Territories of Svalbard and Jan Mayen

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Updates: 

The GENC standard treats Svalbard and Jan Mayen as two countries.

New information indicates that Jan Mayen and Svalbard both keep the same time as Norway, +1d (one hour later than Greenwich, with daylight saving time observed). "Administrative Subdivisions of Countries" said that Jan Mayen kept -1d, which would be more in keeping with its geographical location.

International standard ISO 3166-2 was published on December 15, 1998. It superseded ISO/DIS 3166-2 (draft international standard), which came out in fall 1996. Both versions show no administrative subdivisions of Svalbard and Jan Mayen as a country; but both versions assign codes to the two territories as parts of Norway. The codes are shown in the Primary subdivisions table below.

Country overview: 

Short nameSVALBARD AND JAN MAYEN
ISO codeSJ
GEC codeSV
LanguageRussian (ru), Norwegian (no)
Time zone+1 ~
CapitalLongyearbyen

 

The question of sovereignty over Svalbard wasn't settled until 1920-02-09, when the Svalbard treaty assigned it to Norway. Svalbard became a territory of Norway on 1925-08-14. Jan Mayen Island, already a possession, was made a Norwegian territory on 1929-05-08. Although ISO lists them as a single entity, they are separate jurisdictions.

Other names of country: 

  1. English: Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands (variant)
  2. French: Svalbard et île f Jan Mayen
  3. German: Svalbard und Jan Mayen
  4. Portuguese: Ilhas fp Svalbard e Jan Mayen
  5. Spanish: Islas fp Svalbard y Jan Mayen, Svalbard e Isla f de Jan Mayen
  6. Turkish: Svalbard ve Jan Mayen Adaları

Origin of name: 

Svalbard is Norse sval: cold, bard: coast. Captain Jan Mayen was based in Jan Mayen Island from 1611 to 1635.

Primary subdivisions: 

Svalbard and Jan Mayen consists of two territories of Norway.

TerritoryHASCGENCISOPopulationArea(km.²)Area(mi.²)Capital
Jan MayenSJ.JNXJ,XJM220373144
SvalbardSJ.SVXR,XSV212,48162,04923,957Longyearbyen
2 territories2,48162,42224,101
  • HASC: Hierarchical administrative subdivision codes.
  • GEC: GEC treats each of these territories as a separate country. Their
    GEC country codes are the last two letters of their HASC codes.
  • GENC: Two-letter and three-letter country codes from GENC.
  • Population: 2010-01-01, from population register.
  • ISO: Territory codes from ISO 3166-2. For full identification in a global
    context, prefix "NO-" to the code (ex: NO-21 represents Svalbard).

Postal codes: 

These territories have postal codes that are part of the Norwegian system. Jan Mayen is NO-8099; Svalbard has codes in the range NO-917x.

Further subdivisions:

See the Authorities of Svalbard and Jan Mayen page.

Territorial extent: 

Jan Mayen is a single isolated island in the Arctic.

Svalbard includes all the islands between 74° and 81° N. latitude and between 10° and 35° E. longitude. The largest of the islands are Spitsbergen, Nordaustlandet, Edgeøya, Barentsøya, Prins Karls Forland, Kvitøya, and Bjørnøya (Bear Islands), which is isolated and south of the main group.

The UN LOCODE page  for Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands lists locations in the country, some of them with their latitudes and longitudes, some with their ISO 3166-2 codes for their subdivisions. This information can be put together to approximate the territorial extent of subdivisions.

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