Spitsbergen 5-ROUBLES¶
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Obverse: (BLUE) WHALE with wicked grin on top of the world
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Reverse: Denomination
- Composition
- unknown
- Country
- Spitsbergen
- Approx. Size
- 20mm
- Area
- Oceans
- Animal Class
- Mammals
- Species
- Blue whale
- KM#
- 14
Although the artist took some liberties with the body shape, I am reasonably certain this is a Blue whale, due to the shape of the head and placement of the mouth. A chunky Blue whale, with one wicked grin. I love it! Blue whales are severely endangered and are the largest mammal on the planet. They prefer cold water but tend to hang out more in the southern hemisphere, with some in the North Atlantic. Back in the day (before we killed most of them), there were probably a lot more in the Arctic Ocean.
It is possible that these coins never actually circulated, but it is hard to determine. They're too cool to exclude from zoo, even if they didn't get used.
The inscription over the whale reads "Spitsbergen." This coin is the thickest of the Spitsbergen set, at 2.15 mm.
Spitsbergen¶
- Area
- Oceans
Spitsbergen (sometimes mispelled "Spitzbergen"), part of the Svalbard archipelego, is a barren mountainous island -- the name means "pointy peaks" -- in the Arctic Ocean that is closer to the North Pole than it is to the Arctic Circle. Lots of countries squabbled over this territory, mainly due to whaling interests, and in 1920 it was agreed it would go to Norway (almost 600 km due south).
There may be up to three settlements on the island, or there may only be one active settlement left today. It would be hard to hang around a place where night basically starts in late October and lasts until mid-February.
The Russian mining company Arktikugol set up camp here in 1932, and issued coins (tokens, really) for the workers in 1946, 1993, and 1998.
