10 Kroner Great Norwegian Spitsbergen Coal Company

Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani — majority-owned by the Norwegian state since 1932 — issued a series of company scrip for use exclusively at Longyearbyen on Svalbard, where the archipelago's legal status under the 1920 Spitsbergen Treaty created a peculiar economic enclave. Norwegian sovereignty applied, but the remote logistics of arctic coal mining made a closed-currency system practical well into the late twentieth century. Workers were paid partly in this scrip, redeemable only at the company store.

The 1976 series is among the last issued before the transition to normal Norwegian kroner retail banking on the island. Svalbard scrip from this period is increasingly difficult to find in unfolded condition — pocket wear from miners is the rule, not the exception.