Van Keulenfjorden is a 30 km long fjord on the west coast of Spitsbergen separating Nathorst Land to the north and

Wedel Jarlsberg Land Wedel Jarlsberg Land is the land area between Van Keulenfjorden and Hornsund on the southwestern part of Spitsbergen, Svalbard. The area is largely covered with glaciers, and is completely within the Sør-Spitsbergen National Park. Named aft ...

to the south. Van Keulenfjorden is separated from Bellsund by Forsbladodden in the north and Richardodden to the south.

History

Whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industr ...

occurred here at least as early as 1613, when a little

pinnace Pinnace may refer to: * Pinnace (ship's boat), a small vessel used as a tender to larger vessels among other things * Full-rigged pinnace The full-rigged pinnace was the larger of two types of vessel called a pinnace in use from the sixteenth c ...

from St. Jean de Luz was said to have been behind Eders Island (at the mouth of Van Keulenfjorden). Van Keulenfjorden was originally called ''Sardam'' (''

Zaandam Zaandam () is a city in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. It is the main city of the municipality of Zaanstad, and received city rights in 1811. It is located on the river Zaan, just north of Amsterdam. The statistical district Zaand ...

'') ''Bay'' by the Dutch, and is labeled as such on maps from 1620 to 1710, when

Cornelis Giles Cornelis Giles (in Dutch: Cornelis Cornelisz. Gielis; – 2 July 1722) was a Dutch whaler, navigator, cartographer, and polar explorer. Life As a whaler in 1707, Giles traveled north of Nordaustlandet in Svalbard, and managed to reach a d ...

and Outger Rep (c. 1710) added the name ''Van Keulens baaytje'' to the anchorage behind Eders Island. The bay was named in honor of their publisher, Gerard van Keulen.

William Scoresby William Scoresby (5 October 178921 March 1857) was an English whaler, Arctic explorer, scientist and clergyman. Early years Scoresby was born in the village of Cropton near Pickering south-west of Whitby in Yorkshire. His father, William ...

(1820), thinking the name applied to the fjord as a whole, labeled it ''Van Keulens Bay''. This mistake has been repeated by map-makers to the present day.

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. * Norwegian Polar Institut
Place Names of Svalbard Database
Fjords of Spitsbergen {{Spitsbergen-geo-stub