I just picked up a few coins from Spitzbergen. Here's one I just catalogued: Spitzbergen, 1993, 100 Roubles There is also an interesting documentary on Spitzbergen that I'd like to share with you all. Spitsbergen: The Long Dark Night (RT Documentary)
I like them. I have no idea where Spitzbergen is but it sounds German but apparently speaks Russian and that is interesting. I was trying to gather coins with bears on them for awhile so I may have to find one of these.
Spitsbergen is a "populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway" (Wikipedia) And true it sounds German that's why I looked it up...
Yeah, I looked it up too. Apparently it's named after its Dutch discoverer. I thought it might be something like Kaliningrad, which I found out about recently and which has a really strange history.
Guess what may be confusing about these pieces is the use of Russian (and Cyrillic characters) on them. The island of Spitsbergen is, like all of Svalbard, part of Norway. However, various mining companies operate there, and one of them is Arktikugol. That name is also used on those tokens. The 1993 pieces had to be withdrawn, by the way, because the Norwegian government objected to the "Russian Federation" reference. And from what I have read, the tokens dated 1998 were not actually used - today Arktikugol uses chip cards ... Christian
