Editing Svalbard (section)

=== 17th–18th centuries ===
[[File:Traankokerijen bij het dorp Smerenburg Rijksmuseum SK-A-2355.jpeg|thumb|upright=1.25|The whaling station of the Amsterdam chamber of the Northern Company in [[Smeerenburg]], by [[Cornelis de Man]] (1639), but based on a painting of a ''Dansk hvalfangststation'' (Danish whaling station) by A.B.R. Speeck (1634), which represented the Danish station in Copenhagen Bay (Kobbefjorden)]]

[[Smeerenburg]] was one of the first settlements, established by the Dutch in 1619.<ref>Torkildsen (1984): 37</ref> Smaller bases were also built by the English, Danish, and French. At first the outposts were merely summer camps, but from the early 1630s, a few individuals started to [[overwintering|overwinter]]. Whaling at Spitsbergen lasted until the 1820s, when the Dutch, British, and Danish whalers moved elsewhere in the Arctic.<ref>Torkildsen (1984): 39</ref> By the late 17th century, [[Russians|Russian]] hunters arrived; they overwintered to a greater extent and hunted land mammals such as the polar bear and fox.<ref>Torkildsen (1984): 40</ref>

Norwegian hunting—mostly for walrus—started in the 1790s. The first Norwegian citizens to reach Spitsbergen proper were a number of Coast [[Sámi people]] from the [[Hammerfest]] region, who were hired as part of a Russian crew for an expedition in 1795.<ref>Carlheim-Gyllensköld (1900), p. 155</ref>