1 Krone Bear Island

Bjørnøen A.S. was a Norwegian mining company that briefly held a concession to exploit coal on Bear Island, the remote Norwegian-claimed island in the Barents Sea roughly midway between Svalbard and the Norwegian mainland. These notes — technically company scrip rather than sovereign currency — were issued for internal use among the small workforce stationed there during the company's operational period, before the 1920 Svalbard Treaty formalized Norwegian sovereignty over the archipelago and effectively ended the commercial venture.

Bear Island scrip of any denomination is genuinely rare. The workforce was tiny, the operation short-lived, and few pieces made it back to the mainland in any condition.