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Longyearbyen
Longyearbyen (, , "Longyear Town") is the world's northernmost settlements, northernmost settlement with a population greater than 1,000, and the capital and the largest inhabited area of Svalbard. It stretches along the foot of the left bank (geography), bank of the Longyear Valley and on the shore of Adventfjorden, the short estuary leading into Isfjorden (Svalbard), Isfjorden on the west coast of Spitsbergen, the island's broadest inlet. As of 2002, Longyearbyen Community Council became an official municipalities of Norway, Norwegian municipality. It is the seat of the Governor of Svalbard. As of 2024, the town's mayor is Leif Terje Aunevik. Known as Longyear City until 1926, the town was established by and named after American John Munro Longyear, whose Arctic Coal Company started coal-mining there in 1906. Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani (SNSK) took over the mining operations in 1916, and still conducts mining. The German ''Kriegsmarine'' almost completely Operation Zit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Svalbard
Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range from 74th parallel north, 74° to 81st parallel north, 81° north latitude, and from 10th meridian east, 10° to 35th meridian east, 35° east longitude. The largest island is Spitsbergen (37,673 km2), followed in size by Nordaustlandet (14,443 km2), (5,073 km2), and Barentsøya (1,288 km2). Bear Island (Norway), Bjørnøya or Bear Island (178 km2) is the most southerly island in the territory, situated some 147 km south of Spitsbergen. Other small islands in the group include Hopen (Svalbard), Hopen to the southeast of Edgeøya, Kongsøya and Svenskøya in the east, and Kvitøya to the northeast. The largest settlement is Longyearbyen, situated in Isfjor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian language, Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway in the Arctic Ocean. Constituting the westernmost bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea. Spitsbergen covers an area of , making it the largest island in Norway and the List of islands by area, 36th largest in the world. The administrative centre is Longyearbyen. Other settlements, in addition to research outposts, are the mining community of Barentsburg, the research community of Ny-Ålesund, and the mining outpost of Sveagruva. Spitsbergen was covered in of ice in 1999, which was approximately 58.5% of the island's total area. The island was first used as a whaling base in the 17th and 18th centuries, after which it was abandoned. Coal mining started at the e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Svalbard Airport, Longyear
Svalbard Airport (; ) is the main airport serving Svalbard in Norway. It is northwest of Longyearbyen on the west coast, and is the northernmost airport in the world with scheduled public flights. The first airport near Longyearbyen was constructed during World War II. In 1959, it was first used for occasional flights, but could only be used a few months a year. Construction of the new airport at Hotellneset started in 1973, and the airport was opened on 2 September 1975. It is owned and operated by state-owned Avinor. In 2014, the airport handled 154,261 passengers. Scandinavian Airlines operates daily flights to Tromsø and Oslo in mainland Norway. Lufttransport provides services to the other airport on Svalbard: Ny-Ålesund, using Dornier 228 turboprop aircraft. There are also regular charter flights. History Adventdalen The first airstrip on Svalbard was constructed in Adventdalen, near Longyearbyen, by the Luftwaffe during World War II. It was not used immediately after ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Longyearbyen Community Council
Longyearbyen Community Council () is the local government for Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. It has many of the same responsibilities of a municipality. It is organized with a 15-member council which since 2011 has been led by Mayor Christin Kristoffersen of the Labour Party. The council's main responsibilities are infrastructure and utilities, including power, land-use and community planning, education from kindergarten to upper secondary level and child welfare. It operates three kindergartens in addition to the 13-grade Longyearbyen School. The Svalbard Council was established on 1 November 1971. It consisted of 17 non-partisan members which were elected or appointed in three different groups—'' Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani'' (SNSK) employees, government employees and others, although the ratio changed several times. Svalbard Samfunnsdrift (SSD), a limited company which was responsible for public infrastructure and services, was established by SNSK on 1 Januar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Svalbard Satellite Station
Svalbard Satellite Station () or SvalSat is a satellite ground station located on Platåberget near Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. Opened in 1997, it is operated by Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT), a joint venture between Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC). SvalSat and KSAT's Troll Satellite Station (TrollSat) in Antarctica are the only ground stations that can see a low altitude polar orbiting satellite (e.g., in Sun-synchronous orbit) on every revolution as the Earth rotates. As of 2021, the facility consists of 100 multi-mission and customer-dedicated antennas which operate in the C band (IEEE), C, L band, L, S band, S, X band, X and K_band_(IEEE), K bands. The station provides ground services to more satellites than any other facility in the world. Customers with their own installations include the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Centre In Svalbard
The University Centre in Svalbard (; UNIS) is a Norway, Norwegian state enterprise, state-owned aksjeselskap, limited company that is involved in research and provides some higher education in Arctic studies. The company is wholly owned by the Ministry of Education and Research (Norway), Ministry of Education and Research, and the universities of University of Oslo, Oslo, University of Bergen, Bergen, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU and Norwegian University of Life Sciences, NMBU appoint the board of directors. It is led by a director appointed by the board for a four-year term. The centre is List of northernmost items, the world’s northernmost research and higher education institution, in Longyearbyen at 78° N latitude. The courses offered fall into five main science disciplines: Arctic biology, Arctic geology, Arctic geophysics, Arctic technology and Arctic safety. Organization The centre was established in 1993 in Longyear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sveagruva
