Amsterdamøya
| Amsterdamøya | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Waters | Greenland Sea | |
| Archipelago | Svalbard | |
| Geographical location | 79 ° 45 ′ 24 " N , 10 ° 48 ′ 30" E | |
|
||
| length | 8 kilometers | |
| width | 4 km | |
| surface | 18.8 km² | |
| Highest elevation | Hollendarberget 472 m |
|
| Residents | uninhabited | |
| main place | Smeerenburg (historical) | |
 |
||
Amsterdamøya ( German Amsterdam Island , not to be confused with the Amsterdam Island in the southern Indian Ocean ) is an uninhabited island in the far northwest of the Norwegian Svalbard Archipelago and belongs to Albert-I-Land . In the 17th century, the most important Dutch whaling station at the time, Smeerenburg, was located on its southeast coast .
geography
The island has an approximately triangular floor plan. It is about eight kilometers long, a maximum of four kilometers wide, and 18.8 km² in size. From the flat tip in the southeast, the land rises gently to the west, reaches a height of 472 m in Hollendarberget and then breaks off into steep cliffs . There are several small glaciers such as Annabreen and Hiertabreen and some lakes such as Gjøavatnet in the northwest of the island. Amsterdamøya is separated from the island of Danskøya to the south by the Danskegatt (Danish Gate), and from the island of Spitzbergen by the Smeerenburgfjord .
The cliffs of Søre Salatberget are home to a colony of crab grebe and other birds that have existed for at least 500 years. The mountain was named after the spoonweed growing here , which was consumed by the whalers in Smeerenburg as an effective remedy against scurvy .
history
17th century map: Amſterdammer Eyland
Dutch map from 1720
Amsterdamøya was first sighted by Willem Barents in 1596 when he discovered Svalbard while searching for the Northeast Passage . From 1614, Dutch whalers used the island as a base for hunting in the surrounding waters. Five years later they erected the first permanent buildings on the south bank of Amsterdamøya for the Smeerenburg whaling station, which became the most important in all of Svalbard. In its heyday in the 1630s, it consisted of 17 buildings. Eight kilns were operated.
After an attack by Basque whalers on the Dutch station on the island of Jan Mayen , seven men remained on both Jan Mayen and Amsterdamøya to guard the stations in the winter of 1633/34. While all men died of scurvy on Jan Mayen, the first winter in Smeerenburg was successful. In the winter of 1634/35, however, the entire crew died here too. The descent of Smeerenburg began in 1640 because there were no more whales to be found near the coast. Around 1660 Smeerenburg was given up and left to decay. The port was only occasionally visited by ships.
Several explorers and explorers visited Amsterdamøya, such as Constantine Phipps in 1773, Joseph Paul Gaimard in 1838 and Otto Torell in 1858.
Amsterdamøya has been part of the Nordvest Spitsbergen National Park since 1973 .
literature
- Kristin Prestvold: Smeerenburg - Gravneset. Europe's first oil adventure . Sysselmannen på Svalbard, Miljøvernavdelingen 2001
- William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia , Vol. 1, ABC-CLIO, 2003. ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , p. 12
Individual evidence
- ↑ Amsterdamøya . In: The Place Names of Svalbard (first edition 1942). Norsk Polarinstitutt , Oslo 2001, ISBN 82-90307-82-9 (English, Norwegian).
- ↑ WO van der Knaap and JFN van Leeuwen: Interplay between peat formation and animal behavior in the Spitsbergen archipelago, recorded in peat sections (PDF; 4.9 MB). In: Nienke Boschman and Louwrens Hacquebord (eds.): Circumpolar studies 1, 2004. ISSN 1574-0374
