The Nineteenth Century Exploration of Svalbard

Abstract

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had seen the development of the exploitation of the natural resources of the Svalbard archipelago and thus the availability of information about this High Arctic island group. Mapping and descriptions of natural conditions had followed the hunters to a certain extent, but it was during the nineteenth century that scientific exploration blossomed. British whaling and naval expeditions in the early nineteenth century included serious scientific work, but the first truly scientific expedition was carried out by one Norwegian in 1827. British gentleman explorers combined adventure with exploration and scientific collections and observations from the middle of the century, but the last half of the century belonged to Swedish scientists who worked around the entire archipelago. From the beginning of the twentieth century they left the field to Norwegian scientists.