Researchers’ efforts to make Svalbard Norwegian

Scientists played a key role in the struggle to make Svalbard Norwegian, but the greatest polar scientist of them all was strangely mute on the subject. What legacy did Nansen leave behind in Norwegian Svalbard research?

“The Norwegian contribution to the exploration of the archipelago is very significant and has been one of the most important factors in securing Norway’s sovereignty.” This is what the newspaper Aftenposten stated on 22 July 1924, the day after the Norwegian Parliament had ratified the Spitsbergen Treaty of 1920. According to the newspaper, Adolf Hoel had done the lion’s share of the work. He had “held out the longest, one could even say he dedicated his life to Spitsbergen”. 

Hoel first arrived in Spitsbergen in 1907 as a geologist on Gunnar Isachsen’s second expedition to the archipelago. The following year, Isachsen applied to the Norwegian Parliament for government funding for Norwegian expeditions to Spitsbergen. Referring to the Norwegian interests in this Arctic realm, he declared: “If this is to continue, we must—since the land is still without a master—participate in its exploration.” The result was the Norwegian State-Supported Spitsbergen Expeditions.

Thus there was a clear understanding that exploration and research were key to securing areas that were still defined as terra nullius (land belonging to no one). In addition, it was no coincidence that the increased Norwegian scientific and political interest in the Spitsbergen Archipelago came right after the dissolution of the union with Sweden in 1905, when Norway gained control of its own foreign policy. At the same time, polar self-confidence was growing rapidly in Norway, following the high-profile expeditions of Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, and Roald Amundsen. 

Since 1907, the official Norwegian policy had been that the archipelago should be terra nullius, where no country had sovereignty, but where all had the right to conduct commercial activities. During the period from 1910 to 1914, Norway organised three conferences to clarify the sovereignty issue. At the same time, researchers were systematically working towards a Norwegian conquest of the archipelago—first economically and culturally, and ultimately politically. After the end of World War I in 1918, the Norwegian authorities suddenly saw an opportunity to claim sovereignty. When the issue of Spitsbergen was to be decided, the Norwegian research activity was deliberately used as an argument for Norway’s right to the archipelago.

Whether the scientific research Norwegians had conducted in Svalbard over the course of a few years played a decisive role in the outcome of the negotiations is arguable. The great powers’ goodwill towards Norway must be seen in light of the country’s carefully maintained neutrality during World War I, and a general feeling that Norway ought to receive something in compensation for the losses suffered by its merchant fleet. Nevertheless, the case shows that both politicians and researchers believed scientific activity held political and international legal significance. This may also explain why government funding for research in Svalbard increased significantly in the years leading up to 1920, but suddenly disappeared after 1925, when Svalbard was formally incorporated into the Kingdom of Norway. 

Adolf Hoel, who took over as leader of the Norwegian State-Supported Spitsbergen Expeditions in 1910 and founded Norway’s Svalbard and Arctic Ocean Research Survey in 1928, had formulated a clear plan for how to carry out effective Arctic imperialism: “The first step is to send out research expeditions.” This would provide the necessary knowledge about the territory’s natural conditions and economic opportunities. Next, one should establish “scientific and humanitarian stations and facilities, such as meteorological stations”. Furthermore, Hoel believed it was important to encourage and support “economic enterprises”. Lastly, one should engage in “agitation both domestically and abroad in order to promote one’s goals, which should then be promoted as being work carried out for the country’s progress”.

When Hoel formulated this plan in 1928, he based it on experience from the Svalbard case. However, it was also a plan for how Norway should proceed in order to gain sovereignty over Northeast Greenland. 

Nansen and the Svalbard Question

The newspaper Aalesund Avis posed the following question in April 1919: “Would it not be natural for the Norwegian government also to make use of Nansen’s influence in the Spitsbergen Question?” Nansen was in Paris during the peace negotiations, but not as a Norwegian delegate. He was there as a representative and leader of “Den norske forening for Nationernas liga”, a Norwegian association working to establish the League of Nations. 

Norway’s political efforts to gain sovereignty over Spitsbergen began in earnest that spring in Paris. However, even though Nansen was in the same city, there is no evidence to suggest that he contributed to the campaign to make Svalbard Norwegian—despite receiving direct requests, including from diplomatic circles. 

Nansen nevertheless published his book about Svalbard—En ferd til Spitsbergen—in 1920. But does this mean that he too wanted people to perceive the archipelago as being linked to Norway—precisely during the period leading up to Norway’s formal takeover of Svalbard in 1925?

