ADVENT BAY Svalbard - Spitzbergen - Spitsbergen



  Norwegian Postal Service 100 years on Svalbard

    Norwegische Post 100 Jahre auf Svalbard/Spitzbergen

El Servicio Postal Noruego 100 años en Svalbard

  Norvegese Postale Servizio 100 anni su Svalbard

  La Poste norvégienne 100 années sur Svalbard

Posten på Svalbard 1897-1997

By Fred Goldberg

    Introduction

    In 1997 it is one hundred years ago that the first postal service was established in the Tourist chalet built by the Vesteraalen Steamship Co. at Advent Bay. To celebrate this anniversary I think it is proper to make a brief account of the postal history of Svalbard that might be of interest to the gereral public and not only to stamp collectors. This account is not in any way a complete listening of cancellations or events. In this booklet my ambition has been to mark some headlights and important events concerning the develompent of the postal service that led to interesting cancellations and covers.

    I have collected covers and postcards from all kinds of expeditions, information about post-offices, ship-cancellations, cruise itineraries, postal markings and cancellation equipment over 40 years. My ambition is to write a book to be a complete account over the postal history of Svalbard. In gathering information to this booklet I would like to thank all my helpful friends and collectors and especially the postmasters Evald Nilsen, Harald Aune, Ragnar Bøhn, Fin Pedersen and Roar Bjørke, members of Tromsø Filatelistklubb Lars Liahjell, Arvid Jørgensen and Knut R. Rasmussen, Per Kyrre-Reymert at Tromsø Museum, Arne Bay, Oslo and Gøsta Karlsson, Skara, for helping me with layout and printing.

    History

    Svalbard means the land with the cold coasts and was mentioned in the Icelandic sagas already in 1194, but Svalbard could have aluded to the edge of the icepack north of Iceland or Greenland. The Svalbard islands were discovered 1596 by the Dutch captain Willem Barents when he was sailing north with two ships, trying to find a northeren seaway to the orient.




    Dane's island/Danskøya
      He discovered Svalbard at its north-western corner in the vicinity of Dane's island where
      S.A Andrée started his fatal balloon flight towards the North Pole in 1897. Barents named
      the area Spitsbergen because he saw a lot of mountains with sharp peaks separated by glaciers.

      In the beginning of the seventheeth century the Englishman Henry Hudson
      discovered that the waters around Svalbard were very rich in whales. When his discovery became known in Europe a very active whaling period commenced along the west coast of Spitsbergen and lasted to the middle of the seventeenth century, at which time the
      whales were nearly extinct.

    During the beginning of the eighteenth century the Pomores from the Archangelsk area and Kola peninsula began to colonize Svalbard, being very active with trapping activites. They were primarily hunting walerus, seals, reindeers, polar bears and foxes. To be a successful trapper they had to send the winters on Svalbard and many trappers perished due to a very har life or to scurvy.
    During the second half of the nineteenth century Svalbard became very popular and important area for scientific research, especially geology and natural sciences. As there are no forests or trees on Svalbard it is very easy to study the very rich geological formations of all ages. Sweden was here a very active country with many scientific expeditions led by famouse explorers and scientists like Otto Torell, the father of modern polar exploration, A. E Nordenskiõld, the founder of the North-East Passage 1878-79, A. G. Nathorst and Nils Ekholm, just to mention a few. On the map over Svalbard there are today many Swedish place-names as a result of the numerous Swedish activities on the island. During this period A E Nordenskiõld and others started mining activities, mining, fosfates, gypsum and marble. None of these industrial attemps became comercially successful. After the turn of the century Americans, Englishmen and Swedes showed interest in coalmining. The American tycoon John M. Longyear was one of the first to open a profitable coal mine at Advent Bay (Advent City) in 1906. In 1916 the Norwegians formed the Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani A/S (SNSK) and took over the American coal mine. In 1917 the Swedes started the Svea coal mine on the northern shore of the van Mijen fjord. A Dutch company started coal mine in Green Fjord called Barentsburg and sold it to the Russians 1932, just to mention a few important mines.

    The Prepostal era

    The first post-office on Svalbard was opened 1897 inside the Tourist-hotel established by the Vesteraalens Steamship Company
    in   Advent Bay.   It was not a regular post-office and therefore called a letter.house. The postmaster was the hotel manager mr. Ellingsen. Mail was, however, been transported to and from the island long before this post-office was established. Mail to Svalbard was sent from Tromsø or Hammerfest with fishing-boats or trappers and mailed from Svalbard was sent to mainland Norway with any ship heading south. This mail was therfore postally taken care of when it reach a village or town somewhere along the Norwegian coast. Mail from this era is very scarce abd difficult to identify. The only way to know if it is a cover from Svalbard is to know who the sender was by identifying the handwriting or that he inside letter is intact mentioning that it was written on Svalbard.




    Picture 1


      The oldest known cover from Svalbard was sent by the famous Swedish polar explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiõld from his first Arctic Expedition led by Otto Torell 1858. Picture 1.



    Picture 2


      Picture 2 shows a cover sent by Nils Strindberg, who was a member of the fatal Andrée balloon expedition. The expedition arrived the first time to Svalbard in June 1896, but the balloon flight was cancelled due to the lack of southerly wind. As there was no post-office on Svalbard this year, Strindberg sent his letter with the steamer "Express" to Advent Bay from where it was taken to Tromsø with the steamer Lofoten". Here the Andrée-expedition forwarding agent And. Aagaard sent the letter south with the Hurtigruten (regular ship service along the Norwegian coast). Istead of stamp Strindberg had written a note that the cover should be given to And. Aagaard who would forward it to the addressee. The hurtigrute-ship carried a postmaster with the postal cancellation marked Nordlands Postexp. E and cancelled the cover 12 VIII 96. The letter E indicated which postmaster the cancellation belonged to.


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