From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jan Mayen
is an
island
in the
Arctic Ocean
. It is part of
Norway
. The island's area is 373 km². A large part of the island is an
active volcano
, the
Beerenberg
, which is 2,277m high. Jan Mayen is 600 km north of
Iceland
, 500 km east of
Greenland
and 1000 km west of the
Norwegian
mainland.
[1]
There is a radio station and a
meteorological
station on the island. The staff at these stations are the only people living on the island.
There are many claims and stories about discovery of the island. Some claims and possible discoveries are as early as the beginning of the 6th century. However, the first discovery that is certain was in 1614. The Dutchman
Jan Jacobs May van Schellinkhout
visited the island then and it is named for him. His
first mate
made maps of some of the coast.
It is incorrectly assumed that
Henry Hudson
discovered the island in
1607
and called it
Hudson's Tutches
or
Touches
, but there is no evidence for this. Thereafter it was allegedly seen several times by navigators who 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, claimed in 1629 that he had discovered the island and called it
Ile de Richelieu;
and in 1614 English captain
John Clarke
named it Isabella.
[
source?
]
The island has very few residents. The
Long Range Navigation
(Loran-C) base has a staff of 14 and a
weather
services station has a staff of four. The staff members of both stations live in Olonkinbyen. The island has no native people living on it, but is given the
ISO 3166-1
country code
SJ, the
Internet
country code
top-level domain
(
ccTLD
)
.no
(
.sj
is
allocated but not used
Archived
2009-02-07 at the
Wayback Machine
) and data code JN. Its
amateur radio
call sign
prefix is JX.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Jan Mayen
.
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1.
Transcontinental country
/territory that is part of both Europe and Asia. 2. Territory or with territory geographically part of North America. 3. Partially recognized. 4. Not all dependent territories are listed. 5. Territory has some form of self-rule. 6. Territory or with territory geographically part of Africa.
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