“Let them take Svalbard” was the headline on January 13 for the Norwegian tabloid VG.
This was actually a distortion of comments by Croatian president Zoran Milanović, giving the misleading impression that he was offering Donald Trump an alternative territorial conquest to Greenland. But it reflects an underlying Norwegian anxiety about the future of its northern islands.
Milanović had labeled Greenland “useless” in comparison to the Svalbard archipelago in a press conference four days earlier that the Norwegian press picked up on. Much of the water around the latter, a Norwegian territory governed according to a unique 1920 treaty, is ice-free all year round thanks to the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.
This fact, along with its location between the North Pole and the Russian and Norwegian mainland, makes Svalbard arguably more important for Arctic security than Greenland. Milanović’s efforts to highlight this drew the attention of the Russian ambassador to Norway, who labeled his comments “very provocative in the current conditions.”
On the immediate point, Russia and Norway are aligned. Neither wants to see greater US involvement that might threaten their respective Arctic interests. But more broadly, there are significant tensions between the two major players on Svalbard, with mutual distrust around interpretations of the Svalbard Treaty.
These disputes may not lead to anything serious, and Svalbard is unlikely to be “taken” any time soon. However, as wider interest in Arctic geopolitics grows, Norway is becoming increasingly twitchy.
With no indigenous population, the date of Svalbard’s first human settlement is contested. On an expedition in 1596, two Dutch ships commanded by Willem Barentsz had sighted the northwest coast of the island they called “Spitsbergen” (pointed mountains), but Russian Pomor hunters may have already been living there for months at a time fifty years prior.
As wider interest in Arctic geopolitics grows,…
Auteur: Huw Paige
