Sir Martin Conway, on his visit to Spitsbergen in 1896–97, described the fjord as having "ice-smoothed hills of [the] hardest rock.
The latter men added the alternative name Danes Bay, which Cornelis Gisbert Zorgdrager (1720) and William Scoresby (1820) copied.
[9] In 1868, Nordenskiöld had planned to wait at Kobbefjorden "for a favourable opportunity at the end of September or during October for sailing northwards" of Spitsbergen.
[10] On August 23, his ship, the Sofia, left a number of naturalists ashore within the fjord, before sailing north to review the state of the pack-ice.
The Sofia returned to the fjord several days later, "where a violent snowstorm had almost put a stop to the work of the party that was left behind, but did not prevent a series of magnetic observations from being taken and some hitherto unknown insects [being] discovered."