5 Kroner Great Norwegian Spitsbergen Coal Company

Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani operated a company town economy at Longyearbyen under the Svalbard Treaty framework, which placed the archipelago under Norwegian sovereignty but barred the state from imposing standard taxation — an arrangement that left the company free to issue its own scrip for use exclusively within its settlements. This note circulated as functional currency among miners who lived, ate, and spent within company-controlled infrastructure, with no practical alternative.

The scrip series ran across a period when the Norwegian government was actively debating whether to nationalize the coal operations entirely, which it eventually did in 1973. Notes from the tail end of this issue were already obsolete before they wore out.