name Moskushamn in 1938. It reverted to its original name in 2002.

References

Former populated places in Svalbard 1917 establishments in Norway Spitsbergen {{Spitsbergen-geo-stub