Sveagruva (), or simply Svea, was a mining settlement in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, lying at the head of Van Mijenfjord. When occupied by the workers, it was the third largest settlement in the archipelago (after Longyearbyen and Barentsburg) but there were no permanent inhabitants. Around 300 workers living in Longyearbyen commuted to Sveagruva for work on a daily or weekly basis. The mine was operated by Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani. There is no road to Longyearbyen or any other settlements, so travel is done by air from Svea Airport and coal transport by ship from a port southwest. Sveagruva closed in 2020 and currently has no permanent inhabitants. As of 2023, Sveagruva has been re-wilded to a pristine state. Almost every structure from its mining past has been removed in the largest operation of its kind. History The town was established in 1917 by Swedes. It was thereafter destroyed in 1944, but quickly re-established after World War II Wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Zitronella
Operation Zitronella, also known as (Operation Sicily), was an eight-hour German raid on Spitzbergen, in the Svalbard Archipelago, on 8 September 1943. The battleships (in its only offensive action) and , plus nine destroyers, sailed to the archipelago, bombarded Allied-occupied settlements in Isfjorden and covered a landing party. Six Norwegians were killed and 31 were taken prisoner; sixteen Germans were wounded, one dying of his wounds. Background Svalbard The Svalbard Archipelago is in the Arctic Ocean, from the North Pole and a similar distance to Norway to the south. The islands are mountainous, with permanently snow-covered peaks, some glaciated; there are occasional river terraces at the bottom of steep valleys and some coastal plains. In winter, the islands are covered in snow and the bays ice over. To the west, Spitzbergen Island has several large fiords along its west coast; Isfjorden being up to wide. The Gulf Stream warms the waters and the sea is ice-free du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani
Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani (SNSK), or simply Store Norske, is a Norwegian coal mining company based on the Svalbard archipelago. It was formed in 1916, after a Norwegian purchase of the American Arctic Coal Company (ACC). The company has 360 employees and operated two coal mines. The larger one was located in the Sveagruva settlement, about 60 km south of Longyearbyen. The Svea Nord longwall mine has an annual output of 2 million tonnes of bituminous coal. A third of it is sold for metallurgical purposes. The managing director of Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani was Per Andersson. The Sveagruva mine closed in 2017. The Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani has a shipping port at Cape Amsterdam, 15 km from Sveagruva. In 2021, the Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani was ranked no. 81 in the Arctic Environmental Responsibility Index (AERI) that covers 120 oil, gas, and mining companies involved in resource extraction north of the Arctic Circle The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault () is a secure backup facility for the world's crop diversity on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The Seed Vault provides long-term storage for duplicates of seeds from around the world, conserved in gene banks. This provides security of the world's food supply against the loss of seeds in genebanks due to mismanagement, accident, equipment failures, funding cuts, war, sabotage, disease, and natural disasters. The Seed Vault is managed under terms spelled out in a tripartite agreement among the Norwegian government, the Crop Trust, and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen). The Norwegian government entirely funded the Seed Vault's approximately ( in 2008) construction cost. Norway and the Crop Trust pay for operational costs. Storing seeds in the vault is free to depositors. As of June 2025, the Seed Vault conserves 1,355,591 accessions, representing more than 13,000 years of History of agricu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Munro Longyear
John Munro Longyear Sr. (April 15, 1850 – May 28, 1922) was an American businessman and noted developer of timber and mineral lands in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Minnesota who became the central figure behind the Arctic Coal Company, which surveyed and mined coalfields on Spitsbergen, from 1905 to 1916. This company developed a settlement on Spitsbergen able to accommodate up to around 500 people which became known as Longyear City, now Longyearbyen, adjacent Adventfjorden, Advent Bay. Biography Longyear was born in Lansing, Michigan, on April 15, 1850, the son of U.S. Congressman John W. Longyear, John Wesley Longyear (1820–1875) and Harriet Longyear (née Harriet Munro, 1826–1917). He had two brothers, Howard and James, and a sister Ida and possibly other siblings. Through his mother, Longyear was reportedly the great-great-great-grandchild of the Scottish Americans, Scottish American soldier William Munroe (Scottish soldier), William Munroe. In young life ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arctic Coal Company
Arctic Coal Company was a coal mining company that operated mines at Longyearbyen (then Longyear City) in Svalbard, Norway, between 1906 and 1916. The American industrialist John Munro Longyear visited Spitsbergen as a tourist in 1901, where he met with an expedition prospecting for coal. He returned to Spitsbergen 1903, where he met Henrik B. Næss in Adventfjorden, who gave him samples and information on coal fields. Along with his associate Frederick Ayer, Longyear bought the Norwegian claims on the west side of Adventfjorden, installed William D. Munroe as general manager, and expanded the claims significantly the following year. In 1906, the Boston-based Arctic Coal Company, with Ayer and Longyear as the main shareholders, started mining in Mine 1a, after having built docks and housing. The company had American administration, but mostly Norwegian laborers, and named the town Longyear City.Holm (1999): 46 Coal was transported the from the mine to the port using an aerial tram ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
