History of Svalbard - Industrialization

Industrialization

The first attempt at creating a permanent settlement was carried out by Sweden's Alfred Gabriel Nathorst. He established Kapp Thordsen on Isfjorden in 1872, but the planned phosphorite mining was not carried out and the settlement abandoned. Coal had always been mined and gathered by whalers and hunters, but industrial mining did not start until 1899. Søren Zachariassen of Tromsø was the first to establish a mining company to exploit Svalbard minerals. He claimed several places in Isfjorden and exported coal to the mainland, but lack of capital stopped further growth.

The first commercially viable mining company was John Munroe Longyear's Arctic Coal Company, which established Longyear City (from 1925 Longyearbyen). By 1910, 200 men were working for the company. The town and mines were bought by the Norwegian-owned Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani in 1916. Another early entrepreneur was Ernest Mansfield and his Northern Exploration Company. He started marble mining on Blomstrandhalvøya, but the marble was unusable and his company never had any profitable ventures, despite surveying large parts of the island. By the 1910s, it was established that coal was the only economically viable mining activity on Svalbard. Swedish interests established mines at Pyramiden and Sveagruva, while Dutch investors established Barentsburg in 1920. During the First World War, Norway saw the advantage of increasing self-supply of coal and Kings Bay established mining in Ny-Ålesund in 1916.