Svalbard

Nobody’s land

Icelandic annals mention a place called Svalbard in 1194, but the islands were first described by the Dutch explorer Willem Barents, who sighted them in 1596; their jagged peaks gave the name Spitsbergen.^[2][1] Dutch and English whalers came from 1611, followed by others, and several countries claimed the islands and the seas around them.^[1][2]

As whaling moved to open water the claims faded. For a long time the islands were visited mainly by Russian fur trappers, from 1704 until the 1850s, and were regarded as terra nullius, nobody’s land.^[2]

Coal and conferences

Mining in the early 1900s raised the question of who owned the coal, claimed by American, British, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch and Russian companies and individuals.^[1] Norway called three conferences between 1910 and 1914; the United States and Germany wanted a share in governing the islands, which Russia opposed, and the First World War set the matter aside.^[2]

At the Paris peace talks in 1919 Norway proposed that it take sovereignty. A commission, impressed by Norway’s neutrality in the war, agreed unanimously, on conditions. The treaty was signed on 9 February 1920 by Norway, the United States, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Britain and Sweden, and came into force in 1925.^[2]

Norwegian, but open to all

The treaty gives Norway sovereignty over the islands and their waters. But the ships and nationals of every party have equal rights to fish and hunt, and “equal liberty of access and entry for any reason or object whatever”, with mining and commerce “on a footing of absolute equality”. Norway may not discriminate by citizenship.^[3][2]

Norway also undertakes not to create or allow any naval base or fortification, and the islands “may never be used for warlike purposes”.^[3] In practice only Norway and Russia have kept mining and exporting coal.^[1]

“The nationals of all the High Contracting Parties shall have equal liberty of access and entry for any reason or object whatever”^[3]

Svalbard today

Longyearbyen is the administrative centre, with an airport since 1975, a university centre that is the world’s northernmost institution of higher education, and, in a mountain nearby, the Global Seed Vault, completed in 2008. In 2010 Norway and Russia settled a long dispute over the maritime border in the Barents Sea, dividing the area roughly equally.^[1]