Rijpsburg cabin

Last crawled date: 2 years ago

This cabin was build in 1900 by Soren Zachariassen from Tromso, Norway. In a cultural heritage point of view it is an important cabin because it was the first building for commercial coal mining on Spitsbergen. Now it the last remaining building of the Rijpsburg settlement. In 1920 the Dutch compagny Nespico (Nederlandsche Spitsbergen Company) exploited the area for coal. They build several other pre-fabricated cabins and used the 1900-cabin as the (in 1920) northernmost radio station. The Dutch stopped mining in 1921, mostly because of the shallow waters what made transportation of the coal quite complicated. After the Dutch bought a larger mine in the end of 1920 in Gronfjorden (now: Barentsburg) only a hunter stayed in the old cabin to guard the property. In 1932 the Dutch sold all their properties on Spitsbergen to the Russian Artikugol Compagny. The area around Rijpsburg is still today an area claimed by without any activity. #bohemanfly #dutch #netherland #norway #rijpsburg #russia #russians #spitsbergen #svalbard