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| - Spitsbergen Island (until recently the name was used colectivly for Svalbard Islands as a whole) was named by its discoverer, Willem Barentsz, in 1596. The name Spitsbergen, meaning “pointed mountains” in Dutch, but it is still tought that the Vikings may have got there first, but no proof of this was found so far. The first verified discoveries of Jan Mayen, by three separate expeditions, occurred in the summer of 1614; but it is still tought that Medieval Irish Monks, Dutch explores and the Vikings may have got there first, but no proof of this was found so far.
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| abstract
| - Spitsbergen Island (until recently the name was used colectivly for Svalbard Islands as a whole) was named by its discoverer, Willem Barentsz, in 1596. The name Spitsbergen, meaning “pointed mountains” in Dutch, but it is still tought that the Vikings may have got there first, but no proof of this was found so far. The first verified discoveries of Jan Mayen, by three separate expeditions, occurred in the summer of 1614; but it is still tought that Medieval Irish Monks, Dutch explores and the Vikings may have got there first, but no proof of this was found so far. A Danish-chartered company began sending whaling fleets to Spitsbergen from 1617 onwards. The Island was empty except for the odd whaling ship and fishing boat until Vesteraalens Dampskibsselskab started tours to the Hotellneset in 1896. The American industrialist John Munroe Longyear later visited Spitsbergen as a tourist in 1901, where he met with an Norwegian/US/Russian joint expedition prospecting for coal. He returned to Spitsbergen 1903, where he met Henrik B. Næss in Adventfjorden and learned of then newly discover coal fields. In 1906, the Boston-based Arctic Coal Company, with Ayer and Longyear as the firm's main shareholders, started mining in Mine 1a, after having built docks and housing. The town of Longyearbyen is named after him. During the Cold War, Soviets, Swedes, Finns and Norwegians worked the Islands in an uneasy peace. The Spitsbergen Treaty of 9 February 1920, the demilitarisation of the archipelago. The signatories were given equal rights to engage in commercial activities (mainly coal mining) on the islands. As of 2012, Norway and Russia are making use of this right. Allied soldiers were stationed on the island in 1941 to prevent Nazi Germany from occupying the islands. The USSR had also taken the Rybachy Peninsula off of Finland after the Winter War of 1939–1940 and then clashed with them later in World War 2 (WW2) over it. No. 151 Wing RAF was based at Severomorsk between 1941 and 1942. Mermansk was also the main entry point in the region for American Lend-Leas goods in World War 2. Nazi Germany's German Kriegsmarine also used near by Kirkenes in Norway as a port and 11 local resistance fighters who helped the Norwegian partisans collect information about the German occupation forces were executed in the August of 1943. Kirkenes is notable as it is the the terminus of Kirkenes–Bjørnevatn Line, which is the world's second-most northerly railway line. It is is used to transport Iron ore and mine workers between the two locations. Lake Bjørnevatnet was drained in 1958 so that the iron ore under the lake could be mined by the growing opencast mine which had opened near by in 1910. The iron ore was first discovered in 1866, but it was ignored for the next 40 years since it was not until the 1900s that new technology made it commercially viable. A failed attempt to extract it was made in 1903 and a successfully bid was made in 1906, which formally opened as a open cast mining operation in 1910. It got it's electricity supply from the Jarfjord Power Station, which was built in the early 1920s. At its peak, the mining company had a total of 1,500 employees and some of the pits are still in operation today, but others have closed over the years. The USSR had also taken the Rybachy Peninsula off of Finland after the Winter War of 1939–1940 and then clashed with them later in World War 2 (WW2) over it. No. 151 Wing RAF was based at Severomorsk between 1941 and 1942. Mermansk was also the main entry point in the region for American Lend-Leas goods in World War 2. Nazi Germany's German Kriegsmarine also used near by Kirkenes in Norway as a port and 11 local resistance fighters who helped the Norwegian partisans collect information about the German occupation forces were executed in the August of 1943. The Soviet nickel mining town of Nikel (Russian: Ни́кель; Finnish: Kolosjoki) is a town in the Pechengsky District of Murmansk Oblast, Russia, located on the shores of Lake Kuets-Yarvi 196 kilometres (122 mi) northwest of Murmansk and 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) from the Norwegian border. Population: 12,756 (2010 Census); 16,534 (2002 Census); 21,838 (1989 Census); 18,000 (1973) It was founded by Finland in the early 1930's and taken over by the Russians in the Winter War. It is situated over a massive nickel reserve.
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