Ryke Yseøyane is a group of several small islands off the east coast of the island 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-Sva ...
in
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. The islands are named after the Dutch whaler Ryke Yse of
Vlieland
Vlieland (; fry, Flylân) is a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality and island in the northern Netherlands. The municipality of Vlieland is the second most sparsely populated municipality in the Netherlands, after Schiermonnikoog.
V ...
, who discovered them about 1640–1645. The group was first marked by Hendrick Doncker, of Amsterdam, in 1663. Two Norwegian polar bear hunters wintered on Ryke Yseøyane for two subsequent winters in 1967–1969. During the second winter, one of them was lost in drifting ice. They are part of the
Southeast Svalbard Nature Reserve.
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: Cambridge University Press.
* Norwegian Polar Institut
Place names in Norwegian polar areas
External links
Islands of Svalbard
Uninhabited islands of Norway
{{svalbard-geo-stub