Why Beerenberg is remarkable

Beerenberg dominates Jan Mayen's northern half (the region known as Nord-Jan) and is the most striking feature on a 53-kilometre-long island ringed by high cliffs. The volcano's broad slopes, regular on the upper cone and gentler on the older shield beneath, are studded with parasitic cinder cones erupted from flank fissures, and its summit is crowned by a crater roughly one kilometre wide, mostly filled with ice. Along the crater rim stands the highest point, Haakon VII Toppen, on the western side.↗↗↗

Its Dutch name means 'Bear Mountain', a reminder of the early 17th-century Dutch whalers who came to these waters and reported polar bears on the slopes. Whaling itself shaped the island's history — Dutch companies ran summer hunting operations here from around 1614 until the bowhead stocks collapsed — but Beerenberg's true identity is geological: it sits at the junction of the Jan Mayen fracture zone and the Mohns mid-ocean ridge, a restless tectonic setting that keeps the volcano alive.↗↗

A volcano wrapped in ice

The mountain is an Arctic volcano in the fullest sense. More than twenty glaciers fan out from the ice cap that blankets its upper slopes, together covering a large share of the island, and five of them calve directly into the sea. The longest is the Weyprecht Glacier, which pours from the summit crater through a breach in the northwestern rim and runs about six kilometres down to the water. For visitors approaching by sea, this meeting of glacier and ocean is the defining image of Jan Mayen.↗↗↗

A living, erupting landscape

Beerenberg is actively erupting, not dormant theatre. Historical eruptions are recorded in 1732, 1818 and 1851, and the modern era added flank eruptions in 1970, 1973 and, most recently, 1985. Scientists estimate an eruption on Jan Mayen roughly once every 100 to 130 years on average, so the threat of new activity and earthquakes is constant.↗↗

The 1970 eruption is the one that changed understanding of the volcano. Hidden at first by intense storms, it was discovered only days later when a pilot spotted an eruption plume reported up to 10–11 kilometres high, with a red volcanic sunset seen as far away as England. Lava poured from a fissure zone on the northeast flank, briefly building over four square kilometres of new land on the former seabed before the sea eroded most of it away within a few years. The 1985 eruption was far briefer — only around 35 to 40 hours — yet still produced earthquakes and millions of cubic metres of lava close to the staffed settlement.↗↗↗↗

Today the island's small, rotating contingent of Norwegian meteorological and military personnel and the seismic stations around Olonkin City keep a continuous watch on the volcano, feeding data that also underpins aviation safety in the North Atlantic. The whole island and its surrounding seas are protected as the Jan Mayen Nature Reserve, set up to preserve a near-pristine Arctic landscape, its seabirds and its volcanic system.↗↗↗

Climbing Beerenberg: for expert mountaineers only

The first ascent, on 11 August 1921, was made by a scientific party that included Swiss glaciologist Paul-Louis Mercanton, Scottish geologist James Mann Wordie — later of Shackleton's Endurance expedition — and naturalist T.C. Lethbridge, who climbed from base camp up the Ekerold Valley and onto the ice. A centenary expedition retraced their route in 2021, describing howling winds over 40 knots, hardpacked snow, axe work and roped teams in the final metres. Ever since 1921 the summit has been reached very rarely, and foreign climbing parties have only succeeded after arranging both permission and guides.↗↗

The reality of attempting Beerenberg is stark. There is no commercial transport to the island, no hotels, no doctor and effectively no rescue service — climbers must carry all food, camp on their own, and bring full glacier skills and self-supported logistics. Crevasses on the upper glaciers are a constant hazard, and water is scarce on the barren slopes. Entry requires a special permit granted by Norwegian authorities, usually only for scientific or well-justified expedition purposes. This is a self-sufficient Arctic mountaineering objective, not a guided trek.↗↗

Seeing Beerenberg without climbing

For most travellers, Beerenberg is experienced from the sea. Cruise ships anchor occasionally off Jan Mayen, allowing guided landings and views of the volcano that rises abruptly from the Norwegian Sea. The island is otherwise kept 'clean' and untouched, so the offshore approach — watching the cone appear and vanish through drifting cloud — is the realistic way to encounter it. The best chance of a clear sightline is in the short summer, when fog thins and the mountain sometimes reveals itself all at once, an effect Lord Dufferin captured in 1856 when the clouds split to expose a glittering snow cone overhead.↗↗↗