Anders Kristian Orvin was a Norwegian geologist and explorer. The Orvin Mountains

Orvin Mountains

The Orvin Mountains constitute a major group of mountain ranges, extending for about 65 miles between the Wohlthat Mountains and the Mühlig-Hofmann Mountains in Queen Maud Land...

 in Queen Maud Land

Queen Maud Land

Queen Maud Land is a c. 2.7 million-square-kilometre region of Antarctica claimed as a dependent territory by Norway. The territory lies between 20° west and 45° east, between the British Antarctic Territory to the west and the Australian Antarctic Territory to the east. The latitudinal...

 in Antarctica are named after him.

Anders Kristian Orvin was born in Hattfjelldal

Hattfjelldal

Hattfjelldal is a municipality in Nordland county, Norway. It is part of the Helgeland traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Hattfjelldal. Other villages include Grubben, Svenskvollen, and Varntresk...

, in Nordland

Nordland

is a county in Norway in the North Norway region, bordering Troms in the north, Nord-Trøndelag in the south, Norrbottens län in Sweden to the east, Västerbottens län to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The county was formerly known as Nordlandene amt. The county administration is...

 county, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

. His father Ole Tobias Olsen (1830-1924) was a pastor in Nordland until 1905 when the family moved to Oslo. He graduated from the University of Oslo

University of Oslo

The University of Oslo , formerly The Royal Frederick University , is the oldest and largest university in Norway, situated in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The university was founded in 1811 and was modelled after the recently established University of Berlin...

 in mineralogy in 1912 and took the dr.philos. degree in 1934 on the thesis Geology of the Kings Bay Region, Spitsbergen. He also wrote Geology of Bear Island (1928, with Gunnar Horn

Gunnar Horn

Gunnar Hansen Horn was a Norwegian petroleum geologist and Arctic explorer. He is most renowned as the leader of the Bratvaag Expedition that found the long-lost remains of S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 at Kvitøya in 1930....

), and Outline of the Geological History of Spitsbergen (1940).

Orvin participated in and led a number of expeditions to Svalbard and Greenland

Greenland

Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...

 between the years 1913 and 1936. His expeditions went to East Greenland as well as Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...

 and Bear Island. He was the managing director of the Norwegian Polar Institute

Norwegian Polar Institute

The Norwegian Polar Institute is Norway's national institution for polar research. It is run under the auspices of the Norwegian Ministry of Environment. The institute organizes expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic regions and runs a research station at Ny-Ålesund...

 from 1957 to 1990. He was made a Knight 1st Class of Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav in 1960.

Selected works

• Geology of Bear Island with Gunnar Horn (1928)
• Outline of the geological history of Spitsbergen (1940)
• The places of Jan Mayen (1960)