Ny-Ålesund (formerly Brandal City) is the name of a small
settlement on Svalbard. It is located northeast of the Brøgger
Peninsula, on the south side of Kongsfjorden on Spitsbergen, which
is the largest island on Svalbard. Ny-Ålesund is one of the world's
northernmost settlements. About 30 people live here in the winter
and around 130 in the summer. Coal mining was the origin of the
establishment of the site in 1916. The founders and developers of
the mining community Ny-Ålesund were the private owners of Kings Bay
Kull Company AS: Lawyer Trygve Klausen and the fishing and Arctic
shipowners Peter S. Brandal and Michael Knutsen. After a mining
accident in 1929, mining under the auspices of the Ålesund Company
ceased. In December 1933, the Norwegian state took over all the
shares in Kings Bay Kull Company and in 1945, coal mining was
restarted under state auspices, but the major mining accident in
1962 led to the closure of mining. Ny-Ålesund has been the starting
point for several attempts to reach the North Pole and other Arctic
expeditions, including Roald Amundsen's and Lincoln Ellsworth's
voyage with the aircraft carriers N 24 and N 25 in 1925 and the
airship Norway in 1926 and Umberto Nobile's voyage in 1928 with the
airship Italia.
After 1964, Ny-Ålesund was built up as a
center for international Arctic research and environmental
monitoring. Several countries have research stations, and in the
summer the research activity is great.
Ny-Ålesund has its own
airport and quay. A museum shows the site's history from its
establishment as a coal mining town until today as a research
center. Ny-Ålesund has the world's northernmost post office, a small
local café and a souvenir shop. Since its establishment in 1916,
Kings Bay Kull Company has owned and operated Ny-Ålesund. The
company was originally headquartered in Ålesund, hence the name
Ny-Ålesund.
Ny-Ålesund has the largest collection of
protected cultural monuments on Svalbard and the post office
building in Ny-Ålesund was named the cultural monument of the week
for week 50 of the Cultural Heritage Year 2009.