The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Longyearbyen
(lông´yrbü´´n) (KEY) , town and administrative center of Svalbard, on Isfjorden, Spitsbergen island. It is a coal-mining settlement, founded (1905) by an American company and named after the American miner J. M. Longyear. Its coal mines were transferred to a Norwegian company in 1916. It was destroyed (Sept., 1943) by German battleships but was quickly rebuilt. The Svalbard International Seed Vault, a seed bank designed as a global backup storage facility, is under construction inside a mountain near the town.
rbü´´
n) (KEY) , town and administrative center of Svalbard, on Isfjorden, Spitsbergen island. It is a coal-mining settlement, founded (1905) by an American company and named after the American miner J. M. Longyear. Its coal mines were transferred to a Norwegian company in 1916. It was destroyed (Sept., 1943) by German battleships but was quickly rebuilt. The Svalbard International Seed Vault, a seed bank designed as a global backup storage facility, is under construction inside a mountain near the town.
