Ytre Norskøya () is an island on the northwest coast of

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 archipel ...

, part of the

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 be ...

archipelago.

History

Remains of a

whaling Whaling is the hunting of whales for their products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that was important in the Industrial Revolution. Whaling was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16t ...

station exist on the southern side of the island, possibly rivaling Smeerenburg in size. It was Europe's northernmost outpost ever established until the early 19th century; and the most northerly permanent settlement established of any size until the 1950s. The station had as many as nine tryworks, some having a single furnace, others having two. To the west of these structures were buildings used by the men working ashore. Further west is found one of the largest grave sites in Spitsbergen, where 165 graves have been found. The station probably belonged to the Zeeland partners of the Noordsche Compagnie, who were forced to settle on Ytre Norskøya sometime after 1619 because the whaling vessels belonging to

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

would not allow them to establish themselves at Smeerenburg. A high look-out point on the island called ''Zeeusche Uytkyk'' (Zeeland Look-out) was used by the Dutch to search for the spouts of

bowhead whale The bowhead whale (''Balaena mysticetus''), sometimes called the Greenland right whale, Arctic whale, and polar whale, is a species of baleen whale belonging to the family Balaenidae and is the only living representative of the genus '' Balaena' ...

s. The name appears on Henrik Doncker's 1655 map of ''Mauritius Bay'' ( modern Smeerenburgfjorden), which, however, shows the bay as it was in the 1620s (when the Danes abandoned Smeerenburg). The station was abandoned in 1670.

References

* * *Johansen, B. F., J. Henriksen, Ø. Overrein, and K. Prestvold. 2007. Ytre Norskøya. Norsk Polarinstitutt Cruisehåndbok for Svalbard.

External links

* Norwegian Polar Institute
Place names in Norwegian polar areas
Islands of Svalbard Whaling stations in Norway Whaling in Norway Former populated places in Svalbard Whaling in the Netherlands {{svalbard-geo-stub