Danskøya is an island

Island

An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...

 in Norway

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...

's Svalbard

Svalbard

Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. It is located north of mainland Europe, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude , and from 10° to 35° east longitude. Spitsbergen is the...

 archipelago

Archipelago

An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...

 in the Arctic Ocean

Arctic Ocean

The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions...

. It lies just off the northwest coast of Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...

, the largest island in the archipelago, near to Magdalenefjorden

Magdalenefjorden

Magdalenefjorden is an 8 km long and up to 5 km wide fjord between Reuschhalvøya and Hoelhalvøya, Albert I Land, on the west coast of Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago.-History:...

. Just to the north lies Amsterdamøya

Amsterdamøya

Amsterdamøya is a small island off the northwest coast of West-Spitsbergen.-History:Amsterdamøya was first seen by Willem Barents in 1596. The Dutch first occupied it in 1614 , building a temporary whaling station on the island's southeastern promontory. In 1619 a semi-permanent station was...

. Like many of Svalbard's islands, Danskøya is uninhabited. The island has an area of 40.6 square kilometres (15.7 sq mi).

In 1631 the Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 established a permanent station in Robbe Bay (Kobbefjorden

Kobbefjorden

Kobbefjorden is a small fjord on the west coast of Danskøya, on the northwestern coast of Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago. The fjord is about two miles long and 1-1.2 miles wide...

), which was abandoned in 1658. Another station was established by the Dutch in Houcker Bay (Virgohamna

Virgohamna

Virgohamna is a small bay on the northern coast of Danskøya, an island off the northwestern coast of Spitsbergen, the main island of the Svalbard archipelago...

), on the north side of Danskøya in the 1630s. It was called the "Cookery of Harlingen." The remains of this station were seen by Friderich Martens

Friderich Martens

Friderich Martens, was a German physician and naturalist who conducted the first scientific observations of the nature, animal life and climate of Svalbard...

 in 1671.

The island is the location from which S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897

S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897

S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 was an ill-fated effort to reach the North Pole in which all three expedition members perished. S. A. Andrée , the first Swedish balloonist, proposed a voyage by hydrogen balloon from Svalbard to either Russia or Canada, which was to pass,...

 started. Andrée

Salomon August Andrée

Salomon August Andrée , during his lifetime most often known as S. A. Andrée, was a Swedish engineer, physicist, aeronaut and polar explorer who died while leading an attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole by hydrogen balloon...

's hydrogen

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...

 balloon

Gas balloon

A gas balloon is any balloon that stays aloft due to being filled with a gas less dense than air or lighter than air . A gas balloon may also be called a Charlière for its inventor, the Frenchman Jacques Charles. Today, familiar gas balloons include large blimps and small rubber party balloons...

 crashed on the pack ice three days after its launch from Danskøya, and after wandering and drifting for nearly three months, the explorers finally perished on Kvitøya

Kvitøya

Kvitøya is an island in the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, with an area of . It is located at , making it the easternmost part of the Kingdom of Norway...

, also in Svalbard.