page_title: Jan Mayen
section_title: First verified discoveries: mapping and naming
hierarchical_section_title: Jan Mayen / History / Jan Mayen during the Golden Age of Dutch exploration and discovery (c. 1590s–1720s) / First verified discoveries: mapping and naming
caption_attribution_description: Norsk bokmål: Illustrasjon hentet fra boken "C.G. Zorgdragers Bloeyende opkomst der aloude en hedendaagsche Groenlandsche visschery" av Zorgdrager, Cornelis Gijsbertsz og utgitt av By Joannes Oosterwyk (nl, 1720) English: Illustration from the book "C.G. Zorgdragers Bloeyende opkomst der aloude en hedendaagsche Groenlandsche visschery" by Zorgdrager, Cornelis Gijsbertsz and published by By Joannes Oosterwyk (nl, 1720)
context_page_description: Jan Mayen is a Norwegian volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean, with no permanent population. It is 55 km long and 373 km² in area, partly covered by glaciers. It has two parts: larger northeast Nord-Jan and smaller Sør-Jan, linked by a 2.5 km wide isthmus. It lies 600 km northeast of Iceland, 500 km east of central Greenland and 1,000 km west of the North Cape, Norway. The island is mountainous, the highest summit being the Beerenberg volcano in the north. The isthmus is the location of the two largest lakes of the island, Sørlaguna, and Nordlaguna. A third lake is called Ullerenglaguna. Jan Mayen was formed by the Jan Mayen hotspot.
  Although administered separately, in the ISO 3166-1 standard Jan Mayen and Svalbard are collectively designated as Svalbard and Jan Mayen, with the two-letter country code "SJ".
  The island and the circa 1960s NATO base is frequently referenced in the Kathryn Bigelow film, K-19: The Widowmaker.
context_section_description: The first verified discoveries of Jan Mayen, by three separate expeditions, occurred in the summer of 1614, probably within one month of each other. The Dutchman Fopp Gerritsz, whilst in command of a whaling expedition sent out by the Englishman John Clarke, of Dunkirk, claimed (in 1631) to have discovered the island on June 28 and named it "Isabella". In January the Noordsche Compagnie (Northern Company), modelled on the Dutch East India Company, had been established to support Dutch whaling in the Arctic. Two of its ships, financed by merchants from Amsterdam and Enkhuizen, reached Jan Mayen in July 1614. The captains of these ships—Jan Jacobszoon May van Schellinkhout (after whom the island was ultimately named) on the Gouden Cath (Golden Cat), and Jacob de Gouwenaer on the Orangienboom (Orange Tree)—named it Mr. Joris Eylant after the Dutch cartographer Joris Carolus who was on board and mapped the island. The captains acknowledged that a third Dutch ship, the Cleyn Swaentgen (Little Swan) captained by Jan Jansz Kerckhoff and financed by Noordsche Compagnie shareholders from Delft, had already been at the island when they arrived. They had assumed the latter, who named the island Maurits Eylandt (or Mauritius) after Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, would report their discovery to the States General. However, the Delft merchants had decided to keep the discovery secret and returned in 1615 to hunt for their own profit. The ensuing dispute was only settled in 1617, though both companies were allowed to whale at Jan Mayen in the meantime.
  In 1615, the English whaler Robert Fotherby went ashore. Apparently thinking he had made a new discovery, he named the island "Sir Thomas Smith's Island" and the volcano "Mount Hakluyt". On a map of c. 1634, Jean Vrolicq renamed the island Île de Richelieu.
  Jan Mayen first appeared on Willem Jansz Blaeu's 1620 edition map of Europe, originally published by Cornelis Doedz in 1606. Blaeu, who lived in Amsterdam, named it "Jan Mayen" after captain Jan Jacobszoon May van Schellinkhout of the Amsterdam-financed Gouden Cath. Blaeu made the first detailed map of the island in his famous "Zeespiegel" atlas of 1623, establishing its current name.
caption: A map of Jan Mayen during the Golden Age of Dutch exploration and discovery (c. 1590s–1720s). This is a typical map created by Dutch cartographers from the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography.
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