Vikings and/or Russians may have discovered Svalbard as early as the 12th century. Traditional Norse accounts exist of a land known as Svalbard - literally "cold edge". But the Dutchman Willem Barents made the first indisputable discovery of Svalbard in 1596. The islands served as an international whaling base in the 17th and 18th centuries, when there the Greenland whale became extinct in this region. They also provided the headquarters for many Arctic exploration expeditions.

At the beginning of 20th century, American, British, Swedish, Russian and Norwegian companies started coal mining. Norway's sovereignty was recognized on 9 February 1920 with an addition that it cannot use it for military purposes and that the other nations retain right to their settlements; five years later Norway officially took over the territory. Some historians claim that Norway was given sovereignty as compensation for its Merchant Fleet losses during WW I, where the Norwegian Merchant fleet played an important role supplying the UK. Only Norwegian and Russian settlements survived World War II.

From the late 1940s to the early 1980s the geology of the Svalbard archipelago was investigated by teams from Cambridge University and other universities (e.g., Oxford University), led by Cambridge geologist W. Brian Harland. Many of the geographical features of the isles are named after the participants in these expeditions, or were given names by them linked to places in Cambridge (see Norwegian Polar Institute).