Svalbard and Jan Mayen in the world (W3)

Svalbard and Jan Mayen ( no, Svalbard og Jan Mayen, ISO 3166-1 alpha-2: SJ, ISO 3166-1 alpha-3: SJM, ISO 3166-1 numeric: 744) is a statistical designation defined by ISO 3166-1 for a collective grouping of two remote jurisdictions of Norway:

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 ...

and Jan Mayen. While the two are combined for the purposes of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) category, they are not administratively related. This has further resulted in the country code top-level domain being issued for Svalbard and Jan Mayen, and ISO 3166-2:SJ. The United Nations Statistics Division also uses this code, but has named it the Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands. Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean under the sovereignty of Norway, but is subject to the special status granted by the

Svalbard Treaty The Svalbard Treaty (originally the Spitsbergen Treaty) recognises the sovereignty of Norway over the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, at the time called Spitsbergen. The exercise of sovereignty is, however, subject to certain stipulations, and n ...

. Jan Mayen is a remote island in the Arctic Ocean; it has no permanent population and is administered by the County Governor of

Nordland Nordland (; smj, Nordlánnda, sma, Nordlaante, sme, Nordlánda, en, Northland) is a county in Norway in the Northern Norway region, the least populous of all 11 counties, bordering Troms og Finnmark in the north, Trøndelag in the south, N ...

. Svalbard and Jan Mayen have in common that they are the only integrated parts of Norway not allocated to counties. While a separate ISO code for Svalbard was proposed by the United Nations, it was the Norwegian authorities who took initiative to include Jan Mayen in the code. Its official language is Norwegian.

Constituents

Svalbard

Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic about midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude, and from 10° to 35° east longitude. The area is and there were 2,572 residents in 2009.

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 ...

is the largest island, followed by Nordaustlandet and Edgeøya. The administrative center is

Longyearbyen Longyearbyen (, locally �lɔ̀ŋjɑrˌbyːən "The Longyear Town") is the world's northernmost settlement with a population greater than 1,000 and the largest inhabited area of Svalbard, Norway. It stretches along the foot of the left bank ...

, and other settlements, in addition to research outposts, are the Russian mining community of Barentsburg, the research community of

Ny-Ålesund Ny-Ålesund ("New Ålesund") is a small town in Oscar II Land on the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard, Norway. It is situated on the Brøgger peninsula ( Brøggerhalvøya) and on the shore of the bay of Kongsfjorden. The company town is owned and ...

and the mining outpost of Sveagruva. The

of 1920 recognizes Norwegian sovereignty, and the 1925 '' Svalbard Act'' made Svalbard a full part of the Kingdom of Norway. The archipelago is administered by the Governor of Svalbard, which is subordinate to the

Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security The Royal Ministry of Justice and Public Security ( no, Det kongelige justis- og beredskapsdepartement) is a Norwegian government ministry that oversees justice, the police, and domestic intelligence. The main purpose of the ministry is to provide ...

. Unlike the rest of Norway (including Jan Mayen), Svalbard is a free economic zone and a demilitarized zone, and is not part of the

Schengen Area The Schengen Area ( , ) is an area comprising 27 European countries that have officially abolished all passport and all other types of border control at their mutual borders. Being an element within the wider area of freedom, security and j ...

nor the European Economic Area.

Jan Mayen

Jan Mayen is a volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean located at the border of the Norwegian Sea and the

Greenland Sea The Greenland Sea is a body of water that borders Greenland to the west, the Svalbard archipelago to the east, Fram Strait and the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Norwegian Sea and Iceland to the south. The Greenland Sea is often defined as p ...

. The single island covers an area of and is dominated by the tall Beerenberg volcano. The island's only population is a combined military and meteorological outpost that operated a LORAN-C transmitter at Olonkinbyen. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute annexed the island for Norway in 1922. On 27 February 1930, the island was made de jure a part of the Kingdom of Norway. Since 1994, the island has been administered by the County Governor of

, with some authority delegated to the station commander. Before 1994, the Governor of Svalbard administered Jan Mayen.

Application

The ISO designation is congruent with an equivalent United Nations Statistics Division category and users of these classification systems may in some cases report separately for "Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands" instead of rolling up this information into the "Norway" category. Neither Svalbard nor Jan Mayen have their own flag or coat of arms, and the flag of Norway is used for both of them, both alone and as a group. An attempt to change the ISO code to just "Svalbard" has previously failed because of opposition from the

Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ( Norwegian (Bokmål): ''Det kongelige utenriksdepartement''; Norwegian (Nynorsk): ''Det kongelege utanriksdepartement'') is the foreign ministry of the Kingdom of Norway. It was established on June ...

. However, for statistics use within population and trade, "Svalbard and Jan Mayen" essentially means just "Svalbard".

ISO 3166-2

ISO 3166-2:SJ is the entry for Svalbard and Jan Mayen in ISO 3166-2, a system for assigning codes to subnational administrative divisions. However, further subdivision for Svalbard and Jan Mayen occurs under Norway's entry, ISO 3166-2:NO: *

* Jan Mayen The

hierarchical administrative subdivision codes A geocode is a code that represents a geographic entity (location or object). It is a unique identifier of the entity, to distinguish it from others in a finite set of geographic entities. In general the ''geocode'' is a human-readable and ...

for Svalbard is SJ.SV and for Jan Mayen is SJ.JM.

Top-level domain

By virtue of the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code SJ, Svalbard and Jan Mayen were grouped together and allocated the Internet country code

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

(ccTLD) .

Norid Norid AS is the registry for the Norwegian country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) .no (Norway), .sj (Svalbard and Jan Mayen) and . bv (Bouvet Island). By agreement with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, Norid is delegated the exclusive a ...

, who also administered the Norway's ccTLD, was given the responsibility for the .sj and Bouvet Island's domain in 1997. Policy prohibits any registration with either of the domains, as institutions connected to Svalbard can use the domain. Norwegian authorities do not want to commercialize the domain resources, and therefore will not be sold to a third party.

References

Bibliography

* * {{Authority control Geography of Jan Mayen Geography of Svalbard Concession territories