Bjørnøen AS is a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 government enterprise

State ownership

State ownership, also called public ownership, government ownership or state property, are property interests that are vested in the state, rather than an individual or communities....

 that owns all land and some heritage buildings on the uninhabited overseas territory of Bjørnøya. The company is managed by Kings Bay AS, and does not have any employees. It is owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry

Ministry of Trade and Industry (Norway)

The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry is a Norwegian ministry responsible for business, trade and industry. It is led by Trond Giske . The department must report to the legislature, Storting.-History:The Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Shipping, Industry, Craft and Fisheries was created...

, who own the company as part of a strategy to claim sovereignty

Sovereignty

Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...

 of the island.

Kings Bay is responsible for the administration of the company, financed through the ordinary state subsidies to Kings Bay. The company has the same board of directors

Board of directors

A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...

 and managing director as Kings Bay. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute

Norwegian Meteorological Institute

Norwegian Meteorological Institute is the Norwegian national institute for weather forecasts.The three main offices are located in Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø. The Institute has around 500 employees and keeps around 650 paid observers of various kinds around the country...

 rents some land for a meteorological station on the island. They are also responsible for coordinating any scientific activities on the island, that (with a few exceptions) became a nature reserve

Nature reserve

A nature reserve is a protected area of importance for wildlife, flora, fauna or features of geological or other special interest, which is reserved and managed for conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research...

 on August 16, 2002.

History

The company was founded as I/S Bjørnøen Kulkompani on June 3, 1918 to perform coal mining

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

 on Bjørnøya. It was nationalized

Nationalization

Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...

in 1932 and became a subsidiary of Kings Bay in 1967.