Magnitude 6 earthquake hits Norwegian island Svalbard
A man walks on the snow past a monument to Lenin in front of a building with Russian flags flapping in the blizzard, in the miners' town of Barentsburg, Svalbard Archipelago, northern Norway, May 7, 2022. (AFP Photo)


A magnitude 6 earthquake hit the Norwegian island of Svalbard on Saturday, at a depth of 2 kilometers (1 mile), the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said.

"We have had no reports of any incident," a police spokesperson at the Svalbard governor's office told Reuters.

He added there were usually "many ships" sailing around the island, but did not know how many there were at the moment.

"As of now we have no incoming reports on this," a spokesperson for Norway's northern region rescue services told Reuters.

The main settlement on Svalbard, Longyearbyen, is situated in the central part of the archipelago.

Located about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole, the island is one of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas. It is known for its rugged, remote terrain of glaciers and frozen tundra that serves as a natural habitat for polar bears.

The region has recently seen other seismic activity, with a 6.1 magnitude earthquake striking near the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen on Jan. 9, 2021.

The 2021 earthquake was centered just east of the glacier-covered Jan Mayen, a volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean that belongs to Norway and is located about 500 kilometers east of central Greenland.