Grytviken

Grytviken
Location of Grytviken and King Edward Point
Coordinates: 54°16′53″S 36°30′29″W / 54.28139°S 36.50806°W / -54.28139; -36.50806
Country	United Kingdom
British Overseas Territory	South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
Disestablished	1966
Population  (2018)
• Total	3 (summer)
Time zone	UTC−2 (GST)

Grytviken (/ˈɡrɪtviːkən/ GRIT-vee-kən Norwegian: [ˈɡɾŷːtviːkn̩]) is a hamlet on South Georgia in the South Atlantic. Formerly a whaling station, it was the largest settlement on the island. Grytviken is located at the head of King Edward Cove within the larger Cumberland East Bay, considered the best harbour on the island.^[1] The location's name, meaning "pot bay", was coined in 1902 by the Swedish Antarctic Expedition and documented by the surveyor Johan Gunnar Andersson, after the expedition found old English try pots used to render seal oil at the site. Settlement was re-established on 16 November 1904 by Norwegian Antarctic explorer Carl Anton Larsen on the long-used site of former whaling settlements.^[2][3]

Grytviken is built on a substantial area of sheltered, flat land and has a good supply of fresh water. Although it was the largest settlement on South Georgia, the island's administration was based at the nearby British Antarctic Survey research station at King Edward Point. The whaling station closed in December 1966 when dwindling whale stocks made it financially unviable.

Grytviken no longer has permanent residents but occasionally accommodates researchers and British administrative and military personnel. It is also temporarily inhabited during summer months by a few staff who manage the South Georgia Museum. The settlement has become a popular attraction for Antarctic cruise lines, with many tourists visiting the resting places of polar explorers Sir Ernest Shackleton and Frank Wild in Grytviken's graveyard. Grytviken is located 900m west of King Edward Point, the administrative capital of South Georgia and it's only remaining continuosly inhabited settlement.