The Spitsbergen reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Spitsbergen

The name of Spitsbergen (or Spitzbergen), the major island of the Svalbard archipelago, often popularly or historically refers to the whole Svalbard group. In such contexts the island formerly bore the name of West Spitsbergen.

Early whaling expeditions to Svalbard tended, because of currents and fauna, to cluster around West Spitsbergen and the islands off-shore.

See Smeerenburg.

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