I always thought Svalbard was the Norwegian name for Spitsbergen and that therefore the two were interchangeable. Now I am here I have learned I was wrong as they mean two quite different things.
Svalbard is the name of the archipelago of islands, north of Norway, while Spitsbergen is one of the islands in the archipelago.
Svalbard was discovered in 1596 by a Dutchman, Willem Barentz, who, I'm assuming, is the same person who gave his name to the water north of Russia and east of this archipelago. It has been governed by Norway since the 1920s, but belongs to no one country.
Longyearbyen is the capital of Spitsbergen (and the archipelago as there isn't much other human life around here), is home to about 2,000 people and is named after an American, John Mason Longyear, who founded it in 1906 as a base for coal mining. Byen means town and was added when Svalbard came under Norwegian governance. Until then, it was know as The City Longyear.
It is 2,313km to Oslo from Longyearbyen and just 1,338km to the North Pole.
Jane Archer
