Spitzbergen

Spitsbergen is the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago, which is situated in the Arctic Ocean and administered by Norway. The name Spitsbergen means Jagged Peaks, and was given by the Dutch explorer Willem Barents, who discovered the island while searching for a North-East Passage in 1596. Spitsbergen is the only inhabited island in the archipelago, and according to the terms of the Svalbard Treaty, citizens of any of the signatory countries may settle in the archipelago. Currently only Norwegians and Russians make use of this right. The largest settlement on Spitsbergen is the Norwegain town of Longyearbyen, while the second largest settlement is the Russian coal-mining settlement of Barentsburg (The Dutch sold it in 1932 to the Russian State company Arktikugol).

Early whaling expeditions to Svalbard tended, because of currents and fauna, to cluster around West Spitsbergen and the islands off-shore.