Editing Spitsbergen (section)

===Danish expansion===
[[File:Bucentaur i Bellsund 1906-08-17.jpg|thumb|A 1906 photograph of the Norwegian whaling factory ship ''Bucentaur'' in [[Bellsund]], Spitsbergen]]
From 1617 onwards, a Danish-chartered company began sending whaling fleets to Spitsbergen.<ref>pp. 18-20 in Már Jónsson. "Denmark-Norway as a Potential World Power in the Early Seventeenth Century", ''Itinerario'', Volume 33, Issue 02, July 2009, pp 17-27.</ref> This successful expansion by Denmark into the North Atlantic has recently been cited by historians as the first step of the Danish–Norwegian state into overseas colonialism. It eventually built [[Danish colonial empire|a small overseas empire]] of East Indian trade posts, North Atlantic possessions (such as Greenland and Iceland), and a small Atlantic trade route between possessions on the [[Guinea Coast]] (in modern Ghana) and what are now the [[United States Virgin Islands]].<ref>Már Jónsson (2009) passim.,</ref><ref>Pernille Ipsen and Gunlög Fur. "Introduction to Scandinavian Colonialism", ''Itinerario'', Volume 33, Issue 02, July 2009, pp 7-16.</ref>

The entire Svalbard archipelago, nominally ruled first by [[Denmark–Norway]], and later the Norwegians (as [[Union between Sweden and Norway]] from 1814 to 1905, independent Norway from 1905), remained a source of riches for fishery and whaling vessels from many nations. The islands also became the launching point for a number of [[Arctic]] explorers, including [[William Edward Parry]], [[Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld]], [[Otto Martin Torell]], [[Alfred Gabriel Nathorst]], [[Roald Amundsen]] and [[Ernest Shackleton]].