Jan Mayen Island, a part of the Kingdom of Norway, is a 373-square-kilometer
arctic volcanic island
partly covered by glaciers and divided into two parts by a narrow isthmus. It is located between Greenland and
the north of Norway at 71° N 8° W (http://kvaleberg.com/pac/index.php/Special:Mapsources/71_N_8_W__3000000). The island is
mountainous, the highest summit being Beerenberg in the north (2277 m).
It 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.
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 Defense Communication
Service.
Henry Hudson discovered the island in 1607 and called it Hudson's Tutches or Touches. Thereafter it was observed several times by navigators
who successively 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 Īle de Richelieu;
and in 1614 Joris Carolus named one of its promontories Jan Meys Hoel, after the captain of one of his ships. The
present name of the island is derived from this, the claim of its discovery by a Dutch navigator, Jan Mayen, in 1611, being unsupportable.
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 country code SJ,
the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .no
(.sj is allocated but not used (http://www.norid.no/domenenavnbaser/bv-sj.html)) and data code JN. Its amateur radio callsign prefix is
JX.
External links
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