Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels
🇳🇴 Norway · Bockfjorden, Svalbard
♨ Temperature
20°C
⛰ Altitude
50 m
⚗ pH
—
💧 TDS
—
🌊 Flow rate
—
📅 Established
First documented in the early 20th century; studied scientifically since the 1990s
✓ Verified on 2026-07-31
Jotunkjeldene emerges near sea level on the western shore of Bockfjorden, deep in Svalbard's Nordvest-Spitsbergen National Park at roughly 79°20'N — making it, together with its larger neighbour Trollkjeldene eight kilometres up the same valley, the northernmost land thermal springs anywhere on Earth. The warmth comes from a geological fault linked to the long-extinct Sverrefjellet volcano; as the water rises through Proterozoic Hecla Hoek marble it dissolves calcium and carbon dioxide, which precipitate back out as delicate travertine terraces around the vents. Those terraces support mosses and algae found nowhere else in the Svalbard archipelago. There are no roads or settlements nearby — the springs are visited only by Zodiac landing from expedition ships operating out of Longyearbyen between June and September, always with an armed polar bear guide, and touching the water or the fragile carbonate deposits is prohibited under Norwegian Polar Institute rules protecting the site.
| Calcium carbonate (travertine) | 0 mg/L |
| Carbon dioxide | 0 mg/L |
Formed along a fault tied to the extinct Sverrefjellet volcano, the springs' carbonate terraces have built up over centuries and are protected within Nordvest-Spitsbergen National Park, established in 1973. They have been studied by Norwegian and international geologists since the 1990s as one of the best-preserved analogues on Earth for the kind of carbonate spring systems once theorised on Mars.
AddressBockfjorden, Haakon VII Land, Nordvest-Spitsbergen National Park, Svalbard, Norway