The book is about an oceanographic expedition Nansen took to the west and north coasts of Spitsbergen in 1912, aboard his private yacht Veslemøy. He had worked on this popular science account of the expedition both before and after the treaty was signed on 9 February 1920. In the preface, Nansen wrote that the book had gained relevance precisely because “these regions have now become entirely Norwegian”. However, it is striking that he otherwise did not otherwise address Norway’s takeover of Svalbard. He mentioned several Norwegian researchers who worked on Spitsbergen, but in no way emphasised their involvement in exploring the archipelago. 

In addition, Nansen made no effort to Norwegianise the landscape, unlike several other researchers. For example, geologist Olaf Holtedahl described Svalbard’s geology as “strongly connected to our own country”, and geologist Gunnar Holmsen argued that it was unnatural to think of Spitsbergen as a foreign land. In contrast, Nansen emphasised how different Spitsbergen was from Norway. The mountains on West Spitsbergen were “so jagged, and spindly, in a way”. They were like little “hot-tempered lay preachers constantly springing up, and with their thin, screeching voices ranting impotently, but creating only a few wisps of mist”. This landscape contrasted with the “gentle formations back home in Norway, which in broad lines rise higher and higher into the blue sky, and which nothing can shake. If they could speak, it would be with the deep clang of ore, brushing aside these spindly runts”.

Another point was that Nansen did not portray Svalbard as an economically promising place, which was part of the Norwegian strategy at the time. He wrote disparagingly about the optimists who spoke of “Spitsbergen’s possibilities and impossibilities”. He questioned whether it made sense to mine coal there, and doubted that there could ever be “a large settled population up north”, since it would be difficult to get people to settle in “this polar land with its long, cold, dark winter”. Nansen also disliked the footprint left behind by industrial activities: “Such an intrusion into the solitary silence of this natural landscape,” he reflected after a visit to Longyear City. He did not say it explicitly, but Nansen’s text implies that modern society had little place at these latitudes. The extreme natural environment did not suit “European greed”. 

In other words, Nansen did not contribute to the Norwegianisation effort—and it is hard to see that he published En ferd til Spitsbergen to help strengthen Norwegian sovereignty. The mention of the new territory and the Norwegian activity there is too measured for that, and he tops it all off by constantly writing about how sad it was to sail between drifting ice floes, surrounded by “grey fog—far from all pulsating life”. 

Nansen’s description of his encounter with the Norwegian coast when he sailed in with Veslemøy provides a vivid contrast to Spitsbergen. Approaching the treeless town of Andenes in early September he wrote, “This land seemed so fertile and mild,” and when they continued on into Andfjorden and saw the low birch forests on the mountain slopes he added, “we felt as if we had arrived in the balmy south”.

Against territorial expansion?

Although I have not found any evidence that Nansen participated in the efforts to secure Norwegian sovereignty over Svalbard, we cannot conclude that his lack of involvement in the matter was due to his opposition to Norway’s Spitsbergen policy—but it cannot be ruled out either. Nansen undoubtedly had a strong sense of nationalism and was eager to establish Norway’s position and recognition in the world, in part through outstanding polar science. However, he never argued for Norwegian territorial expansion. Quite the contrary. 

In the first round of Norway’s struggle over Greenland, which ended with the East Greenland Treaty of 1924, Nansen was quite clear. Shortly after the treaty (in which Denmark and Norway agreed to disagree) was signed, and the day before it was to be debated in the Norwegian Parliament, Nansen spoke out in the newspaper Tidens Tegn against “the wave of Norwegian pride and nationalism unleashed by the Greenland issue, which has swept up so many good Norwegians”. Nansen’s position was that Greenland belonged to neither Norway nor Denmark: “The rightful owners of the land are the Eskimos, and their interests should be the decisive factor. The best and most rightful thing that Danes, Norwegians, and other nations could do, if it were possible, would be to stay away and let the Eskimos live in peace without European interference.” 

The inhabited west coast of Greenland was one thing, but what about the uninhabited northeastern part of Greenland, which was the area at the centre of the tug-of-war between Norway and Denmark? According to the Norwegian position, this area wasterra nullius, and for Adolf Hoel, establishing a presence through scientific investigations and commercial ventures became a deliberate strategy to strengthen a future sovereignty argument. In many ways, it parallelled what had happened in Svalbard. 

Nansen, however, rebutted claims that Norway had been highly active along this coastline: that was “to put it mildly, an exaggeration”. Rather, he highlighted how little his compatriots had been present in East Greenland. Nevertheless, he believed that Norwegians should be allowed to hunt and trap in the area. He saw no reason why “the Danes should have more rights there than the Norwegians” but he couldn’t understand why people in Norway were so eager to own East Greenland: “The question of sovereignty over this coastline seems to me to be primarily a matter of vanity, with little practical significance.”