Nordvest-Spitsbergen National Park ( no, Nordvest-Spitsbergen nasjonalpark) is located on the

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, N ...

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arc ...

of Svalbard and includes parts of north-west Spitsbergen ( Albert I Land and Haakon VII Land) and nearby islands such as Danes Island and Moffen. It contains, among other things, warm springs and remains of volcanoes in Bockfjorden.

History

There are remains of

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industr ...

stations and graves from the 17th century. In addition there are remains of several Arctic expeditions, for instance in Virgohamna, Danes Island, the launching point for

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

engineer S. A. Andrée's failed 1897 attempt to reach the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...

in a hydrogen

balloon A balloon is a flexible bag that can be inflated with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, and air. For special tasks, balloons can be filled with smoke, liquid water, granular media (e.g. sand, flour or rice), or light so ...

. The park was established by royal resolution on 1 June 1973.

Fauna

The park contains numerous colonies of

seabird Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same enviro ...

s, in addition to Svalbard

reindeer Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 sub ...

and

Arctic fox The Arctic fox (''Vulpes lagopus''), also known as the white fox, polar fox, or snow fox, is a small fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and common throughout the Arctic tundra biome. It is well adapted to living in ...

. It is also a hibernating area for polar bears, and

walrus The walrus (''Odobenus rosmarus'') is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in the fami ...

can be found there. About a third of the area, consisting mainly of its sea-cliffs, islands and other coastal features, has been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports breeding populations of barnacle and

brent geese The brant or brent goose (''Branta bernicla'') is a small goose of the genus '' Branta''. There are three subspecies, all of which winter along temperate-zone sea-coasts and breed on the high-Arctic tundra. The Brent oilfield was named after ...

common eider The common eider (pronounced ) (''Somateria mollissima''), also called St. Cuthbert's duck or Cuddy's duck, is a large ( in body length) sea-duck that is distributed over the northern coasts of Europe, North America and eastern Siberia. It breed ...

s and black guillemots.

Hot springs

The Troll and Jotun hot springs in the park along the edge of the Bockfjorden are the northernmost documented terrestrial

hot spring A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by c ...

s on earth at almost 80 degrees north latitude. The first documentation of these springs was in the late 1800s. Hoel and Holtedahl''Lavadækkerne, vulkanerne og de varme kilder ved Wood Bay paa Spitsbergen,'' A. Hoel, O. Holtedahl, Naturen 37, 3-19 (Oslo), 1913. studied these two hot springs in some detail. They reported that the Jotun hot spring has a temperature of 24.5 °C and the Troll hot spring has a temperature of 28.3 °C.

External links

An article reporting on studies of characteristics Jotun and Troll hot springs

References

National parks of Svalbard Protected areas established in 1973 1973 establishments in Norway Important Bird Areas of Svalbard Seabird colonies {{Spitsbergen-geo-stub