Jan Mayen

Jan Mayen entered securely documented European history in 1614, when several whaling expeditions reached the isolated volcanic island. Dutch captains Jan Jacobszoon May and Jacob de Gouwenaer were among the visitors; the island's eventual name commemorated May. Willem Blaeu placed that name on his map of Europe in 1620 and mapped the island in greater detail in 1623. Claims of earlier discoveries remain uncertain.

From 1615 to 1638 the Noordsche Compagnie used Jan Mayen as an Arctic whaling base. Seasonal crews established shore stations to render blubber into oil. By the 1620s wooden buildings and brick furnaces replaced makeshift tents and processing sites, and forts were built in 1628. Competition could turn destructive: after a raid on the stations in 1632, seven Dutchmen remained through the winter of 1633–34 to guard the property. All died. The bowhead hunt meanwhile depleted local stocks, and the enterprise was abandoned around 1640. For most of the following two centuries, the island lacked permanent inhabitants, its abandoned stations recording a brief and costly commercial occupation beneath Beerenberg.