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. 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 Île 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

• Satellite Radar image of Jan Mayen http://home.online.no/~vteigen/satt.html
• Photographs and information on Jan Mayen http://home.online.no/~vteigen/Piclink.html
• Jan Mayen crew http://www.jan-mayen.no/