Orthographic projection centred on Jan Mayen Island
Jan Mayen Island, a part of the Kingdom of Norway, is a 373 km² arctic volcanic island partly covered by glaciers and divided into two parts by a narrow isthmus. It lies 600km north of Iceland, 500km east of Greenland and 1000km west of the Norwegian mainland at 71° N 8° W. The island is mountainous, the highest summit being Beerenberg in the north (2277 m).
Economy
Jan Mayen Island has no exploitable natural resources. Economic activity is limited to providing services for employees of Norway's radio and meteorological stations located on the island. It has one unpaved airstrip about 1585 meters long, and its 124.1 kilometers of coast include no ports or harbors, only offshore anchorages. Commercial whaling took place between 1633 and 1640 by the Dutch but ended when the Dutch team of seven died of scurvy and the Greenland right whale nearly became extinct. A dispute between Norway and Denmark regarding the fishing exclusion zone between Jan Mayen and Greenland was settled in 1988 granting Denmark with the greater area of sovereignty.
Jan Mayen is an integrated geographical body of Norway. Since 1995 it has been administered by the county governor (fylkesmann) of Nordland; however, some authority has been delegated to a station commander of the Norwegian Logistics Organisation-CIS, a branch of the armed forces.
History
The first certain discovery of the island is from 1614. There are earlier claims and possible discoveries, even as early as the early 6th century. Some historians believe that an Irish monk, Brendan, who was known as a good sailor, was close to Jan Mayen in the early 6th century. He came back from one of his voyages and reported that he had been close to a black island, which was on fire, and that it was a terrible noise in the area. He thought that he might have found the entrance to hell. Viking sailors are also believed to have known about the island.
The island is named after the Dutchman Jan Jacobs May van Schellinkhout who visited the island in 1614. His first mate did some mapping of the coast and named the island Jan Mayen.
It is assumed that Henry Hudson discovered the island in 1607 and called it Hudson's Tutches or Touches. Thereafter it was observed several times by navigators who claimed its discovery and renamed it. Thus, in 1611 or the following year whalers from Hull named it Trinity Island; in 1612 Jean Vrolicq, a French whaler, called it Île de Richelieu; and in 1614 English captain John Clarke named it Isabella.
The island is inhabited by personnel operating a Long Range Navigation (Loran-C) base with a staff of 14 and a weather services station with a staff of four. The staff members of both stations live in Olonkinbyen (English: Olonkin City), as the living quarters by the Loran-C base are called.The island has no indigenous inhabitants, but is assigned the ISO 3166-1 country code SJ, the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .no (.sj is allocated but not used) and data code JN. Its amateur radio call sign prefix is JX.
External links
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Mayen under GFDL
