Festningen Geotope Protected Area ( no, Festningen geotopvernområde) is located at the outermost edge of

Grønfjorden Grønfjorden (English: Green Fjord or Green Harbour) is a 16 km long fjord, separated from Isfjorden to the north by Festningsodden in the west and Heerodden in the east. It lies within the western portion of Nordenskiöld Land. On its east ...

's mouth to Isfjorden on

Nordenskiöld Land Nordenskiöld Land is the land area between Isfjorden and Van Mijenfjorden on Spitsbergen, Svalbard. The area is named after Finnish-Swedish explorer and geologist Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. The coastal region of Nordenskiöld Land (Norde ...

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 ...

. The profile is a cliff which runs along the coast from Kapp Starostin to Festningsodden. It covers an areas of , of which is on land and in the sea. Barentsburg is the closest settlement, located away, across Grønfjorden. Festningen was protect on 26 September 2003, as part of a major expansion of the protected areas in Svalbard. The protected areas is administrated by the

Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management The Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management ( no, Direktoratet for naturforvaltning, DN) was Norway's national governmental body for preserving Norway's natural environment, including establishing and regulating national parks and other protec ...

and the Governor of Svalbard. Festningen ("The Fortress") is a traditional name given by Norwegian hunters to the area because it looked like a natural fortress. The

geotope A geotope is the geological component of the abiotic matrix present in an ecotope. Example geotopes might be an exposed outcrop of rocks, an erratic boulder, a grotto or ravine, a cave, an old stone wall marking a property boundary, and so forth. ...

profile consists of geological succession deposits from several hundred millions of years. It has nearly vertical layers with continual exposure from the

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.9 Mya. It is the last period of the Paleoz ...

period to the Cenozoic era. The stratigraphical features were recorded during the 1910s and 1920s, and are used within geological sciences as a strategic reference profile. Fossilized footprints of an Iguanodon dinosaur, in diameter, dating from 100 million years ago, have been found at Festningen. They were long and tall. Located on a cliff, they were highly exposed to erosion; after they were found and copied, the slab fell into the sea.

References

Protected areas of Svalbard Protected areas established in 2003 2003 establishments in Norway Spitsbergen {{Spitsbergen-geo-stub