Foynøya

Gene­ral: Named after the Nor­we­gi­an Svend Foyn, who in the late 19th cen­tu­ry inven­ted the explo­si­ve har­poon gun to hunt lar­ge wha­les (he did us such a gre­at favour, didn’t he!?). Foynøya is a small, remo­te rock at the end of the world and part of the Nor­the­ast Sval­bard Natu­re Reser­ve.

Foynøya, loo­king east.

Geo­lo­gy: Base­ment gneis­ses.

Recom­men­ded book for fur­ther, well-digesta­ble (real­ly!) info about geo­lo­gy and land­scape of Sval­bard.

Land­scape: Steep rocks, lar­ge bould­ers.

Foynøya (nor­t­hern end, loo­king west). It must have been here or very near­by that Sjef van Don­gen and Cap­tain Sora were maroo­ned for a while in July 1928.

Histo­ry: It was near Foynøya that Ita­li­an Umber­to Nobi­le drifted on the ice for a while in 1928 after the cata­stro­phic crash of his air­ship ‘Ita­lia’. Two men of one of the many res­cue expe­di­ti­ons for Nobi­le, the Dutch Sjef van Don­gen and the Ita­li­an Gen­na­ro Sora, were stran­ded on Foynøya for a while in July 1928, until they were res­cued by water­pla­nes. Nobi­le was evacua­ted by the Swe­dish pilot Ejnar Lund­borg, who, howe­ver, crash-lan­ded on his attempt to res­cue more per­sons later. Lund­borg and the remai­ning Ita­li­ans were later res­cued by the Rus­si­an ice­brea­k­er “Kras­sin”.

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