The island is located at the limits of the Norwegian and Barents seas, approximately halfway between Spitsbergen and the North Cape.

Bear Island was discovered by Dutch explorers Willem Barentsz and Jacob van Heemskerck on 10 June 1596.

Despite its remote location and barren nature, the island has seen commercial activities in past centuries, such as coal mining, fishing and whaling.

[3] The Muscovy Company claimed Bear Island for the English Crown in 1609, but it abandoned the site when walrus-hunting declined.

A Russian settlement existed in the 18th century and its remains were later used as a basis for territorial claims by Imperial Russia in 1899 and again by the Soviet Union in 1947.

Due to the cold climate, the remains of the settlement, including a half-destroyed jetty and a steam locomotive, are relatively well-preserved.

The DSV was secretly in contact with the German naval command and considered the possibility of an occupation of Bear Island.

Although Lerner protested the action, no violence occurred and the matter was settled diplomatically with no definitive claims of sovereignty over Bear Island by any nation.

Three researchers - Czesław Centkiewicz (who later recounted the expedition in his book Wyspa Mgieł i Wichrów), Władysław Łysakowski and Stanisław Siedlecki stayed there for entire winter conducting meteorological and geophysical observations.

German forces attacked several arctic convoys with military supplies bound for the Soviet Union in the waters surrounding Bear Island.

In November 1944, the Soviet Union proposed to annul the Spitsbergen Treaty with the intention of gaining sovereignty over Bear Island.

Negotiations with Trygve Lie of the Norwegian government-in-exile did not lead to an agreement by the end of World War II, and the Soviet proposals were never carried out.

The Norwegian Polar Institute conducts annual expeditions to Bear Island, mostly concerned with ornithological research.

A Russian fisherman had been confirmed to have contracted the disease and was transported via helicopter to Longyearbyen to be treated at its hospital, where he made a full recovery.

The southern part of Bjørnøya is mountainous, the highest top being Miseryfjellet on the southeast coast at about 536 metres (1,759 ft) above sea level.

Apart from a few sandy beaches, the coast is mostly steep, with high cliffs and notable signs of erosion such as caverns and isolated rock pillars.

A branch of the North Atlantic current carries warm water to the west of Svalbard, passing Bear Island on its way.

Bear Island's climate is maritime and polar (Köppen ET) with relatively high temperatures during the winter, and a large amount of precipitation.

The large winter precipitation is very unusual in a high polar region, a result of Atlantic Lows sometimes going this far northeast due to open sea southwest of Bear Island.

Earlier climate normal for Bear Island with sunhours Victor Summerhayes and Charles Elton visited Bear Island during the 1921 Oxford University Spitsbergen expedition[19] and the location formed the basis of their pioneering ecological study which produced one of the first food web diagrams.

[23] Although there are currently no industrial activities on Bjørnøya or in its immediate vicinity, pollution by toxic and radioactive substances remains a threat to the island's virtually untouched nature.

[24] The environmental organisation Bellona has criticised[25] the Norwegian government for licensing these activities without sufficient studies of their ecological impact.

Organic toxins, specifically PCBs, have been found in high concentrations in biological samples from Bear Island, especially in Arctic char of the freshwater lake Ellasjøen.

[26] The Soviet nuclear submarine Komsomolets sank on 7 April 1989, some 135 nautical miles (250 km) southwest of Bear Island.

[27] Leakage of radioactive material from the reactor and nuclear warheads currently poses a problem[citation needed], and severe pollution of the surrounding waters remains possible.

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