History of Svalbard - Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction

Although Denmark–Norway never formally gave up its claim to Svalbard, the archipelago continued to be a terra nullius—a land without a government. The work to establish an administration was initiated by Nordenskiöld in 1871, in which he established that only Russia and Norway would object to an annexation of the island. Fridtjof Nansen's endeavors raised the Norwegian public's consciousness of the Arctic, which again brought forth public support for annexation of Svalbard. Yet the need for jurisdiction came from the mining community. Firstly, there was no means to make a mining claim legal. Secondly, there was a need for conflict resolution, particularly regarding labor conflicts, which often saw the mining company and the workers have different nationalities.

The Government of Norway took initiative in 1907 for negotiations between the involved states. Multilateral conferences were held in 1910, 1912 and 1914, all of which proposed various types of joint rule. The break-through came at the Paris Peace Conference. Germany and Russia had both been excluded, while Norway enjoyed much goodwill after their neutral ally policy during the war and was at the same time seen as harmless. The Svalbard Treaty of 9 February 1920 granted Norway full sovereignty over Svalbard, although with two major limitations: all parties to the treaty had equal rights to economic resources and the archipelago was not to be used for "warlike purposes".

After significant political debate, a proposal to establish Svalbard as a dependency and administrate it from Tromsø was rejected. Instead the Svalbard Act specified that the islands would be administrated by the Governor of Svalbard and was considered "part of the Kingdom of Norway", although not regarded as a county. The islands had until then been known as the Spitsbergen Archipelago, and it was at this time the term Svalbard was introduced. The legislation took effect on 14 August 1925. A mining code was passed in 1925 and by 1927 all mining claims, some of which conflicted, were resolved. All unclaimed land was taken over by the Norwegian Government. Although the Soviet Union was initially skeptical to the treaty, they were willing to trade a signing of it in exchange for a Norwegian recognition of the Soviet regime.

During the 1920s, mining fell into an economic slump, with several of the mining communities being closed. By the 1930s, only Store Norske and the Soviet state-owned Arktikugol were left. This led to more large-scale production, but left the archipelago with only two geopolitical interests, which led to a bilateralization of politics. Because both the Governor and the Commissioner of Mining only had a single person, which was stationed on the mainland during the winter, there was little Norwegian control over the Soviet communities. Pre-war coal production peaked at 786,000 tonnes (774,000 long tons; 866,000 short tons) in 1936, 57 percent of which was from Norwegian mines, and at which time the archipelago had a population of 1,900. The 1930s also saw a limited cod fishery from Ny-Ålesund and a limited tourism with a scheduled ship service to the mainland.