Apropos Grumant

... and some other names in the neighbourhood.

Grumant is, or so it´s claimed in some places (like here), a Russian name for Greenland. Both the Scandinavians and Russians believed Svalbard to be a part of Greenland, in olden days.

Apparently the Russians are not very happy about how the Norwegians have established Svalbard as an official name for the islands, they would have preferred the more neutral Spitsbergen.

Svalbard is Old Norse and means something like "the cold shore". Today it´s the Norwegian name for all the islands situated between 74° and 81° northern latitude and 10° and 34° eastern longitude.

Spitsbergen is the name the Dutchman Willem Barents gave the islands when he came here in 1596. The reason for the name is all the pointy mountains.

I am still a bit confused about whether the name Spitsbergen used today means all of the islands, or only the biggest one, the one we´re living on right now. I´ve heard both.

Barentsburg is, obviously, named after Willem. Just like the Barents-sea.

Longyearbyen was established in 1906, by an American, John Munroe Longyear. He was one of the owners of the company Arctic Coal Company. In 1916 the mines and town were bought by Store Norske Spitsbergen Kullkompani, but the name Longyear stuck. More about the town here.

And then there´s Pyramiden, of course. That´s simple, the town was put by the foot of the mountain Pyramiden. I´ll show you photos real soon, they will explain the name of the mountain.

Finally, a few pictures from today´s hike on a nearby mountain. We didn´t reach the summit, but we got plenty of fresh air and exercise, which was the main idea.

Here´s the ridge we followed. Our house can be seen at the bottom.


Me and Rifle. Luckily no polar bears around.



And Emma and Thomas.


The mountain Lindholmhøgda (or actually the summit, that we didn´t reach), is named after Joachim Lindholm, who was a mining engineer at Longyearbyen between 1925 and 1941.

You might wonder where I find this kind of obscure information? Check out this page.